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Dorian Gray is a dandy, a man who should live life in full, completely, realising his wishes and dreams; one of the feature of a dandy is youth that represent beauty. Youth and beauty can give happiness.
Dorian at the beginning of the play fascinates a painter called Basil and thanks to a witchcraft gives eternal youth on the man while on the portrait we will find the signs of age and vices.
Dorian Gray now lives only for pleasure and making use of everyone and letting people died insensitively.
We know that at the end Dorian and the painter see the portrait who was put in an attic and covered. When Dorian sees the portrait he stabs it and Dorian himself died and the picture returns to its original purity.
At the end Dorian's face is withered, wrinkled, loathsome in fact when people sees him died they don't recognise him. They recognise him only for a ring that he is wearing.
It is a nineteen century's version of the myth of the Faust: both Dorian and Faust are men who sell their soul to devil to obtain something: in the case of Dorian to obtain youth, in the case of Faust to obtain knowledge. How? Thanks to the picture that represent the dark side of Dorian personality, that is the double. Dorian tries to forget this dark side of his personality locking jis portrait in a dark room under a sheet.
Every excess will be punished, reality can't be escaped. When Dorian destroys the picture he dies, the picture is the symbol of the Victorian society of the immorality of the bad conscience of the middle class. Dorian's appearance pure and innocent is the symbol of the middle class' hypocrisy who would like hide behind a curtain. Finally the picture shows Wilde's theory of art: art is eternal and more important than life and is art that wins. The picture recovers all its perfection and Dorian dies.
Third person narrator with an internal prospective, there is an identification between the reader and the character. The setting is very well described; great importance is given to senses and perceptions and Wilde uses techniques typical of drama: the characters reveal themselves through what they say or through what other people say.
The importance of being Ernest is a "Comedy of manner" that deals with moral and social behaviour of upper middle classes' people who follow specific social codes. They are well-made plays with fixed pattern of 4 phases:
1- exposition
2- complication
3- crisis
4- resolution
in the same period we can find completely different plays, the "Drama of ideas" that consists of comedies which deals with ideas in a witty and humorous way; the stage is used as a means to attack evils and institutions or show hypocrisy.
In this kind of comedy we have a blend of comedy, serious intent and didacticism; this kind of play doesn't only aim at entertaining, but above all it aims at thinking, learning and drawing conclusion.
In Wilde's comedy we have 3 keywords to remember:
pun
paradox
parody
PUN: is a ply on words where the same sound corresponds to different words or meanings; for example in the title "Ernest" is a name, but "earnest" means honest and serious. In the story Gwendolyn wants to marry a man called Ernest and this is why Jack is compelled to pretend his name is Ernest, only at the end he discovers his true identity: he was christened Ernest, so we have an happy ending.
PARADOX: is a statement which seems to contradict itself, but in fact has some truth beyond its apparent absurdity; this paradoxes have to be acted in a very calm and imperturbability way. Naturally the language is based on enjoyable witticism.
PARODY: is a literary or musical composition or show which imitates a known composition.
Both paradox and parody belonged to the "Technique of contraries": it means that the characters say the must irrelevant and absurd things as if they were talking common sense.
The plot together with the language create words where missing babies and also false identities are funny elements and hurt no one.
Shaw won a Nobel price in 1925.
He was Irish and he was born in Dublin 1856, his life spanned nearly a century, in fact he died in 1950. his early education was mainly a musical education because his mother loved art in general, so with his mother visited museums, art galleries and theatres. When he was 20 he moved to London and as usually happens he had a love-hate relationship with Ireland. He become a critic of music and art and joined the Fabian Society that was an association of middle classes' intellectuals whose members were working for the improvement of the harsh conditions of the lawyer classes in industrial society. He had an active pert, for example he took lecture on Ibsen, a Norwegian play-writer, who dealt with the social and domestic personal problems of the time. His works had strong impact on the English theatre, for example his most famous play is "Doll's House" dealing with a failed marriage. The social realistic phase of Ibsen influenced Shaw who considered drama as a vehicle for presenting his views on social institutions and human experiences in a provocative form.
It's a drama of ideas in place of comedy of manner or a well-made play. He revealed against Victorian society and it's hypocrisy and prudery. Shaw was no more successful abroad; he wrote different plays that included in the collection "Plays pleasant and unpleasant".
"Pygmalion" was written in 1912 (and later turned into the musical "My fair lady" in 1956 and in 1964 Pygmalion become a film). It can be considered a profit of realism, ha was idealist with a mission; his trade was being a play-writer and his vocation was being a prophet. He described himself as a puritan reform who used drama to present his ideas besides to criticise Victorian institutions. He wanted to improve society, ha wanted to create social awareness through ethical themes. He wanted to replace idealism by realism (Ibsen before Shaw had presented real life and introduced ethical themes). Shaw opposed mainly sentimentalism, and the uncritical adulation of Shakespeare.
Play of ideas:
He invented drama of ideas or discussion with comic, tragic and farcical (e 432) overtones. The characters are brilliant speakers, they have the life of the mind but they lack the warmth of human beings. The best element is the dialogue and of course dialogues are based on contemporary problems such as:
militarism
equality of women
wife - husband relationship
religion
women seen as a life force because of their energy beyond intellect and because of procreation.
Another very important point are the stage directions: they are very detailed for both the stage producers and for readers.
The aims are:
establish the background scenery and the time of action
give a sort of identity card of characters
illustrate the characters' personality
describe in detail actions or gestures, voices of stage
convey the authors comments.
Style:
The sentences are long, but the effect is one of speed and simplicity and the tone is vital.
Devices:
paradox
inversion of ideas
unexpected
truth together with exaggerations
Characters:
They say what they think instead of what is expected and to the Victorian audience it was shocking and amusing.
Plot:
Harry Higgins is a professor of phonetic; he meets a flower girl whose name is Elisa Dolittle with an incomprehensible cockney dialect and he boasts to his friend Colonel ++++++++++ that after 3 months ha can turn the girl into a duchess by training her to speak like a duchess.
Elisa comes to live with him who gives her intensive lessons; the girl succeeds in becoming a lady and Higgins wins the +++++++.
The play ends with Elisa that leaving Higgins because she doesn't want to be the object of his experiments any more. So she becomes an emancipated woman, she's a round character and she developed during the story.
Explication of the title "Pygmalion":
Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus who fell in love with a statue made of Avery; this statue represent a woman who Aphrodite transformed in a living being according to the king's request.
Pygmalion is a person who becomes the teacher of an uneducated person especially a woman developing her abilities and her manners; the name Pygmalion comes from the king of Cyprus.
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