The Importance of Being Earnest

The full title of the play is The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. Wilde told Robert Ross that its theme was the idea: That we should treat all trivial things in...

Oscar Wilde, like many writers of the late 1800s, was an iconoclast bent on the deconstruction of Victorian values. Much of the irony in The Importance of Being Earnest serves this purpose. Wilde...

In Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest, Act III, it is discovered that Jack Worthing's father's name is, in fact, Ernest. This, in Wilde's own comical way, would then make Jack...

The title of the play helps us understand what Wilde is satirizing or poking fun at. For starters, he is skewering middle-class hypocrisies about domestic bliss; one of the confusions about talking...

Act 2, like all of The Importance of Being Earnest, contains many examples of irony. I will cite a few of these and discuss how they contribute to the humor of the play. One early example is when...

"Bunbury," or "Bunburyism," refers to the imaginary friend of Algernon called Bunbury that he uses to enable him to get out of awkward social engagements and to lead a double life. Bunbury finds...

Here are four very popular ones. The one below shows that for the first time Jack has been honest about something without even trying nor wanting to. Since his "christian name" would be Earnest,...

The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde's most famous play, and a modern comedy of manners. Since Wilde was both a satirist and a master writer, although not a linguist; he was known for...

The characters of Ms. Prism and Dr. Chasuble are quite important to the play—even thought hey are secondary characters—in that they allow Wilde to go full-force in his criticism of the "polite...

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a satire, or a comedy of manners that pokes fun at and critiques the mannerisms and values of the upper class. Wilde incorporates a number of...

Although The Importance of Being Earnest is now Oscar Wilde's most famous play, it is not characteristic of his work as a playwright and marked a new departure for him. Wilde's other social...

Although they do not discover the relationship until the end of the play, Jack is Algernon's older brother. The relationship between the two much aligns with this. Jack is, at least ostensibly,...

No, Jack/Ernest Worthing has not truly learned "the importance of being earnest" at the end of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. The ending of the play is meant to be ironic....

Oscar Wilde lived during the Victorian period (i.e., the reign of Queen Victoria, which lasted from from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901). It is important here to distinguish...

The typical belief during this era was that upper-class morals and propriety would trickle down to the middle and lower class, there the upper class could and should set the example for their...

While Oscar Wilde's witty dialogue is no doubt a chief comedic delight, The Importance of Being Earnest also utilizes elements of farce and the comedy of manners style to mine humor out of its...

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners that critiques the members of the Victorian upper class of the period—namely those members of society who had little to do with...

There have been various film adaptations of The Importance of Being Earnest. The best known, and probably the best, are Anthony Asquith's 1952 version and Oliver Parker's film, released precisely...

In Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, food symbolizes the appetite for power. Prior to this concluding scene in Act III, there are two other important “food scenes” that help...

The mention of "talking like a dentist" comes when Jack is forced to explain to Algernon why he is Ernest in the country but Jack in the city. The comment and its surrounding dialogue contain puns...

The 2002 Miramax video production of The Importance of Being Earnest is remakably faithful to Wilde's original script. It does have some notable differences, however. The film begins with Algy and...

The role of women in this play, particularly mothers and single women, is to pursue marriage. Mothers pursue and police marriage for their daughters, while daughters relentlessly pursue husbands....

Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses extreme exaggeration for emphasis or to highlight a contrast, often with humorous intent. In this play, Oscar Wilde’s characters often speak in hyperbole,...

The play The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, is a comedy of manners which intends to satirize the oddities that were resounding among members of the middle and upper classes of...

The play The Importance of Being Earnest is humorous mainly in its satire and exaggeration of high-class society. While it seems like a stuffy, self-righteous play, it is really simply a mockery of...

There is no "clear-cut" meaning to Algernon words. Instead, his initial dialogue with Lane is a conglomerate of puns written by Wilde with the purpose of declaring, from the very start of the...

Almost as soon as the play opens, Algernon makes such another incongruous statement. He says to his butler, Lane, I don't play accurately—any one can play accurately—but I play with wonderful...

Historical context is an important piece of the puzzle when deciphering the social criticism of Wilde's play. The play premiered in 1895, at the turn of the nineteenth century. This was a time when...

Because The Importance of Being Earnest is an entirely farcical and satirical play, we should consider this quote within that context. Gwendolen speaks these words when she and Cecily are beginning...

In Oscar Wilde's farcical comedy of manners, when Lady Brackwell learns that Jack was found in a large, black leather hand-bag in a cloak-room at Victoria Station [a major train station in London],...

The Importance of Being Earnest is not a particularly "religious play," but there is a character who is associated with the church—Reverend Chasuble—and two of the main characters seek...

The four main characters in Oscar Wilde's comedy of manner The Importance of Being Earnest are depicted as superficial people, so it's difficult to know if they are even capable of any deep...

Jack and Algernon are friends who seem to have known each other socially for a while; however, in Act I, we learn that Algernon doesn't know that Jack's name isn't actually Ernest Worthing (it's...

Jack plans to kill off his fake brother, Ernest, saying that he died "suddenly, in Paris, by a severe chill" because he wants to marry Gwendolen (and, presumably, he would not be able to continue...

Gwendolyn and Cicely are the two female leads in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and the competitive elements of their relationship reflect some truth in Algernon's statement. It is...

Depending upon one's penchant for humor, there are many scenes that evoke laughter in Wilde's irreverent play. But, because the farcical appeals often to many students you may wish to choose such a...

"Bunbury" is the imaginary friend Jack (Earnest) must "visit" in order to avoid attending his aunt's long and boring dinner parties. This is a purely virtual invention of his to have an excuse for...

A paradox often considered as one of the funniest in any Oscar Wilde play, this expression is spoken by Lady Bracknell during her interview with Jack Worthing (whose name they all think is actually...

Act II of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest shows the flirtatious relationship between the reverend Dr. Chasuble and the prude Miss Prism as they meet during one of Chasuble's...

The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, near the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. Victorian values such as respectability prevailed during the sixties and seventies, but...

Hyperbole is one of the techniques Oscar Wilde uses most often in The Importance of Being Earnest. Hyperbole—exaggeration for effect—enables Wilde to satirize the ridiculous ideas and behaviors of...

The importance of language as an important source of humor in Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest is based on Wilde's ubiquitous use of sarcasm, irony, epigrams, paradoxes, and...

Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest begins with Algernon Moncrieff playing his piano, whether "accurately" or not, while his manservant, Lane, enters the scene. While the two men only engage...

It is evident as soon as Jack Worthing admits he has an alter ego named Ernest that the title of The Importance of Being Earnest is a pun. Both Gwendolen and Cecily are determined to marry a man...

In the play, love and marriage are treated as fodder for jokes. We typically think of things like marriage as being serious subjects, but one of the ways that Oscar Wilde creates humor in the play...

Gwendolen and Cecily seem to think they are vastly different, and they do have a few superficial differences. Mostly, the women are from different environment: Gwendolen lives in London, while...

Lady Bracknell is interviewing Jack to see if he is worthy of marrying her daughter. Much of the comedy of the scene comes from quotes like this one. Lady Bracknell asks questions that feel like a...

A great thesis statement concerning the humor in The Importance of Being Earnest might concern the genre of satire, which is the use of humor, irony, wit, or even ridicule to expose the flaws of a...

In the play, there are several places which indicate that a character's relationship with food seems to be symbolic of their adherence to, or failure to abide by, social rules and conventions. For...

In Act III, Jack finalizes the play with the sentence I have finally realized for the first time in my life, the vital Importance of being earnest. By extrapolating the phrase "being earnest"...