Monday (B)
- Read: Introduction to Oscar Wilde (Shaw Festival Production Packet, pg. 4)
- Watch and Discuss: A&E Biography – Oscar Wilde
- Introduction to Play: The Importance of Being Earnest takes place in London and the countryside in 1895, the last few years of the period that would be termed Victorian England. The English aristocracy flourished during this time. It is this group on which Wilde’s satire focuses, along with their view that marriage has nothing to do with love, but is rather a means for achieving social status.
- Small-Group Work: Students will break into groups of 3-4 and will receive one scenario. They must discuss the scenario as a group, respond to the questions, and be prepared to share with the class.
- Discuss: Group work
- Perform: We will begin acting out Act 1 of The Importance of Being Earnest as a class. Students will volunteer to begin reading the play in the front of the room. We will pause to discuss key lines and plot developments.
o Set up: Algernon Moncrieff, an upper-class English Bachelor, and his Manservant, Lane, are preparing for the arrival of Algernon’s aunt, the Lady Bracknell. He is visited by his friend Jack Worthing—though Algernon knows Jack as “Ernest.”
- Homework: Wuthering Heights papers due next class! Please bring both your Wuthering Heights books and The Importance of Being Earnest to class!
Tuesday or Wednesday (A/B)
- Discuss: Students will have the opportunity to share what they decided to write about for their final paper for Wuthering Heights. Students will then turn in their papers.
- Recap: What have we read thus far in The Importance of Being Earnest? Students will provide a short summary of the beginning of Act 1 before we continue performing the play.
- Perform and Discuss: The Importance of Being Earnest Act 1 (Lady Bracknell and Gwendolyn enter, pg. 37 to Gwendolyn is told to sit in the carriage, pg. 44)
- What’s in a name?: Students will return to their seats and view a PowerPoint presentation with 10 different names. They will be asked to write down their impressions of what they believe these “people” are like based on their impressions of the names.
- Discuss: “What’s in a Name?” Activity
- BehindtheName.com: We will then visit the website BehindtheName.com, which provides etymological information about names from around the world. A few students will volunteer their names to demonstrate how the website can be used to find historical and linguistic information about their names.
- Perform and Discuss: The Importance of Being Earnest Act 1 (Lady Bracknell interviews Jack, pg. 44 to the top of 49)
o *Special props*
- Type II Quick Write
- Closing Activity: Discuss and turn in quick write responses.
Thursday or Friday (A/B)
- Recap: What have we read thus far in The Importance of Being Earnest? Students will provide a short summary of the beginning of Act 1 before we continue performing the play.
- Perform and Discuss: The Importance of Being Earnest Act 1 (Algernon and Jack discuss women, hard work, and wit, pg. 49-55)
- Type II Quick Write
- Small Groups: Students will get into groups of no more than four and respond to the following prompt in their notebooks. Select one of the following lines from Algernon that are supposedly his “words of wisdom.” What exactly is he saying here? Respond to what he is saying (agree, disagree or qualify) and support your position with at least one specific example from life, literature, or film.
o “Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the slightest instinct about when to die.”
o “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”
o “The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.”
o “It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.”
- Discuss: Small group work
- Watch: The Importance of Being Earnest (Miramax, 2002) Act 1
o Act 1 – Approx. 30 min.
o At 08:41 (short diversion w/ Cecily) -- play through
o At 19:25 (diversion w/ Cecily) -- skip to DVD Ch. 4 (21:35), Lady Bracknell interview
o End part way through DVD Ch. 5 (31:00)
- Closing Activity: As a class, we will discuss the changes that the director decided to make to scenery, lines, and the order of particular scenes and the students’ opinions about the changes.
