Work record

The Importance of Being Earnest

Name: The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Also known as: The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

1895 (published 1899) · 19th Century · Drama · English

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Abstract

Written: First performed 14 February 1895; published 1899
Setting: 1890s; London and a manor house in Hertfordshire
Author: Oscar Wilde
Country: United Kingdom (late Victorian England)
Language: English
Genre: Comedy of manners; farce
Form: Play in three acts
Recommended: Grades 8–12 (Light comedy; deception and mild innuendo.)

Premise. Two young gentlemen each keep an invented person to escape their duties: one a scapegrace brother in town, the other a sickly friend in the country. Both pretend to be named Ernest to win the women they love.

Complications. A grand dowager refuses one suitor because he was found as an infant in a cloakroom. In the country, two young women each believe they are engaged to Ernest and battle with cucumber sandwiches and sugar.

Revelation. The governess is recognized as the nurse who once left a baby in a handbag and a manuscript in a pram. The orphan is the elder brother of his friend and was christened with the very name he pretended to have.

Style. The play's force lies in its epigrams and paradoxes, in which characters say outrageous things with perfect composure.

For students. This is a superb comedy for discussing satire, honesty and social pretension. Read parts aloud and notice how the ending turns a lie into truth.

History. It opened in February 1895, weeks before its author's arrest and disgrace. The theatre soon removed his name from the posters, though the comedy has never stopped being performed.

Main characters

Jack Worthing: gentleman with a double life
Algernon Moncrieff: idle wit
Gwendolen Fairfax: Algernon's cousin
Cecily Cardew: Jack's ward
Lady Bracknell: formidable aunt
Miss Prism: governess

Portrait of Oscar Wilde. Source · Public domain

Summary

The Importance of Being Earnest, subtitled 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People', is Oscar Wilde's last and most famous play, a farce of mistaken identities and witty epigrams. In the first act, in his London flat, the idle young Algernon Moncrieff discovers that his friend, whom he knows as Ernest Worthing, is really Jack Worthing, a respectable country gentleman who invented a wicked younger brother named Ernest so that he could escape to town. Algernon confesses that he too has an invented friend, the invalid Bunbury, whose illnesses let him escape dull dinners; he calls this 'Bunburying'. Jack is in love with Algernon's cousin Gwendolen Fairfax, who returns his love chiefly because she believes his name is Ernest, a name she says inspires absolute confidence. When Jack proposes, Gwendolen's formidable mother, Lady Bracknell, interviews him and is appalled to learn that he was found as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station; she forbids the match. In the second act, at Jack's country house, Algernon arrives pretending to be the wicked brother Ernest and falls in love with Jack's young ward, Cecily Cardew, who has long been engaged to 'Ernest' in her imagination and diary. Jack arrives in mourning to announce Ernest's death. Gwendolen arrives too, and the two young women, each believing herself engaged to Ernest, quarrel over tea and cake, until the men's deceptions are exposed. Both men plan to be christened Ernest. In the third act Lady Bracknell arrives; Cecily's fortune softens her. Then the governess Miss Prism is recognized as the nurse who, twenty-eight years earlier, left a baby in a handbag in the cloakroom at Victoria Station and placed her three-volume novel in the pram. Jack turns out to be Algernon's elder brother, christened Ernest. He has been telling the truth all along. The play satirizes Victorian marriage, class and earnestness itself, and Wilde's dialogue is full of brilliant paradoxes. Its moral seriousness lies in its comic exposure of hypocrisy, vanity and double lives.

Virtues in this work

Justice: The play exposes hypocrisy and empty social judgment.

Plot or Argument

Act I: Algernon's flat
Jack is revealed as 'Ernest' in town; he proposes to Gwendolen and is interrogated and refused by Lady Bracknell.
Act II: The Manor House garden
Algernon poses as Ernest and woos Cecily; the two women quarrel over who is engaged to Ernest; the deceptions are exposed.
Act III: The drawing room
Lady Bracknell arrives, Miss Prism's past is revealed, and Jack learns he really is Ernest.

Characters

John (Jack) Worthing, hero
Respectable country gentleman who calls himself Ernest in town.
Algernon Moncrieff, friend
Witty, idle bachelor who invents Bunbury.
Gwendolen Fairfax, beloved
Fashionable young woman devoted to the name Ernest.
Cecily Cardew, ward
Romantic young heiress with a diary.
Lady Bracknell, aunt and mother
Imperious guardian of social standards.
Miss Prism, governess
Cecily's teacher with a forgotten past.
Rev. Canon Chasuble, rector
Clergyman who admires Miss Prism.

Lessons

The double life
Jack and Algernon live double lives for convenience; the comedy shows how lies multiply.
- What is Bunburying?
- How do the lies unravel?
Related across the library
- The River War, Lesson: Disease as the unglamorous enemy
  Disease as the unglamorous enemy. The cholera epidemic of 1896 killed more of the Dongola force than the enemy did, and Churchill writes that the insidious attack of disease appals the boldest. Malaria, liver abscess and fever recur throughout. The history reminds readers that the real cost of nineteenth-century campaigns was medical.
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Lesson: Self-sacrifice
  Self-sacrifice. The Prince, the Swallow and the Nightingale give away what they have for others. Readers can discuss what makes a sacrifice worthwhile.
- Emma, Lesson: Rank and worth in a small society
  Rank and worth in a small society. Highbury is finely graded, from Hartfield and Donwell down to the Bateses' rooms and the Martins' farm. Emma at first despises Robert Martin as beneath Harriet, while Mr. Knightley values his good sense. Austen does not overturn the order of her village, but she judges each person by conduct within it, so that the farmer proves more worthy than the vicar.
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales, The Happy Prince
  A sick child with a fever asks for oranges.
- The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Lesson: Seeming and being
  Seeming and being. Blifil says the right things and keeps the outward rules; Tom breaks them and keeps faith with the poor. Thwackum and Square each have a theory of virtue and neither shows much charity. Fielding asks readers to judge people by their deeds and their kindness, not their professions.
Satire of society
Lady Bracknell judges suitors by money and birth. Wilde exposes the shallowness of such values.
- What questions does Lady Bracknell ask Jack?
- What does Wilde find funny about them?
Related across the library
- Mansfield Park, Lesson: Education shapes character
  Education shapes character. Sir Thomas realises too late that his daughters were taught accomplishments but not principle. The novel examines what upbringing really instils.
- Mansfield Park, Lesson: Principle over charm
  Principle over charm. Fanny's quiet judgment proves sounder than the Crawfords' brilliance. Austen asks readers to value constancy and conscience over wit and attraction.
- The Praise of Folly, Folly's benefits: the stage-play argument
  And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house Folly argues that the man who strips the masks off the actors spoils the play, defending social illusion as necessary to life.
- Main Street, Lesson: Satire and fairness
  Satire and fairness. Lewis mocks the town but also shows Carol's faults. Students can weigh both.
- The Silver Chair, Lesson: Holding to the truth in the dark
  Holding to the truth in the dark. In Underland the Queen tells them there is no sun, no sky and no Aslan, only her lamp and her cave. Her soft voice and sweet smoke almost make them believe it. The book teaches that the truth does not stop being true because someone talks us out of seeing it.
Words and truth
The play's wit turns on paradox and wordplay; it asks whether style matters more than sincerity.
- Find three paradoxes.
- Does the ending make sincerity matter after all?
Related across the library
- The Idiot, Full Text
  not to tell such lies in old days I assure you In old days he was only rather over-enthusiastic and see what it s come to now Of course drink s at the bottom of it Do you know he keeps a mistress He has become something worse than a harmless har now I can t understand my mother s long-suffering Has he told you about the siege of Kars Or how his grey trace-- horse began to talk He doesn t even stick at that And Ganya suddenly roared with laughter Why do you look at me like that he asked Myshkin suddenly I am surp...
- The Theory of the Leisure Class, Lesson: Emulation without end
  Emulation without end. Because people measure themselves against their neighbours, Veblen argues, the desire for wealth can never be satisfied: each gain only resets the standard. The argument makes economic behaviour a matter of comparison rather than need.
- Charlotte's Web, Lesson: Words have power
  Words have power. Four ordinary words written in a web change how a whole county sees one pig. Charlotte chooses her words carefully and truthfully, and the book shows how much good a well-chosen word can do.
- The Nibelungenlied, Lesson: Honor can make truth lethal
  Honor can make truth lethal. The scandal of Brunhild's deception matters because courtly rank and sexual reputation are public structures. The poem teaches that truth spoken inside an honor culture may not liberate anyone; it may demand blood.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor, Lesson: Many tongues in one town
  Many tongues in one town. Windsor is full of accents and errors: Evans's Welsh, Caius's French, Quickly's malapropisms, Pistol's bombast, the Host's catchphrases. Falstaff's final humiliation includes being mocked by a man who makes fritters of English. The comedy delights in language while gently teaching that pride in one's own speech can be another kind of folly.

Context

First performed at the St James's Theatre, London, on 14 February 1895, it was Wilde's greatest success. Within weeks his trials began, the play was closed, and his name was removed from the playbills.

Composition

Originally written in four acts and reduced to three for the first production; published in 1899.

Reception

Now one of the most performed comedies in English, admired for its dialogue and its satire.

Satire Folly Identity Self Marriage Class / Society Language / Storytelling Love Desire

Comparisons

Twelfth Night
Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken identities and disguise.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde's novel of a double life with tragic, not comic, consequences.
Pride and Prejudice
Austen's comedy of courtship, rank and money.

Quotes

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I (Project Gutenberg #844).Quote card

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. Holmes explains to Watson why he has let the jewel thief James Ryder run away.
The Taming of the Shrew, Lesson: Inner worth over outward show
Inner worth over outward show. Petruchio arrives at his wedding in rags and sends away Kate's fine gown, arguing that the mind makes the body rich and honour shows through mean clothing. The Bianca plot, all disguise and swapped clothes, shows the opposite danger: people taken for what they wear.
Critique of Practical Reason, Lesson: Faith grounded in practice
Faith grounded in practice. The postulates of God and immortality are not proofs of theory but conditions without which the command to seek the highest good would be empty. Kant thereby places religious belief on moral ground. Readers can weigh both what this secures and what it leaves out.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 5, Scene 4
And once again I do receive thee honest Valentine's immediate acceptance of Proteus's repentance, grounded in the claim that penitence appeases heaven's wrath.
Selected Sermons, Introduction
Melancthon Thomas Bilney went afterwards to Latimer's rooms gave him his own reasons for good-will to the teaching of Melancthon and explained to him his faith as a Reformer in a way that secured Latimer's attention Latimer's free vigorous mind admitted the new reasonings and in his after-life he looked always upon little Bilney as the man who had first opened his eyes With homely earnestness Latimer began soon to express his new convictions His zeal and purity of life had caused him to be trusted by the Univers...

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I (Project Gutenberg #844).Quote card

Posterior Analytics and Physics, Physics
We say that one thing comes to be from another thing and one sort of thing from another sort of thing both in i89 b o reading kKartpa with Philoponus and Pacius So that one of these substrata would be superfluous i89 b the case of simple and of complex things I mean the following We can say i the man becomes musical' a what is not-musical becomes musical V or the not- musical man becomes a musical man Now what becomes in and man and not musical I call simple and what each becomes musical simple also But when we...
The Art of War, Book VI
Then for to avoide infirmitie, thei did flie from places Fennie, or subjecte to hurtfull windes: whiche thei knewe not so well, by the qualitie of the situacion, as by the face of the inhabitours: for when thei sawe theim evill coloured, or swollen, or full of other infeccion, thei would not lodge there Roman generals judged the healthiness of a camp site by the appearance of local people, an early form of environmental health assessment.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Full Text
sir FALSTAFF To have her or no Go say the woman told me so SIMPLE May I be bold to say so sir FALSTAFF Ay sir like who more bold SIMPLE I thank your worship I shall make my master glad with these tidings Exit Simple HOST Thou art clerkly thou art clerkly Sir John Was there a wise woman with thee FALSTAFF Ay that there was mine host one that hath taught me more wit than ever I learned before in my life and I paid nothing for it neither but was paid for my learning Enter Bardolph BARDOLPH Out alas sir cozenage mer...
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Full Text
Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin TO MY MOTHER Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair Like Twilight's too her dusky hair But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn A dancing Shape an Image gay To haunt to startle and way-lay Wordsworth CONTENTS I WE ARE SEVEN II REBECCA'S RELATIONS III A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS IV REBECCA'S POINT OF VIEW V WISDOM'S WAYS VI SUNSHINE IN A SHADY PLACE VII RIVERBORO SECRETS VIII COLOR OF ROSE IX ASHES OF ROSES X RAINBOW BRIDGES XI THE STIRRING O...
Principles of Political Economy, Book III, Chapter VII: Of money
There cannot, in short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society, than money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time and labour. From the chapter on money in Book III: Mill argues that money is a machine for doing quickly what barter would do slowly, and does not alter the underlying laws of value.

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.”

— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act III (Project Gutenberg #844).Quote card

The Praise of Folly, Superstitious devotions
Or what should I say of them that hug themselves with their counterfeit pardons; that have measured purgatory by an hourglass One of the sharpest lines in the catalogue of devotees, aimed at the trade in indulgences and calculated remissions of purgatory.
The Woman in White, Lesson: Marian's courage
Marian's courage. Marian is the first character whom the reader sees through another's eyes as unfashionable, and she becomes the one Fosco respects most. Her night on the verandah roof in the rain, her watchfulness at Blackwater Park and her rescue of Laura from the asylum make her the moving force of the plot, as Walter acknowledges in the last line.
Posterior Analytics and Physics, Physics
We say that one thing comes to be from another thing and one sort of thing from another sort of thing both in i89 b o reading kKartpa with Philoponus and Pacius So that one of these substrata would be superfluous i89 b the case of simple and of complex things I mean the following We can say i the man becomes musical' a what is not-musical becomes musical V or the not- musical man becomes a musical man Now what becomes in and man and not musical I call simple and what each becomes musical simple also But when we...
Characters, Lesson: Comedy is social knowledge
Comedy is social knowledge. The sketches make laughter a tool of observation. Ridicule can discipline manners, but it also exposes the observer’s own standards.
An Essay on Man, Epistle II, line 18
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! The close of the portrait of man as a middle being.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The meaning of Bunburying.
Lady Bracknell's interview with Jack.
The handbag at Victoria Station.
The final line's play on Earnest.

Key terms and names

Farce: Comedy based on improbable situations and mistaken identity.
Epigram: A short, witty saying.
Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory but reveals a truth.
Bunburying: Algernon's word for inventing an excuse to escape obligations.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension Why does Jack call himself Ernest in town?
Comprehension How is Jack's identity revealed?
Interpretation What does Lady Bracknell value?
Interpretation Why do the women care so much about the name Ernest?
Interpretation What does the play's title mean?
Big Question Is a harmless lie ever really harmless?

Faith Connections

Ephesians 4:25 (Scripture)
Put away lying and speak truth; the comedy exposes the tangle of deceit.
1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)
Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord on the heart; a corrective to Lady Bracknell's values.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Society's obsession with appearance, rank and form produces absurd hypocrisy that only honest truth can untangle.

Rhetorical device: paradox. Lines such as the remark that truth is rarely pure and never simple invert ordinary expectations.

Debate: Resolved: that the play has a serious moral point.

Memory Work

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Act I. Lady Bracknell's most famous line.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Show how Wilde satirizes marriage in the play.

Comparison with Twelfth Night: Compare the use of disguise in Shakespeare and Wilde.

Medical Lens

Bunbury's invented illnesses parody Victorian invalidism.

Hypochondria

Act I
Algernon describes his invalid friend Bunbury.
Hypochondria

Creative Prompts

Fiction
Write a short scene in which Bunbury finally appears.
Essay
Explain how Wilde uses paradox to satirize Victorian society.
Classroom
Stage the tea-party scene between Gwendolen and Cecily.