Home > The Importance of Being Earnest Summary & Study Guide

The Importance of Being Earnest | Introduction

Oscar Wilde's most successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest, became an instant hit when it opened in London, England, in February, 1895, running for eighty-six performances. The play has remained popular with audiences ever since, vying with Wilde's 1890 novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray as his most recognized work. The play proves vexing to critics, though, for it resists categorization, seeming to some merely a flimsy plot which serves as an excuse for Wilde's witty epigrams (terse, often paradoxical, sayings or catch-phrases). To others it is a penetratingly humorous and insightful social comedy.

When Earnest opened, Wilde was already familiar to readers for Dorian Gray, as well as for collections of fairy tales, stories, and literary criticism. Theatre-goers knew him for his earlier dramatic works, including three previous successes, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Women of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband (1895), as well as for his more controversial play, Salome (1896), which was banned in Britain for its racy (by nineteenth century standards) sexual content.

The Importance of Being Earnest has been favorably compared with William Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night and Restoration plays like Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal and Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. While it is generally acknowledged that Wilde's play owes a debt to these works, critics have contended that the playwright captures something unique about his era, reworking the late Victorian melodramas and stage romances to present a farcical, highly satiric work—though audiences generally appraise the play as simply great fun.

Tragically, as The Importance of Being Earnest, his fourth and most successful play, received acclaim in London, Wilde himself became embroiled in the legal actions against his homosexuality that would end his career and lead to imprisonment, bankruptcy, divorce, and exile.

The Importance of Being Earnest Summary

Act One
The play opens in the fashionable London residence of Algernon Moncrieff. His friend Jack (who goes by the name '"Earnest") Worthing arrives, revealing his intention to propose matrimony to Algernon's cousin Gwendolen Fairfax. In the course of their conversation, Jack admits that he is the ward to a young woman, Cecily Cardew. Also, he admits to leading a double life, stating that his "name is Earnest in town and Jack in the country." In the country, he pretends to have a brother in London named Earnest whose wicked ways necessitate frequent trips to the city to rescue him.

Algernon's aunt, Lady Augusta Bracknell, arrives with his cousin Gwendolen Fairfax. While Algernon and his aunt discuss the music for her next party, Jack—claiming his name is Earnest—confesses his love for Gwendolen and proposes marriage. She is delighted, because her "ideal has always been to love someone of the name Earnest." When the lovers tell Lady Bracknell their news, she responds frostily, forbidding marriage outright after learning that while Jack has an occupation—he smokes—and money, he has no lineage to boast of—in fact, he has no knowledge of his real family at all. He was discovered as an infant, abandoned in a handbag in Victoria Station.

Because Cecily seems too interested in Jack's imaginary brother, Earnest, Jack decides to "kill" him. Gwendolen informs Jack that while Lady Bracknell forbids their marriage and that she "may marry someone else,... » Complete The Importance of Being Earnest Summary