======================================================================
= The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest =
======================================================================
Introduction
======================================================================
'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
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
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
======================================================================
'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 accepted the play for production at his theatre, but before
rehearsals began, he changed his plans in order to help a beleaguered
colleague, the actor-manager George Alexander of the St James's
Theatre. In early 1895 Alexander's production of Henry James's 'Guy
Domville' failed, and closed after 31 performances, leaving Alexander
in urgent need of a new play to follow it. 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", but the
three-act version usually performed is widely considered more
effective than Wilde's four-act original.
First productions
======================================================================
The play was first produced at the St James's Theatre, London, on 14
February - Valentine's Day - 1895, preceded by a curtain-raiser, a
short comedy called 'In the Season', by Langdon E. Mitchell. During
most of the month-long rehearsal period Wilde was on holiday in
Algeria with his gay partner, Lord Alfred Douglas, but he returned in
time for the dress rehearsal on 12 February. Douglas remained in
Algiers; his father, the Marquess of Queensberry, planned to disrupt
the premiere by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the
playwright when he took his bow at the end. Wilde learned of the plan
and Alexander cancelled Queensberry's ticket and arranged for the
police to bar his entrance. Wilde wrote to Douglas, "He arrived with a
prize fighter!! I had all Scotland Yard to guard the theatre. He
prowled around for three hours, then left chattering like a monstrous
ape". Queensberry left the bouquet at the theatre entrance.
Wilde arrived for the premiere dressed in "florid sobriety", wearing a
green carnation in his lapel. Allan Aynesworth, who played Algernon
Moncrieff, recalled to Hesketh Pearson:
The theatrical newspaper 'The Era' reported that the play "met with
enthusiastic and unanimous approval" and confidently predicted "a long
and prosperous run". Aynesworth was "debonair and stylish", and
Alexander, who played Jack Worthing, "demure"; according to 'The Era',
"Mr George Alexander played Worthing just as a part of this sort
should be played, i.e., with entire seriousness and no indication of
purposed irony". 'The Morning Post' said that Irene Vanbrugh and
Evelyn Millard could not be bettered and caught the required
Gilbertian tone. 'The Observer' remarked on the "rapturous amusement"
of the audience, and echoed 'The Eras prediction of a long run.
According to the published text, the characters, descriptions and cast
comprised:
John Worthing, JP of the Manor House, Woolton, Hertfordshire George
Alexander
Algernon Moncrieff his friend Allan Aynesworth
Rev Canon Chasuble, DD Rector of Woolton H. H. Vincent
Merriman butler to Mr Worthing Frank Dyall
Lane Mr Moncrieff's manservant F. Kinsey Peile
Lady Bracknell Rose Leclercq
Hon Gwendolen Fairfax her daughter Irene Vanbrugh
Cecily Cardew John Worthing's ward Evelyn Millard (succeeded by
Violet Lyster)
Miss Prism her governess Mrs George Canninge
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, but it closed on 8 May
after only 83 performances.
The play's original Broadway production opened at the Empire Theatre
on 22 April 1895 but closed after sixteen performances. Its cast
included William Faversham as Algernon, Henry Miller as Jack, Viola
Allen as Gwendolen and Ida Vernon as Lady Bracknell. The Australian
premiere was in Melbourne on 10 August 1895, presented by Robert
Brough and Dion Boucicault Jr., with Cecil Ward as Jack, Boucicault as
Algernon and Jenny Watt-Tanner as Lady Bracknell. The production was
an immediate success. Wilde's downfall in England did not affect the
popularity of his plays in Australia. 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
======================================================================
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".
The play was so light-hearted that some reviewers compared it to comic
opera rather than drama. W. H. Auden later (1963) called it "a pure
verbal opera", and 'The Times' commented, "The story is almost too
preposterous to go without music". Mary McCarthy, in 'Sights and
Spectacles' (1959), despite thinking the play extremely funny, called
it "a ferocious idyll"; "depravity is the hero and the only
character".
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' the story is "dissolved" into the
form of the play. 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'".
1895–1929
===========
'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.
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
===========
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. During a
1946 season at the Haymarket, the King and Queen attended a
performance, 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.
