This quarter I am taking an upper level Restoration and 18th Century Literature class. When I registered for the class last quarter there was no hint that it would center solely on Restoration and 18th Century drama, but our professor likes to laugh, and apparently thinks the topics of infidelity and lewd behavior on stage quite humorous. So this quarter Restoration Comedy is our bag, baby, yeah. And quite ironically, or perhaps quite appropriately, at least for all of us in the class (and for those with ears which have already been subjected to extended ranting and description of the course from my not so fond of Restoration Comedy lips), the featured article on Wikipedia today highlights, you guessed it: Restoration Comedy.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. I love a good play. And I love a play with carefully crafted wit that evokes sincere comedic value. And I increasingly find that I love a broad range of literature, ranging from classics to contemporary, from short stories to plays, to novels, to essays. But the “drama” we are reading in this class borders consistently on mere filth, and already I feel as if I am perhaps being tricked into reading the equivalent of our modern day romance novels, 18th Century-style. And while I’m no prude, I don’t particularly care for romance novels. And I don’t like feeling tricked into reading them. But that being said, I am willing to give this class a chance, to read the myriad of no doubt bawdy plays, and to even see if I can fully understand this post-English Civil War time-period. Because I am definitely interested in this, the Restoration period, if for no other reason than I am, as it were, a literature major, and, well, that’s my job: to be interested in the various periods of literature. I just don’t anticipate this period of literature being anything I will want to study beyond this class. And I don’t anticipate this class being exceptional. Especially if we keep watching films as ridiculous as the one we watched today.

Today we sat through what is possibly the best example of a failed transition from page to stage, and then finally, from stage to film. It was a rendition of Wycherley’s “The Country Wife,” and is surpassed in horribleness only by some of Kenneth Branagh’s portrayals of famous Shakespearian characters.

On the up-side, the film definitely did not lack gusto in the humor department. The majority of the class, however, seemed to be laughing at the characters donning bad makeup and sporting ineffective, wavering accents, rather than at the lines they were squeakily delivering (and more often than not, shouting) in the cacophony of the high-pitched, I’m a junior-higher experiencing pubertytone. Apparently this ear-piercing squeal is the sound the director hears when he hears a British accent. One of the male actors actually had so much powder on his face that he looked as if he were attempting to channel Casper, the metro-sexual ghost with badly dyed hair.

Boo!