The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde, the last of his four drawing-room plays, following Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895). First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy depicting the tangled affairs of two young men about town who lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest while wooing the two young women of their affections.
The play, celebrated for its wit and repartee, parodies contemporary dramatic norms, gently satirises late Victorian manners, and introduces – in addition to the two pairs of young lovers – the formidable Lady Bracknell, the fussy governess Miss Prism and the benign and scholarly Canon Chasuble. Contemporary reviews in Britain and overseas praised the play's humour, although some critics had reservations about its lack of social messages.
The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but was followed within weeks by his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, unsuccessfully schemed to throw a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright at the end of the performance. This feud led to a series of legal trials from March to May 1895 which resulted in Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for homosexual acts. Despite the play's early success, Wilde's disgrace caused it to be closed in May after 86 performances. After his release from prison in 1897 he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no more comic or dramatic works.
From the early 20th century onwards the play has been revived frequently in English-speaking countries and elsewhere. After the first production, which featured George Alexander, Allan Aynesworth and Irene Vanbrugh among others, many actors have been associated with the play, including Mabel Terry-Lewis, John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Margaret Rutherford, Martin Jarvis, Nigel Havers and Judi Dench. The role of the redoubtable Lady Bracknell has sometimes been played by men. The Importance of Being Earnest has been adapted for radio from the 1920s onwards and for television since the 1930s, filmed for the cinema on three occasions (directed by Anthony Asquith in 1952, Kurt Baker in 1992 and Oliver Parker in 2002) and turned into operas and musicals.
Synopsis
The play is set in "The Present" (1895 at the time of the premiere).
Act I
Algernon Moncrieff's flat in Half Moon Street
Jack ([[George Alexander (actor)|George Alexander) tells Gwendolen (Irene Vanbrugh) the address of his country house, while Algernon (Allan Aynesworth) secretly overhears.|thumb|alt=young white male and female couple in Victorian costume conversing; she writes in a small notebook, left, while a young white male, right, listens to them, secretly, and writes in his notebook]]
Algernon Moncrieff, a young man about town, is visited by a friend whom he knows by the name of Ernest Worthing. The latter has come from the country to propose to Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon refuses to consent until Ernest explains why his cigarette case bears the inscription, "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack". Worthing is forced to admit to living a double life. In the country, he assumes a serious attitude for the benefit of his young ward, the heiress Cecily Cardew, and goes by the name of John or Jack, while pretending that he must worry about a wastrel younger brother in London, named Ernest. Meanwhile, he assumes the identity of the profligate Ernest when in town. Algernon confesses a similar deception: he pretends to have a sickly friend named Bunbury in the country, whom he can "visit" whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome social obligation. Jack refuses to tell Algernon the location of his country estate.
Gwendolen and her formidable mother, Lady Bracknell, now call on Algernon, who distracts Lady Bracknell in another room while Jack proposes to Gwendolen. She accepts but says she could not love him if his name were not Ernest. He resolves secretly to be rechristened. Discovering the two in this intimate exchange, Lady Bracknell interviews Jack as a prospective suitor for her daughter. Horrified to learn that he was adopted – having been found as a baby in a handbag deposited at Victoria Station in London – she refuses him and forbids further contact with her daughter. Gwendolen manages to covertly promise to him her undying love. As Jack gives her his address in the country, Algernon surreptitiously notes it on the cuff of his sleeve: Jack's revelation of his pretty young ward has motivated his friend to meet her.
Act II
The Garden of the Manor House, Woolton
alt=white man with side whiskers in a garden setting, wearing full Victorian morning dress, including long coat, tophat, gloves and cane|thumb|left|upright|Alexander in Act II (1909 revival)
Cecily is studying with her governess, Miss Prism, in the (fictitious) village of Woolton, Hertfordshire. Algernon arrives, pretending to be Ernest Worthing, and soon charms Cecily. Long fascinated by her uncle Jack's hitherto-absent dissolute brother, she is predisposed to fall for Algernon in his role of Ernest. Algernon plans for the rector, Dr Chasuble, to rechristen him "Ernest". Jack has decided to abandon his double life. He arrives in full mourning and announces his brother's death in Paris, from a severe chill, a story undermined by Algernon's presence in the guise of Ernest. Gwendolen now enters, having left the Bracknells' London house without her mother's knowledge. During the temporary absence of the two men she meets Cecily. They get along well at first, but when they learn of the other's engagement each indignantly declares that she is the one engaged to Ernest. When Jack and Algernon reappear together, Gwendolen and Cecily realise they have been deceived; they leave the men in the garden and withdraw to the house.
Act III
Morning-room at the Manor House, Woolton
Gwendolen and Cecily forgive the men's trickery. Arriving in pursuit of her daughter, Lady Bracknell is astonished to be told that Algernon and Cecily are engaged. The revelation of Cecily's wealth soon dispels Lady Bracknell's initial doubts over the young lady's suitability, but any engagement is forbidden by her guardian, Jack: he will consent only if Lady Bracknell agrees to his own union with Gwendolen – something she declines to do.
