Romeo And Juliet And Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest

All things have a title by which they respond to, and all names have a meaning. Some are based around biblical standards and others correlate with the region from which they originate. Throughout history names and titles have determined the way people live, if he/she is a descendant of royalty his/her name is proof, and descendants of criminals will be looked at differently because he/she bares the name of a criminal. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest exposes the injudiciousness of a name in relationships and how it plays a role in social ranking, although in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet it shows the value in names and how they affect love and families.
Romeo and Juliet is the basis for all of modern romantic and tragic

It kills the status quo and exposes the foible fabric of humanity. The play dictates that all life has deep meaning regardless of name or age, this message is hidden beneath layers of satirical camouflage. The Importance of Being Earnest deals with two wealthy gentlemen who fall in “love”. Both men lead double lives and use it to their advantage, the men are able to have multiple partners at once because one partner could be in london while the other could be in the country. The women they are seeing are also very similar. Gwendolen and Cecily are both very wealthy and very frivolous. Oscar

Both Romeo and Juliet and The Importance of Being Earnest have writers who use elements of diction to make manafest of the importance of names. In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare tells the reader that names can destroy families, love and even life. When Juliet is praying for Romeo to come to her and to be her escape, she says “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”(Shakespeare). By her saying so she means that all are roses are roses no matter what name it is given, the same goes for people. In the play the Montagues and the Capulets have an “ancient grudge… where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”, due to the vendetta the two lovers were driven to death because of their forbidden love (Shakespeare). Unlike Shakespeare, Wilde uses names to further the satirical nature of The Importance of Being Earnest. Throughout the play Wilde is perpetually using situational irony, exaggeration, deflation and epigrammatic phrases in order to ridicule societies social norms. Although the play is satirical it also gives a lot of insight on the importance of names. The play states that names are enough to judge character and even status in society. Wilde uses Algernon especially to ridicule society, at of the play he states that “divorces are made in heaven” which is ironic because by the very end of the play he proposes to a girl who he knew for ten minutes (Wilde). Wilde uses this epigrammatic phrases to point out the flaws hidden in arranged marriages. Howbeit