In 1975 Jonathan Miller, who had been prevented for financial reasons
the previous year from staging the play at the National Theatre with
an all-male cast, directed a production in which Lady Bracknell,
played by Irene Handl, was given a German accent. For Peter Hall's
1982 production at the National Theatre the cast included Judi Dench
as Lady Bracknell, Martin Jarvis as Jack, Nigel Havers as Algernon,
Zoë Wanamaker as Gwendolen and Anna Massey as Miss Prism. In 1987 a
version of the play was given at the Whitehall Theatre starring Hinge
and Bracket as Miss Prism and Lady Bracknell respectively. Nicholas
Hytner's 1993 production at the Aldwych Theatre, starring Maggie
Smith, had occasional references to a conjectural gay subtext.
21st century
==============
The play was presented in Singapore in 2004 by the British Theatre
Playhouse, and the same company took the production to Greenwich
Theatre, London, in 2005. In 2007 Peter Gill directed the play at the
Theatre Royal, Bath. The production went on a short UK tour before
playing in the West End in 2008.
Since the 1987 Whitehall version, some other productions have cast a
male actor in the role of Lady Bracknell. In 2005 the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin, presented the play with an all-male cast; it also featured
Wilde as a character - the play opened with him drinking in a Parisian
café, dreaming of his play. The Melbourne Theatre Company staged a
production in 2011 with Geoffrey Rush as Lady Bracknell. In the same
year the Roundabout Theatre Company presented a Broadway revival based
on the 2009 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production featuring its
director, Brian Bedford, as Lady Bracknell. At the Vaudeville Theatre,
London, in 2015, David Suchet took the role in a production directed
by Adrian Noble.
In 2014 at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, Lucy Bailey directed a
production that followed a trend to "age-blind" casting: the average
age of the cast was nearly seventy, and Jarvis and Havers reprised the
roles they had played at the National in 1982. In 2024 the Royal
Exchange Theatre, Manchester presented an updated version, described
by 'The Guardian' as "a convincing stab at a 21st-century makeover".
In November 2024 the National Theatre again revived the play, in a new
production by Max Webster. The production was recast for a transfer to
the Noël Coward Theatre in September 2025. The two casts included Hugh
Skinner/Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (John Worthing), Ncuti Gatwa/Olly
Alexander (Algernon), Richard Cant/Hugh Dennis (Canon Chasuble),
Sharon D. Clarke/Stephen Fry (Lady Bracknell), Ronkẹ
Adékọluẹ́jọ́/Kitty Hawthorne (Gwendolen), Eliza Scanlen/Jessica
Whitehurst (Cecily) and Amanda Lawrence/Shobna Gulati (Miss Prism).
First edition
===============
Wilde's two final comedies, 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Importance of
Being Earnest', were still on stage in London at the time of his
prosecution in 1895, and they were soon closed as the details of his
case became public. After two years in prison with hard labour, Wilde
went into exile in Paris, sick and depressed, his reputation destroyed
in England. In 1898 Leonard Smithers agreed with Wilde to publish the
two final plays.
Wilde proved to be a diligent reviser, sending detailed instructions
on stage directions, character listings and the book's presentation
and insisting that a playbill from the first performance be reproduced
inside. Ellmann argues that the proofs show a man "very much in
command of himself and of the play". Wilde's name did not appear on
the cover, which stated: "By the Author of 'Lady Windermere's Fan'".
His return to work was brief, as he refused to write anything else: "I
can write, but have lost the joy of writing".
In translation
================
'The Importance of Being Earnest's' popularity has meant it has been
translated into many languages, but the pun in the title ("Ernest", a
masculine proper name, and "earnest", steadfast and serious) poses a
special problem for translators. The simplest instance of a suitable
translation of the pun is in German, where (serious) and (given
name) are the same.
As wordplay is usually unique to the language in question, translators
are faced with a choice of either staying faithful to the original or
creating a similar pun in their own language. Some translators leave
all characters' names unchanged and in their original spelling:
readers are reminded of the original cultural setting, but the
liveliness of the pun is lost. Others, favouring comprehensibility
over fidelity to the original, have replaced 'Ernest' with a name that
also represents a virtue in the target language. For instance, Italian
versions variously call the play , the given names being respectively
the values of honesty, propriety and fidelity. Translators differ in
their approach to the original English honorific titles; some change
them all or none, but most leave a mix, partly as a compensation for
the loss of Englishness.
