“If you tell the truth,
you don’t have to remember anything.”
Mark Twain
As
I was reading this play and watching Judge Adam scramble to keep his story
straight, this quote popped into my head.
Adam tells multiple stories of how he acquired the cuts and bruises on
his face and head. He tells several
different accounts to explain his missing wig.
He claims to be well acquainted with Martha, but then states that he
rarely visits her at her house. He
attributes his nervous attitude to being sick, then changes his story to
worrying about his sick hen. Eventually
he is caught in his lies and runs off to the hill like a scared little boy.
I
found that the social implication of this play is that it is better to tell the
truth in a sticky situation rather than try to lie your way out of it. (Of course, not doing something shady in the
first place would be ideal.) In several
of the plays we have read, a character attempts to lie and deceive the people
around him all for personal gain. We
have seen this in Celimene, Dimple, and now Adam. Things do not work in favor of these
liars.
Rather
than approach the topic of lying and deception in a straightforward and matter-of-fact
manner, The Broken Jug has a comedic setting
that allows for a lighter discussion of the repercussions of lies. As Emily said in her post, we have talked in
class about how comedy shines a light on character flaws. Deception is definitely one of those
flaws! Have you ever heard of a time
when someone greatly benefited from telling a lie and did not experience any
consequences? Probably not. Lying just does not pay off. The benefit of examining these flaws in a
comedy setting is that lying is not directly condemned and we can find humor
in the liar’s actions, but when we stop to think about it, the audience is left
to make the conclusion that no good can come from lies and deception.
I agree with you, and I also think in the bigger scheme of things, a comedy is the perfect way to criticize a government or state of authority without literally stating the criticism. I'm sure being sentenced to the "irons", or something else just as painful, was common practice during this time.
ReplyDeleteI agree that in a comedy a liar's actions can provide entertainment for the audience. However, in the Misanthrope is lying condoned entirely? It seemed to me that the characters in that play encouraged some lying as a means of being polite to your fellow man. I believe that characters like Adam, Dimple, and Celimene told lies so that they could make only their lives better and that is what the audience needs to see is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI loved that Adam was making up stuff as he went in the play. Not in a "I'm glad to see someone lie" way but more of a "how much more can this guy come up with" one. I liked that his stories got more detailed as time went on, but also made less and less sense. As with all lying, over detailed is more suspicious than under detailing.
ReplyDeleteAs for the lying of characters, I agree with Stevan about The Misanthrope, but to take it back even farther, in the Carnival Plays, characters got away with lying/deceiving/cheating throughout all of the works.