The Courtship Dance in The Importance of Being Earnest

THE COURTSHIP DANCE IN THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST THE BEAUTIFUL FARCE of confusion that constitutes the plot of The Importance of Being Eamest reaches its climax in a series of confrontations in the second half of Act II and the first scene of Act III. The denouement with its climax of revelations is still to come, but dramaturgically speaking the play's high point-or high plateau, for the situation is sustained-is the sequence of comic exploitations of the fact that both Jack and Algernon are engaged, to different girls, under the name of a fictitious Ernest Worthing. I shall argue here that the sequence derives added excellence from being made up of a set of symmetrical physical movements executed by the two young couples. It becomes a kind of dance, slow and elaborate, a visual image of the artifice of sophisticated courtship and a major device in the play's esthetic distancing. The first "movement" in the dance is a prelude to the courtship dance proper. It begins when Gwendolen arrives at Jack's country house and meets Cecily, progresses through the girls' warm friendship, and ends in their chilly rivalry when they realize (or think they realize) that they are engaged to be married to the same man. Its physical action is limited-in the first half of the scene to seatings and risings (seated, the girls are friends; standing up, they are rivals), in the second half to the manual business of the tea table. But though it does not include stage walks, the action is indicated in stage directions that are so obviously patterned and parallel as to authorize stylized, "dancen-like performance. The second movement brings the men on stage. Jack enters, "offers to kiss" Gwendolen; Gwendolen, "drawing back," asks if he is engaged to marry Cecily; Jack says no; Gwendolen allows herself to be kissed; Cecily informs her that Jack's name is not Ernest; Gwendolen again draws back. Algernon and Cecily next go through the same sequence of movements-offered kiss, drawing back, kiss, new drawing back-, with Gwendolen in Cecily's earlier role of catty informant. The movement ends when the girls, united as "sisters" in their common disillusion , retire into the house, leaving the brothers bickering outside. The dance has stopped, both romances appear broken, and on this impasse the act ends. The movement may be diagrammed thus: x~~~--x [ house] 256 1959 THE CoURTSmP DANCE The third movement (in Act III) is also double and symmebical. Jack and Algernon confront Gwendolen and Cecily inside the house. The couples are reconciled! and move together in embrace, only to "separate in alarm" a moment later when Lady Bracknell enters and the dance ends. The systematic symmetry of action in the two couples (or, as in the prelude, of their corresponding single partners) is part of the symmetry of situation and dialogue that patterns the whole play. Its primary value, I think, is its mere existence-not whatever value it may be felt to have as symbolic movement and gesture, signifying the elaborate courtship ceremonial of Mayfair society. It need not be taken to "mean" anything; the apperception of it is an end in itself because it causes esthetic pleasure in the beholder. What we enjoy is the spectacle of puppets being manipulated through two identical sets of intricate movements that accord with the multiple exigencies of the plot. It is form triumphing over difficult matter, choreography disciplining farce and making it beautiful, obvious artifact protecting the play from a realist judgment that would find it "contrived" and "artificial." 1. It is characteristic of Wilde's manner in this part of the pIay that the questions the girls ask of their suiton are chiasmically arranged: Gwendolen says she has a question to ask, but it is Cecily who actually asks her question first and who first receives an answer. Quo REINERT ...