French offers a closer pun. According to Les Archives du spectacle in
its listing of productions in French since 1954, the title of the play
is most often given as , but has also been rendered as , , and .
Structure and genre
=====================
The novelist and critic Arthur Ransome argued that Wilde freed himself
by abandoning the melodrama of his earlier drawing room plays and
basing the story entirely on the Earnest/Ernest verbal conceit. Freed
from "living up to any drama more serious than conversation", Wilde
could now amuse himself to a fuller extent with "quips, , epigrams and
repartee that had really nothing to do with the business at hand". The
academic Sos Eltis comments that although Wilde's earliest and longest
handwritten drafts of the play are full of "farcical accidents, broad
puns and a number of familiar comic devices", in his revisions "Wilde
transformed standard nonsense into the more systematic and
disconcerting illogicality which characterizes 'Earnest's' dialogue".
The genre of the 'Importance of Being Earnest' has been debated by
scholars and critics, who have variously categorised it as high
comedy, farce, parody and satire. In a 1956 critique Richard Foster
argues that the play creates "an 'as if' world in which 'real' values
are inverted, reason and unreason are interchanged and the probable
defined by improbability". Contributors to 'The Cambridge Companion to
Oscar Wilde' (1997) variously refer to the play as "high farce", "an
ostensible farce", "farce with aggressive pranks, quick-paced action
and evasion of moral responsibility", and "high comedy".
Triviality
============
Ransome described 'The Importance of Being Earnest' as the most
trivial of Wilde's society plays, and the only one that produces "that
peculiar exhilaration of the spirit by which we recognise the
beautiful ... It is precisely because it is consistently trivial that
it is not ugly". 'Salome', 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Picture of
Dorian Gray' had dwelt on more serious wrongdoing, but vice in 'The
Importance of Being Earnest' is represented by Algernon's greedy
consumption of cucumber sandwiches. Wilde told his friend Robbie Ross
that the play's theme was "That we should treat all trivial things in
life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and
studied triviality". The theme is glanced at in the play's title, and
earnestness is repeatedly alluded to in the dialogue; Algernon says in
Act II, "one must be serious about something if one is to have any
amusement in life", but goes on to reproach Jack for being serious
about everything and thus revealing a trivial nature. Blackmail and
corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert
Chiltern (in 'An Ideal Husband'), but in 'Earnest' the protagonists'
duplicity (Algernon's "Bunburying" and Worthing's double life as Jack
and Ernest) is for more innocent purposes - largely to evade unwelcome
social obligations. While much theatre of the time tackled serious
social and political issues, Wilde's writing in this play is the
antithesis of that of didactic writers like Shaw who used their
characters to present audiences with grand ideals and appeals for
social justice.
Satire and parody
===================
The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs -
marriage and the pursuit of love in particular. In Victorian times
earnestness was considered by some to be the overriding societal
value; originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes,
it spread to the middle and upper classes during the mid-19th century.
The play's subtitle introduces the theme, which continues in the
discussion between Jack and Algernon in Act I: "Yes, but you must be
serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is
so shallow of them".
Wilde's inversion of values continues: when Algernon arrives in
Woolton masquerading as Ernest he tells Cecily that he is not really
wicked at all.
In the final scene Jack asks Gwendolen if she can forgive him for not
having been deceitful after all:
In turn, Gwendolen and Cecily wish to marry a man named Ernest.
Gwendolen ignores her mother's methodical analysis of Jack Worthing's
suitability as a husband and places her entire faith in a forename,
declaring in Act I, "The only really safe name is Ernest". This is an
opinion shared by Cecily in Act II: "I pity any poor married woman
whose husband is not called Ernest".
Wilde portrayed society's rules and rituals in the figure of Lady
Bracknell: according to the Wilde scholar Peter Raby, minute attention
to the details of her style created a comic effect of assertion by
restraint. She dismisses Jack's London address as on the unfashionable
side of Belgrave Square and is unmoved by Jack's explanation that the
handbag in which he was found as a baby was deposited in the cloakroom
of the socially superior half of Victoria Station.
