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The Importance of Being Earnest | HearLore
The Importance of Being Earnest
On the 14th of February 1895, the St James's Theatre in London hosted a premiere that would become the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde's career, only to be extinguished weeks later by a scandal that would destroy the playwright's life. The play, titled The Importance of Being Earnest, was a farcical comedy depicting the tangled affairs of two young men who led double lives to evade social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest while wooing young women. The opening night was a triumph, with The Era reporting enthusiastic and unanimous approval, yet the celebration was shadowed by the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, who had unsuccessfully schemed to throw a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright. This feud triggered a series of legal trials from March to May 1895 that resulted in Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for homosexual acts. The Victorian public turned against him, box-office receipts dwindled, and the play closed on the 8th of May after 86 performances, marking the end of Wilde's dramatic career. He wrote no more comic or dramatic works, publishing the play from exile in Paris in 1898, but the joy of writing was lost to him.
The Double Life of Jack and Algernon
The narrative centers on Algernon Moncrieff, a young man about town, and his friend John Worthing, who arrives in London claiming to be Ernest Worthing. Algernon refuses to consent to the marriage between Ernest and his cousin Gwendolen Fairfax 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, pretending to have a sickly friend named Bunbury in the country whom he can visit whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome social obligation. The play's structure relies on this duplicity, with Jack refusing to tell Algernon the location of his country estate, and Algernon surreptitiously noting it on the cuff of his sleeve when Jack reveals his pretty young ward. The tension builds as Algernon arrives in Woolton, Hertfordshire, pretending to be Ernest Worthing, and charms Cecily, who is long fascinated by her uncle Jack's hitherto-absent dissolute brother. The deception unravels when Gwendolen enters, having left the Bracknells' London house without her mother's knowledge, and 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 realize they have been deceived, leaving the men in the garden and withdrawing to the house.
When was The Importance of Being Earnest first performed?
The play premiered on the 14th of February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. The production ran for 86 performances before closing on the 8th of May 1895 due to the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde.
What is the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest?
The play follows two young men, Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing, who lead double lives to evade social obligations while assuming the name Ernest. Their deceptions unravel when they meet Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax, leading to a series of revelations about their true identities and family connections.
Why did The Importance of Being Earnest close after 86 performances?
The play closed on the 8th of May 1895 because a series of legal trials from March to May 1895 resulted in Oscar Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for homosexual acts. The Victorian public turned against him, causing box-office receipts to dwindle and ending his dramatic career.
Who are the main characters in The Importance of Being Earnest?
The narrative centers on Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing, who both assume the name Ernest to pursue their romantic interests. Supporting characters include Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew, Lady Bracknell, Miss Prism, and Canon Chasuble.
What is the significance of the name Ernest in The Importance of Being Earnest?
The name Ernest represents a Victorian societal value of earnestness, which the play parodies by suggesting that the name itself is the only safe choice for a husband. The title is a pun on the word earnest, meaning serious, and the name Ernest, which Jack Worthing discovers is his original christening name.
How has The Importance of Being Earnest been adapted since its premiere?
The play has been adapted for radio from the 1920s onwards and for television since the 1930s. It has been filmed for cinema three times in 1952, 1992, and 2002, and has been turned into operas and musicals, with the 1995 centenary marking it as the second most known and quoted play in English after Hamlet.
The resolution of the play hinges on a series of revelations that transform the characters from farcical figures into respectable members of society. Lady Bracknell, the formidable mother of Gwendolen, arrives in pursuit of her daughter and is astonished to be told that Algernon and Cecily are engaged. The revelation of Cecily's wealth dispels Lady Bracknell's initial doubts, but any engagement is forbidden by her guardian, Jack, who will consent only if Lady Bracknell agrees to his own union with Gwendolen. The impasse is resolved by the return of Miss Prism, whom Lady Bracknell recognizes 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. The final twist comes when 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, 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.
The Victorian Satire and Social Critique
Wilde's play parodies contemporary dramatic norms and gently satirizes late Victorian manners, introducing the formidable Lady Bracknell, the fussy governess Miss Prism, and the benign and scholarly Canon Chasuble. The play's subtitle, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, introduces the theme that we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality. In Victorian times, earnestness was considered by some to be the overriding societal value, originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes and spreading to the middle and upper classes during the mid-19th century. The play's inversion of values continues when Algernon arrives in Woolton masquerading as Ernest and tells Cecily that he is not really wicked at all. 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. The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs, particularly marriage and the pursuit of love. 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. Blackmail and corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert Chiltern, but in Earnest the protagonists' duplicity is for more innocent purposes, largely to evade unwelcome social obligations.
The Queer Subtext and Historical Context
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 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, and 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. Sir Donald Sinden, an actor who had met Lord Alfred Douglas and two of the play's original cast, wrote to The Times to rebut suggestions that earnest held any sexual connotations, but the theory remains a subject of scholarly debate.
The Bunburying and the Language of Play
Bunbury is a village in Cheshire, and 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. The play is full of epigrams and paradoxes, and 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. 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 as startling for her use of hyperbole and rhetorical extravagance, and the discourse of Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism distinguished by pedantic precept and idiosyncratic diversion. The play achieves a pitch-perfect style that allows these clashes to dissolve, with characters speaking like their creator in well-formed complete sentences and rarely using slang or vogue-words.
The Legacy and Adaptations of the Play
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, as in the 2005 Abbey Theatre, Dublin production with an all-male cast, and the 2011 Melbourne Theatre Company production with Geoffrey Rush as Lady Bracknell. The play 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. Tom Stoppard's 1974 stage comedy Travesties draws extensively on Wilde's play, reimagining a real-life figure who played Algernon in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest produced by James Joyce in Zurich in 1917. The play's popularity has meant it has been translated into many languages, but the pun in the title poses a special problem for translators, with some leaving all characters' names unchanged and others replacing Ernest with a name that also represents a virtue in the target language. 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.