The Importance of Being Earnest

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

"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...

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...

I think that your selection of Lady Bracknell’s interview and the tea-time with Gwendolen and Cecily’s fighting over a fictional “Earnest” are both great selections! There are numerous scenes from...

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....

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

"Bunburying" is practiced in The Importance of Being Earnest by both Jack (although initially unbeknownst to him) and Algernon, who actually coins the word in the play and later reveals that Jack...

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...

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...

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...

The use of aliases or false identities is the subject of many fictional works, including The Importance of Being Earnest. In the play and in other works, characters who attempt to deceive others...

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...

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...

Lady Bracknell represents the Victorian upper-class, born into wealth and status and obsessed with its maintenance. She is the image of the period’s fascination with propriety, and her primary...

This line contains several layers of situational irony: theoretically, Cecily should be glad to think that her cousin Ernest (who is really Algernon, the friend of her guardian, Jack—actually, he's...

"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...

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...

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"...

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...

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...

There are four main techniques used in satire: exaggeration reversal incongruity parody If you look for these, you will see the satire more clearly. For example: there are many examples of...

Oscar Wilde’s script for The Importance of Being Earnest was intended to satirize the Victorian social mores that dominated upper-scale England during the 19th Century. Individuals and families...

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...

Much of the humor in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is created by ironic and/or epigrammatic expressions. Verbal irony is a type of irony that occurs at the sentence level: the...

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...

The Importance of Being Earnestis a criticism of the idiosyncrasies, mannerisms, belief systems, lifestyles, and social expectations. What makes it "criticism" is that Wilde points out in a...

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 title has a dual meaning as it pertains to the play as a whole. First, the title's significance lies in the denotation of the word "earnest." Defined as a quality of being sincere, the word is...

Absurd is defined in the dictionary as "the quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable," a quality and state that is prevalent throughout Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being...

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest involves two romantic relationships, one between Gwendolyn and Jack and one between Algernon and Cecily. The first act of the play introduces us to...

Lady Bracknell has just learned the the woman her nephew, Algernon, wishes to marry, Cecily Cardew, is very rich, and though she first opposed the match, when she finds out how wealthy Cecily is...