Wilde parodies 19th-century melodrama, introducing exaggeratedly
incongruous situations such as Jack's arrival in full mourning for the
brother who has just walked into his house, and the sudden switch from
fulsome affection between Cecily and Gwendolen to deep hostility on
discovering that they are supposedly both engaged to the same man.
Conjectural homosexual subtext
================================
In queer theory the play's themes of duplicity and ambivalence are
inextricably bound up with Wilde's homosexuality, so that the play
exhibits what one critic terms a "flickering presence-absence of ...
homosexual desire". After his release from prison, Wilde wrote to
Reginald Turner, "It was extraordinary reading the play over. How I
used to toy with that tiger Life!" In a 2014 study, William Eaton
writes, "'The Importance of Being Earnest' is what it obviously is, a
play about dissimulation, and that dissimulation - not seeming to be
who one was - was extremely important for homosexuals of Wilde's time
and place, and thus was an extremely non-trivial matter for Wilde".
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a proponent of queer theory, interprets
linguistic aspects of the play as allusions to gay culture and
stereotypes, such as references to the German language and the
composer Richard Wagner, both of which were associated with male
homosexuality in Wilde's day. In 1990 Noel Annan suggested that the
use of the name Ernest may have been a homosexual in-joke. In 1892,
two years before Wilde began writing the play, John Gambril Nicholson
had published a book of pederastic poetry, 'Love in Earnest'. The
sonnet "Of Boys' Names" included the verse:
Annan speculated that "earnest" may also have been a private code-word
among gay men, as in: "Is he earnest?" in the same way that "Is he
musical?" is thought to have been used. Eaton finds this theory
unconvincing, and in 2001 Sir Donald Sinden, an actor who had met Lord
Alfred Douglas and two of the play's original cast (Irene Vanbrugh and
Allan Aynesworth), wrote to 'The Times' to rebut suggestions that
"earnest" held any sexual connotations:
Bunbury
=========
Bunbury is a village in Cheshire. Several theories have been advanced
to explain Wilde's use of the name to imply a secretive double life.
It may have derived from Henry Shirley Bunbury, a hypochondriacal
acquaintance of Wilde's youth. Another theory is that Wilde spotted
the names of a Captain Bunbury and a magistrate, Mr Bunbury, in 'The
Worthing Gazette' in August and September 1894, found the surname
pleasing and borrowed it.
A suggestion put forward by Aleister Crowley - who knew Wilde - was
that Bunbury was a portmanteau word, coined after Wilde had taken a
train to Banbury, met a boy there and arranged a second meeting at
Sunbury. Carolyn Williams, in a 2010 study, writes that for the word
"Bunburying", Wilde "braids the 'Belvawneying' evil eye from Gilbert's
'Engaged'" with Bunthorne from Gilbert (and Sullivan)'s 1881 comic
opera 'Patience'.
Use of language
=================
Although Wilde had for several years been famous for dialogue and his
use of language, Raby has argued that in this play the author achieved
unity and mastery unmatched in his other plays, with the possible
exception of 'Salome'. Raby comments that although the earlier
comedies suffer from an unevenness resulting from the thematic clash
between the trivial and the serious, 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
achieves "a pitch-perfect style" that allows these clashes to
dissolve. Raby identifies three different registers in the play:
Algernon's exchange with his manservant conveying an underlying unity
despite their differing attitudes. The imperious pronouncements of
Lady Bracknell are as startling for her use of hyperbole and
rhetorical extravagance as for her disconcerting opinions. In
contrast, the discourse of Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism is distinguished
by "pedantic precept" and "idiosyncratic diversion". The play is full
of epigrams and paradoxes. Max Beerbohm described it as abounding in
"chiselled apothegms - witticisms unrelated to action or character but
so good in themselves as to have the quality of dramatic surprise".