The impasse is resolved by the return of Miss Prism, whom Lady Bracknell recognises as the person who, 28 years earlier as a family nursemaid, had taken a baby boy out in a perambulator from Lord Bracknell's house and never returned. Challenged, Miss Prism explains that she had absent-mindedly put into the perambulator the manuscript of a novel she was writing, and put the baby in a handbag, which she later left at Victoria Station. Jack produces the same handbag, showing that he is the lost baby, the eldest son of Lady Bracknell's late sister, Mrs Moncrieff, and thus Algernon's elder brother. Having acquired such respectable relations, he is acceptable as Gwendolen's suitor.
Gwendolen continues to insist that she can love only a man named Ernest. Lady Bracknell tells Jack that, as the firstborn, he would have been named after his father, General Moncrieff. Jack examines the Army Lists and discovers that his father's name – and hence his own original christening name – was, in fact, Ernest. As the happy couples embrace – Ernest and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, and even Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism – Lady Bracknell complains to her newfound relative: "My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality". He replies, "On the contrary, Aunt Augusta: I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest".
Composition
thumb|right|alt=Early middle aged white man in Victorian morning dress, seated with legs crossed, holding gloves and looking pensively towards the camera|Oscar Wilde in 1889
The Importance of Being Earnest followed the success of Wilde's earlier drawing room plays, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895).
He spent the summer of 1894 with his family at Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where he began work on the new play.
Wilde scholars generally agree that the most important influence on the play was W. S. Gilbert's 1877 farce Engaged, from which Wilde borrowed not only several incidents but also, in the words of Russell Jackson in his 1980 introduction to Wilde's play, "the gravity of tone demanded by Gilbert of his actors". Wilde's first draft was so long that it filled four exercise books, and over the summer he continually revised and refined it, as he had done with his earlier plays. Among his many changes he altered the subtitle from "a Serious Comedy for Trivial People" to "a Trivial Comedy for Serious People", and renamed the characters Lady Brancaster and Algernon Montford as Lady Bracknell and Algernon Moncrieff.
Wilde wrote the part of John Worthing with the actor-manager Charles Wyndham in mind. Wilde shared Bernard Shaw's view that Wyndham was the ideal comedy actor and based the character on his stage persona. Wyndham waived his contractual rights and allowed Alexander to stage Wilde's play.
After working with Wilde on stage movements, using a model theatre, Alexander asked the author to shorten the play from four acts to three. Wilde complied and combined elements of the second and third acts. The largest cut was the removal of the character of Mr Gribsby, a solicitor who comes from London to serve a writ on the profligate "Ernest" Worthing for unpaid dining bills at the Savoy Hotel. Wilde was not entirely happy with alterations made at Alexander's behest. He said, "Yes, it is quite a good play. I remember I wrote one very like it myself, but it was even more brilliant than this",
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| Miss Prism
| her governess
| Mrs George Canninge
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Queensberry continued harassing Wilde, who within weeks launched a private prosecution against him for criminal libel, triggering a series of trials that revealed Wilde's homosexual private life and ended in his imprisonment for gross indecency in May 1895. The Victorian public turned against him after his arrest, and box-office receipts dwindled rapidly; Alexander tried to save the production by removing the author's name from the playbills, The same company presented the New Zealand premiere in October 1895, when the play was enthusiastically received. Reviewers said, "in subtlety of thought, brilliancy of wit and sparkling humour, it has scarcely been excelled"; and "its fun is irresistible ... increasing in intensity until in the third and last act it becomes uproarious".
Critical opinion
thumb|Reviewers of the premiere, clockwise from top left: [[William Archer (critic)|William Archer, A.B.Walkley, H. G. Wells| and Bernard Shaw|alt=head and shoulders shots of four middle-aged men in Victorian costume and varying degrees of facial hair. One (Walkley) wears a monocle.]]
In contrast with much theatre of the time, the light plot of The Importance of Being Earnest does not address serious social and political issues, and this troubled some contemporary reviewers. Though unsure of Wilde's seriousness as a dramatist, they recognised the play's cleverness, humour and popularity. Shaw found the play "extremely funny" but "heartless", a view he maintained all his life. His review in the Saturday Review argued that comedy should touch as well as amuse: "I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it".
In The World, William Archer wrote that he had enjoyed watching the play but found it to be empty of meaning: "What can a poor critic do with a play which raises no principle, whether of art or morals, creates its own canons and conventions, and is nothing but an absolutely wilful expression of an irrepressibly witty personality?" In The Speaker, A. B. Walkley admired the play and was one of few to see it as the culmination of Wilde's dramatic career. He denied that the term "farce" was derogatory or even lacking in seriousness and said, "It is of nonsense all compact, and better nonsense, I think, our stage has not seen".
H. G. Wells, in an unsigned review for The Pall Mall Gazette, called the play one of the freshest comedies of the year, saying, "More humorous dealing with theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine". He also questioned whether people would fully see its message, "... how Serious People will take this Trivial Comedy intended for their learning remains to be seen. No doubt seriously".
