The Importance of Being Earnest
Victorian comedy of manners
*The Importance of Being Earnest* is an 1895 comedy by Oscar Wilde, subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." The play satirizes Victorian social conventions through characters who adopt false identities—the title puns on "earnest" (sincere) and "Ernest" (a name).
It remains Wilde's most performed work and a touchstone for witty, farcical theater: We're doing *The Importance of Being Earnest* this spring.
- AestheticismDoctrine elevating beauty above morality
- double identityAlternate hidden self
- mistaken identityWrongly recognized as another
- RevelationsTruths suddenly made known
- social classSocietal stratification by status
cucumber sandwiches · country house · Oscar Wilde · Victorian
- PlaysHamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear
- theatreBroadway, acting, theatre, stage, actor
- British TheatreWest End, Macbeth, Globe, King Lear, pantomime
- 1900s LiteratureThe Time Machine, War of the Worlds, Heart of Darkness, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray
- Irish LiteratureJames Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Yeats, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett
- Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, An Ideal Husband, The Happy Prince, epigrams
The Importance of Being EarnestHamlet
Danish prince's revenge tragedy
Oedipus Rex · King Lear · Medea · Antigone · Macbeth
The Importance of Being EarnestA Doll's House
Ibsen's feminist stage work
The Cherry Orchard · The Iceman Cometh · social realism · Waiting for Godot · naturalism
The Importance of Being EarnestAn Ideal Husband
Play about compromised politician
importance, important, importantly, unimportant, import, importing, imported, importer, earnest