Characterisation
==================
Though Wilde deployed characters that were by now familiar - the
upper-class dandy, the overbearing matriarch, the woman with a past,
the puritanical young lady - his treatment is subtler than in his
earlier comedies. Lady Bracknell, for instance, embodies respectable,
upper-class society, but Eltis notes how her development "from the
familiar overbearing duchess into a quirkier and more disturbing
character" can be traced through Wilde's revisions of the play. For
the two young men, Wilde presents not stereotypical stage "dudes" but
intelligent beings who, as Russell Jackson puts it, "speak like their
creator in well-formed complete sentences and rarely use slang or
vogue-words". Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism are, in Jackson's view,
characterised by "a few light touches of detail", their old-fashioned
enthusiasms and the Canon's fastidious pedantry pared down by Wilde
during his many redrafts of the text.
Film
======
'The Importance of Being Earnest' has been adapted for the
English-language cinema at least three times, first in 1952 by Anthony
Asquith who adapted the screenplay and directed it. The cast included
Michael Denison (Algernon), Michael Redgrave (Jack), Edith Evans (Lady
Bracknell), Dorothy Tutin (Cecily), Joan Greenwood (Gwendolen),
Margaret Rutherford (Miss Prism), and Miles Malleson (Dr Chasuble).
In 1992 Kurt Baker directed a version using an all-black cast with
Daryl Keith Roach as Jack, Wren T. Brown as Algernon, Ann Weldon as
Lady Bracknell, Lanei Chapman as Cecily, Chris Calloway as Gwendolen,
CCH Pounder as Miss Prism and Brock Peters as Dr Chasuble, set in the
United States.
In 2002 Oliver Parker, a director who had previously adapted 'An Ideal
Husband', made another film. It stars Colin Firth (Jack), Rupert
Everett (Algernon), Judi Dench (Lady Bracknell), Reese Witherspoon
(Cecily), Frances O'Connor (Gwendolen), Anna Massey (Miss Prism) and
Tom Wilkinson (Canon Chasuble). Parker interpolated about twenty lines
of his own into the script and restored the episode cut by Wilde
before the premiere of the play, in which a solicitor attempts to
serve a writ on the supposed Ernest.
A 2008 Telugu language romantic comedy film, titled 'Ashta Chamma', is
an adaptation of the play.
Operas and musicals
=====================
In 1963 Erik Chisholm composed an opera from the play, basing the
libretto on Wilde's text. Gerald Barry created the 2011 opera 'The
Importance of Being Earnest', commissioned by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic and the Barbican Centre in London. It premiered in Los
Angeles in 2011. The role of Lady Bracknell is sung by a bass. The
stage premiere was given by the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy in
2013. A 2012 concert performance was recorded live at the Barbican by
the BBC and released commercially in 2014. In 2017 Odyssey Opera of
Boston presented Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's opera 'The Importance of
Being Earnest' as part of a "Wilde Opera Nights" series, a season-long
exploration of operatic works inspired by Wilde's writings and world.
In 1964 Gerd Natschinski composed a musical, , based on the play.
According to a study by Robert Tanitch, by 2002, there had been at
least eight adaptations of the play as a musical, though "never with
conspicuous success". The earliest such version was a 1927 American
show entitled 'Oh Earnest'. The journalist Mark Bostridge comments,
"The libretto of a 1957 musical adaptation, 'Half in Earnest',
deposited in the British Library, is scarcely more encouraging. The
curtain rises on Algernon, strumming away at the piano, singing, 'I
can play 'Chopsticks', Lane'. Other songs include 'A Bunburying I Must
Go'". Since Bostridge wrote his article, at least one further musical
version of the play has been staged: a show with a book by Douglas
Livingstone and score by Adam McGuinness and Zia Moranne was staged in
December 2011 at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith; the cast included
Susie Blake, Gyles Brandreth and Edward Petherbridge.
Stage derivatives
===================
Tom Stoppard's 1974 stage comedy 'Travesties' draws extensively on
Wilde's play. Stoppard's central character, Henry Carr, was a
real-life figure who played Algernon in a production of 'The
Importance of Being Earnest' produced by James Joyce in Zurich in
1917. Stoppard reimagines him as an old man, reminiscing about the
production and his days as a young man. The other characters include
Carr's sister Gwendolen and the local librarian, Cecily; the action of
the play, under the erratic control of the old Carr's fallible memory,
continually mirrors that of Wilde's original. Carr has an exchange
with Tristan Tzara reminiscent of John Worthing's exchanges with
Algernon, Tzara has a scene with Joyce that draws on Jack's interview
with Lady Bracknell, and Gwendolen and Cecily have a falling out on
the lines of that of their namesakes in Wilde's play (though to the
tune of "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean" rather than in prose).