As Wilde's works came to be read and performed again in the early 20th century, it was The Importance of Being Earnest that received the most productions. The critic and author Max Beerbohm called the play Wilde's "finest, most undeniably his own", saying that the plots of his other comedies – Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband – follow the manner of Victorien Sardou, and are similarly unrelated to the theme of the work, while in The Importance of Being Earnest "there is a perfect fusion of manner and form. It would be truer to say that the form is swallowed". By the time of its centenary in 1995 the journalist Mark Lawson described the piece as "the second most known and quoted play in English after Hamlet".
Revivals
1895–1929
thumb|upright=0.5|[[Lilian Braithwaite as Cecily, 1901|alt=head and shoulders shot of young white woman with dark hair, seen in left profile]]
The Importance of Being Earnest and Wilde's three other drawing room plays were performed in Britain during the author's imprisonment and exile by small touring groups. A. B. Tapping's company toured The Importance between October 1895 and March 1896, and Elsie Lanham's touring company presented it along with Lady Windermere's Fan, beginning in November 1899. The play was well received; one local critic described it as "sparkling with wit and epigrams", and another called it "a most entertaining comedy [with] some sparkling dialogue".
The play was not seen again in London until after Wilde's death in 1900. Alexander revived it in the small Coronet theatre in Notting Hill, outside the West End, in December the following year, after taking it on tour, starring as John Worthing, with a cast that included the young Lilian Braithwaite as Cecily. The Manchester Guardian called the piece "a brilliant play". The Importance of Being Earnest returned to the West End when Alexander presented a revival at the St James's in 1902. It was billed as "By the author of Lady Windermere's Fan", and few reviews mentioned Wilde's name, but his work was praised. The Sporting Times said:
The revival ran for 52 performances. For the first Broadway revival, by Charles Frohman's Empire Stock Company later in 1902, the playbills and the reviews restored the author's name.
thumb|upright=1.5|[[Leslie Faber (actor)|Leslie Faber (centre) as Jack, 1923 revival, with Louise Hampton as Miss Prism and H. O. Nicholson as Dr Chasuble |alt=stage scene in a garden setting with a man in full mourning costume centre, older woman to his right and an older man in clerical garb to his left, all wearing hats]]
Alexander presented the work again at the St James's in 1909, when he and Aynesworth reprised their original roles; that revival ran for 316 performances.
Max Beerbohm said that the play was sure to become a classic of the English repertory and that its humour was as fresh then as when it had been written, adding that the actors had "worn as well as the play".
The play was revived on Broadway in 1910 with a cast that included Hamilton Revelle, A. E. Matthews and Jane Oaker. The New York Times commented that the play "has lost nothing of its humor ... no one with a sense of humor can afford to miss it". For a 1913 revival at the St James's, the young actors Gerald Ames and A. E. Matthews succeeded the creators as Jack and Algernon.
Leslie Faber as Jack, John Deverell as Algernon and Margaret Scudamore as Lady Bracknell headed the cast in a 1923 production at the Haymarket Theatre. Revivals in the first decades of the 20th century treated "the present" as the current year. It was not until the 1920s that the case for 1890s costumes was established; as a critic in The Manchester Guardian put it, "Thirty years on, one begins to feel that Wilde should be done in the costume of his period – that his wit today needs the backing of the atmosphere that gave it life and truth. ... Wilde's glittering and complex verbal felicities go ill with the shingle and the short skirt".
1930–2000
thumb|upright=1.5|[[Anthony Ireland (actor)|Anthony Ireland and John Gielgud with
Iris Baker and Heather Angel, Lyric, Hammersmith, 1930|alt=Two youngish white men, one with neat moustache and one clean-shaven, sitting on a couch, with two young white women standing to their left]]
In Nigel Playfair's 1930 production at the Lyric, Hammersmith, John Gielgud played Jack to the Lady Bracknell of his aunt, Mabel Terry-Lewis. An Old Vic production in 1934 featured the husband-and-wife team of Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester as Chasuble and Miss Prism; others in the cast were Roger Livesey (Jack), George Curzon (Algernon), Athene Seyler (Lady Bracknell), Flora Robson (Gwendolen) and Ursula Jeans (Cecily). On Broadway, Estelle Winwood co-starred with Clifton Webb and Hope Williams in a 1939 revival.
Gielgud produced and starred in a production at the Globe (now the Gielgud) Theatre in 1939, in a cast that included Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, Joyce Carey as Gwendolen, Angela Baddeley as Cecily and Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism. The Times considered the production the best since the original and praised it for its fidelity to Wilde's conception and its "airy, responsive ball-playing quality". Later in the same year, Gielgud presented the work again, with Jack Hawkins as Algernon, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Gwendolen and Peggy Ashcroft as Cecily, with Evans and Rutherford in their previous roles. The production was presented in several seasons during and after the Second World War, with mostly the same principal players. which, as the journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft put it, gave the play "a final accolade of respectability". Gielgud's London production toured North America and was successfully staged on Broadway in 1947.