The Importance Of Being Earnest (Wendy Hiller) Part 4 of 11

"The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde

link below to playlist of all 11 parts of this "The Importance Of Being Earnest":
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=749CF199F94D9B7F

Gary Bond ... John Worthing, JP
Jeremy Clyde ... Algernon Moncrieff
Alan Hay ... Lane
Gabrielle Drake ... Gwendolen Fairfax
Ann Thornton ... Cecily Cardew
Rosamund Greenwood ... Miss Prism

Directed by Michael Attenborough (stage) and Michael Lindsay-Hogg (TV)

This production was broadcasted on US television in 1985 (when I recorded in on this VHS tape), and that is the date given in several references, but it was originally produced in 1981.


The actor (and manager) Geroge Alexander first presented this play with a one act curtain raiser by Langdon Mitchell. Wilde had submitted a four-act play, and was told to cut it down to three acts. He complied and most of the cutting involved folding the second and third acts into one--the second act as exits today.

Wilde's son Vyvyan reconstructed the original 4-act version, (it survived in a German translation and from copies of Wilde's early drafts, where Lady Bracknell was then called Lady Brancaster).

Some excellent stuff got cut! such as these exchanges:

Jack: I would like, Miss Fairfax, to take advantage of Lady Brancaster's temporary absence.

Gwendolen: Yes, Mr. Worthing, I would certainly advise you to do so.

Jack: (A little taken aback.) Ahem!...I hope that what I am going to say to you will not be in any way a shock to you.

Gwendolen: Oh! I am sure it won't. I have never been shocked in my life. I think to be shocked by anything shows a very low ethical standard. Nobody is ever shocked now-a-days except the clergy and the middle classes. It is the profession of the one and the punishment of the other.

..................

Algernon: And what did Aunt Augusta say?

Jack: Oh, she was positively violent. I never heard such language in the whole course of my life from anyone. She might just as well have been in a pulpit. I shouldn't be at all surprised if she took to philanthropy or something of the sort and abused her fellow creatures for the rest of her life.