The Importance of Being Earnest Annotated

by Oscar Wilde

"The Importance of Being Earnest A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most enduringly popular play."

Genres: Classics, School, Plays, Audiobook, Fiction, Read For School, Class

101 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[Emma Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh we were forced to read this is my sophomore english class.
the only reason i found it kinda good was because each person had a different part and was read by different people in different voices each time. it made it quite entertaining.
i honestly didn’t really see a point in this play... it kinda talked about marriage and stuff a lot... but like i didn’t really see a climax at all. maybe there was one... i just didn’t really notice it.
whelp... it’s over with now... i took the test yesterday.. it’s not my problem anymore😂

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read! The Victorian age is not a time that I'm always excited to read through, but this was enjoyable. The humor still holds up, and while Oscar Wilde can be frustrating sometimes because he's so busy being ~sO cLeVeR~, it really works well in this case. As a teacher, you can have kids read Shakespeare and be like, "Look, this is legit funny," but it's hard for them to catch on to some of the humor. Here, though, the humor is obvious and you can enjoy a lot of laughs together with your students.

[Saranya De (#nezuko's_version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

<<<3
So dramatic!

[Richard Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oscar Wilde is a clever, funny writer, and this is as good as anything he's written. Might be my favorite. (I also enjoyed "An Ideal Husband," "A woman of No Importance," and "Lady Windermere's Fan." Lots of similarities.) His characters are comic rather than realistic, always slightly askew, which could be a turnoff for some. But if you hear them as if they're always being tongue-in-cheek and only partly sincere (which is not too far off), as if they are always in on the joke, like a character in an SNL sketch, and always about a second from bursting out into laughter, it makes a lot of sense. People get angry here, but they're always performatively angry. They give and take offense, but forgive it immediately. They behave badly but but feel shame and embarrassment for about one line--and then they're over it.

It works for me.

Jack, who calls himself Ernest while in London, pretends when he leaves his home in the country that he's going to London to visit his *brother* Ernest (who doesn't exit), a poor young man who's always supposed to be in some kind of trouble, and he wants to marry Gwendolyn, his friend Algernon's cousin. Algernon, who leaves London occasionally to visit his imaginary sick friend Bunbury, finds out Jack has a young female ward who he wants to meet. He tracks down Jack's home, finds Cecily, pretends to be the poor brother Ernest, falls in love with her, and convinces her to marry him. Jack, returning home in mourning pretending Ernest is dead, is horrified to find Algernon pretending to be the fake brother Earnest in excellent health.

Then, the hijinks. Really, though, it's the ironic dialogue that's funniest. Here's Jack when he's caught in a lie and forced to confess:

Jack: Gwendolen--Cecily--it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind...

And here's Algernon explaining to his aunt that his friend Bunbury is dead:

Algernon: My dear Aunt Augusta... The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live... so Bunbury died.
Lady Bracknell: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.

A mystery gets solved, problems are cleared up, and everybody gets a very nice happily ever after.

It's a very funny play, light and silly, and I recommended it.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

delightful😭

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

good silly stupid fun

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers entanglements
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a governess and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day by revealing an essential identity.

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This reminded me of a bedroom farce - it is funny but it lacks the tragic aspect that is often the background to Wilde's books (e.g. Dorian Gray, the Nightingale and the Rose or even the Canterville Ghost). Better to see it on stage than to read it, I would think.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic play - I thoroughly enjoyed this comedy and I hope to one day see it in person on the stage.

[Stefi · Rating 4 out of 5]

If my man isn't named Ernest, I don't want him


4.5

[Ana Pujol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my all-time favorite comedies. Thank you AP Lit for introducing me to this masterpiece.

[Debra ravenpaw Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i knew oscar wilde was funny i would have read this ages ago

[☆◦ 。PIA 。◦☆]

the gays love drama and i do too

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

silly fun read

[Sofiia · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was actually amusing

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was actually kinda funny which was surprising, seeing as this was a school book for me. But the fact they were like all family in the end was a little weird…

[Nova Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is sooooooooo funny

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic for a reason. So delightful.

[Avian Caldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could’t rate it five stars because it was so short, but this play was hilarious and really changed my notions of what plays have to be. It was a great comedy with so many moving parts.

[sof · Rating 5 out of 5]

que graciosidad oscar wilde estuvo loco!

[Janis Artuso · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Oscar Wilde !

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The men in this play are so stupid and that's what makes it so enjoyable. Sometimes you lie about your name so your girlfriend doesn't break up with you, and that's okay.

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume could perhaps be considered as just another edition of Oscar Wilde's classic play, of which most readers, or moviegoers, will know the story of confused identities and the finding of, a baby boy in a handbag (written in Edith Evans' best possible tones!) but this one has a superb introduction by John Gielgud who first performed in the play, as John Worthing, in 1942 at the Phoenix Theatre in London in October of that year ... and Edith Evans was playing Lady Bracknell!

The play first appeared on stage at the St James's Theatre, London, on 14 February 1895 with George Alexander playing Worthing and a Miss Rose Leclercq playing Lady Bracknell.

In a most insightful six-page introduction Gielgud puts the play in its historical context, contrasting it with the plays of Shakespeare and those of the Restoration period. And after the latter period he states that the 'picture stage, front curtain and proscenium, plays came to be written which could be sustained throughout in a single mood' and 'long acts took the place of short scenes'.

He then moves on to explain that what he calls 'flights of poetic imagination', such as Lady Bracknell's interview with Worthing can then 'lift the plays in which they occur to a brilliant peak of nonsense'. He adds, such incidents 'are scenes of classic farce'.

He then outlines the importance of costume that must ensure that the acting 'must never degenerate into knockabout'. He adds, 'The pace of the comedy must be leisurely, mannered; and everybody must, of course, speak beautifully - but the wit must appear spontaneous, though self-conscious.' And he stresses that the dialogue must be perfectly timed because if the audience have time to laugh in between comic lines 'it produces a false impression'.

With plenty of other advice for any prospective actors, he informs them that they must be careful not to 'turn comedy into caricature', something I feel sure Gielgud himself would not do! All this does make interesting reading and on reading the play itself it can be seen where some of his advice would be vital to put across the right feelings. In the reading of the play this is no problem as one can read it anyway one wishes without any loss of comedy, tragedy or feelings of any kind!

[Miranda Arciaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

a delightful social commentary on marriage and the values people hold. This satirical play is bursting with irony and epigrams. There's hardly a dull moment as the characters display their eccentricities. Wilde captures the idiocy of marriages based on superficial things and titles (as in social status). The beauty of this play is that we can laugh at the ludicrous things said, but they do ring with some truth and morbid solemnity - realizing that our world's standards haven't changed all that much when it comes to finding someone to marry. The same fact we laugh at is the same thing that is still very much alive today.

[Taya Emory]

I had to read this for my AP English class and at first I didn't think that I would like this at all but after I got through the first act I started to like it. Definitely would recommend this to anyone who is looking to read a play full of sarcasm.

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT JACKS NAME WAS ERNEST ALL ALONG AND THAT LADY BRACKNELL IS HIS AUNT OR WHATEVER.

[Jennifer (Novel Crawler) · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars because I love this story. However, I did not enjoy this particular book/edition because of the stories, or "connections", in the back. They had little relevance to the story and felt they were merely there to add more pages.

[Nichole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious! My favorite play by far

[Klay Kubiak · Rating 4 out of 5]

love me some wilde...this play is hilarious and is one my favorites.

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

read because of school. Don't remember much about it though

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic.