The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy in three acts by Oscar Wilde, first performed on February 14, 1895 at the St. James Theatre in London in a production by George Alexander. The title of the play is a play on words: "Earnest" means "sincere," while the first name "Ernest" plays a central role in the story.
[Allan Aynesworth, Evelyn Millard, Irene Vanbrugh and George Alexander
in the 1895 premiere]
A comedy in which the protagonists assume fictitious personas to escape burdensome social obligations. The play was written after the success of Wilde's earlier plays Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and A Woman of No Importance. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's main themes are the triviality with which institutions such as marriage are treated, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most popular play.
Two English gentlemen, Algernon and Jack, are bon vivants who devote their leisure time to pleasure. Algernon invents a sick friend named Bunbury so he can go to the country (a trick he calls "Bunburying"), and Jack pretends to have to take care of his dissolute brother Ernest so he can come to town.
[Original production, 1895
Allan Aynesworth as Algernon (left) and George Alexander as Jack]
Jack, who always pretends to be his brother Ernest when he is in town, falls in love with Algernon's cousin Gwendolen and proposes to her. Gwendolen says it is her life's goal to marry someone named Ernest. Algernon visits Jack's country home under the false pretense of being Jack's brother Ernest. While there, he falls in love with Jack's ward, Cecily. She, too, considers the name Ernest an absolute requirement for her future husband. Algernon's Aunt Augusta is absolutely opposed to her daughter's marriage to Jack after she learns that Jack is an orphan who was found as an infant in a carpet bag at London's Victoria Station. However, she agrees to her nephew Algernon's marriage to Cecily when she learns of their considerable fortune. Jack, however, will only give his consent if he can marry Gwendolen in return.
It turns out that Cecily's governess, Miss Prism, accidentally left Algernon's brother in a handbag at the train station many years ago. Eventually, it is revealed that the foundling Jack was that infant, and thus is Algernon's older brother. It also turns out that Jack was actually named after his biological father, Ernest John. Jack has been telling the truth all along without knowing it.
To explain: Jack is a slang form of John. So Jack becomes E(a)rnest John, the "truthful John" - a play on words.
[Gwendolen (Irene Vanbrugh), Merriman (Frank Dyall)
and Cecily (Evelyn Millard), in the original production, Act II]
While Wilde had long been famous for his dialogue and use of language, it has been said that he achieved a unity and mastery in Earnest that is unmatched in his other plays, with the possible exception of Salomé. While his earlier comedies suffer from an unevenness resulting from the thematic clash between the trivial and the serious, Earnest achieves a pitch-perfect style. Three distinct registers can be discerned in the play. The dandyish insouciance of Jack and Algernon - established early with Algernon's exchange with his servant - betrays an underlying unity despite their different attitudes. Lady Bracknell's formidable pronouncements are as startling for their use of hyperbole and rhetorical extravagance as for their disturbing opinions. In contrast, the speech of Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism is characterized by "pedantic precept" and "idiosyncratic diversion." The play is also full of epigrams and paradoxes. Although Wilde uses by now familiar characters - the dandy lord, the overbearing matriarch, the woman with a past, the puritanical young lady - his treatment is more subtle than in his earlier comedies.
Text of the play