In 2016 the Irish actor/writers Helen Norton and Jonathan White wrote
the comic play 'To Hell in a Handbag' which retells the story of 'The
Importance' from the point of view of the characters Canon Chasuble
and Miss Prism, giving them their own back story and showing what
happens to them when they are not on stage in Wilde's play.
Radio and television
======================
There have been many radio versions of the play. In 1925 the BBC
broadcast an adaptation with Hesketh Pearson as Jack Worthing. Further
broadcasts of the play followed during the 1920s and 1930s, and in
November 1937 the BBC broadcast the first television adaptation of the
play, in an abridged version directed by Royston Morley. In 1942 BBC
radio broadcast scenes from the play, featuring two members of the
original cast: the programme was introduced by Allan Aynesworth and
starred Irene Vanbrugh as Lady Bracknell. A 1951 broadcast of the
complete three-act play starred Gielgud, Evans and Gwen
Ffrangcon-Davies.
In March 1958 British commercial television broadcast a production of
the play starring Michael Denison (Jack), Tony Britton (Algernon),
Dulcie Gray (Gwendolen) and Martita Hunt (Lady Bracknell). A 1964
commercial television adaptation starred Ian Carmichael, Patrick
Macnee, Susannah York, Fenella Fielding, Pamela Brown and Irene Handl.
A BBC television version in 1974 starred Coral Browne as Lady
Bracknell. In 1977 BBC Radio 4 broadcast the four-act version of the
play for the first time, with Fabia Drake as Lady Bracknell, Richard
Pasco as Jack, Jeremy Clyde as Algy, Maurice Denham as Canon Chasuble,
Sylvia Coleridge as Miss Prism, Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Gwendolen and
Prunella Scales as Cecily. In 1988 a production of the four-act
version was broadcast on BBC television, starring Joan Plowright, Paul
McGann, Gemma Jones and Alec McCowen.
In 1995, to mark the centenary of the first performance of the play,
Radio 4 broadcast a new adaptation on 13 February; directed by Glyn
Dearman, it featured Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Michael Sheen as
Jack, Martin Clunes as Algernon, John Moffatt as Dr Chasuble, Miriam
Margolyes as Miss Prism, Samantha Bond as Gwendolen and Amanda Root as
Cecily. In December 2000 BBC Radio 3 broadcast an adaptation directed
by Howard Davies starring Geraldine McEwan as Lady Bracknell, Simon
Russell Beale as Jack Worthing, Julian Wadham as Algernon Moncrieff,
Geoffrey Palmer as Canon Chasuble, Celia Imrie as Miss Prism, Victoria
Hamilton as Gwendolen and Emma Fielding as Cecily.
Commercial recordings
=======================
Gielgud's performance is preserved on an EMI audio recording dating
from 1952, which also captures Edith Evans's Lady Bracknell. The cast
also includes Roland Culver (Algernon), Jean Cadell (Miss Prism),
Pamela Brown (Gwendolen) and Celia Johnson (Cecily).
Other audio recordings include a "Theatre Masterworks" version from
1953, directed and narrated by Margaret Webster, with a cast including
Maurice Evans and Lucile Watson; a 1968 recording on the Caedmon label
with Gladys Cooper as Lady Bracknell and Joan Greenwood, Richard
Johnson, Alec McCowen, Lynn Redgrave, Irene Handl and Robertson Hare;
a 1989 version by California Artists Radio Theatre, featuring Dan
O'Herlihy, Jeanette Nolan, Les Tremayne and Richard Erdman; and one by
L.A. Theatre Works issued in 2009, featuring Charles Busch, James
Marsters and Andrea Bowen.
External links
======================================================================
* -- Kindle, EPUB, and txt files
* -- printable PDF version, for paper size A4
* -- early draft manuscript at the British Library
*
*
*
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importance_of_Being_Earnest
