Title: The Importance of Being Earnest
Genre: Play
Year: 1898 (originally performed 1895)
Pages: 60
Origin: read on the Kindle
Nod Rating: 5 nods out of 5
‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.’
Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest
The witticisms of Oscar Wilde are, perhaps, known more widely than his very works of fiction. Such quotes range from the humorous to the wise, including ‘Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes’ and the sublime and uplifting: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’. His smaller works, including poetry and prose, fail to stand-up to such wordplay; all, but his greatest success as a writer, The Importance of Being Earnest.
However, his biggest triumph brought about his downfall. A feud with the Marquess of Queensberry led to a courtroom trial in which Wilde’s homosexuality was revealed, resulting in imprisonment for the playwright. The fallout led to the play being closed and Wilde’s exile in Paris where he soon died. Such a story was enough to capture the heart of the Worm; his only previous contact with Mr Wilde was in the form of the lone novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Read in the days before the blog was born, it failed to excite the Worm. The Importance of Being Earnest would be a different story altogether.
The play – like many other great plays (notably Gogol’s The Government Inspector) – is a comedy of mistaken identities. Two friends take on the moniker “Earnest”, leading to a serious of mishaps, arguments and interesting conversation about ‘Bunburying’. Its format is one followed through the years in British comedy, with Cleese’s 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers coming easily to mind. The play’s subtitle – A Trivial Comedy For Serious People – serves it just as well now, as it did in the late Victorian period. Wilde’s trademarked witticisms abound on every page, as found dressed in the role of the ever playful Algernon:
‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!’As well as the famous:
‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.’But more than this, Wilde pokes fun at the society around him (the very same society that would soon condemn him), including the importance placed on manners and class. Jack is forbidden to marry due to lack of social standing; his redemption is found in a ridiculous back-story.
For those unacquainted with the play, watch it first. Reading the written word of the play was never the original intention; however, Wilde’s fast wordplay can only be fully enjoyed – and understood - when having the leisure to read. The Worm does not give the play 5 nods for its characters or plot, but rather in the full force of Wilde’s writing. His downfall may have led to a curtailment of more works on the stage, but his fame was secured with this masterful and delightful play.
Buy it here
