Author: Oscar Wilde

Title: The importance of being earnest

Date of publication: 1895

Place of publication: London

Dramatis personae:

John Worthing: He is the guardian of Cecily. For years, he has also pretended to have a brother named Ernest. Ernest is the name John goes by in London. The fictional brother is the excuse for disappearing from Hertfordshire and going off to London. John must aspire to become Ernest. Until he seeks to marry Gwendolen, John has used Ernest as an escape from real life, but Gwendolen’s fixation on the name Ernest obligates John who has to embrace his deception in order to pursue the real life he desires. He must reconciles his two worlds in order to understand who he is.

Algernon Moncrieff: Like John, Algernon has invented a fictional character to give him a reprieve from his real life. Algernon is constantly being summoned to Bunbury’s deathbed,(his fictional character) which conveniently draws him away from tiresome or distasteful social obligations. Like John’s fictional brother Ernest, Bunbury provides Algernon with a way of indulging himself while also suggesting great seriousness and sense of duty.

Gwendolin Fairfax: She is an artificial and pretentious girl. And is a product of London high society. Gwendolen is in love with John, whom she knows as Ernest, and she is fixated on this name. Gwendolen is so caught up in finding a husband named Ernest, whose name, she says, “inspires absolute confidence,” that she can’t even see that the man calling himself Ernest is fooling her with a deception.

Cecily Cardew: If Gwendolen She is a child of nature. She is obsessed with the name Ernest just as Gwendolen is. She falls in love with Algernon.

Like Algernon and John, she is a fantasist. She has invented her romance with Ernest and elaborated it with as much artistry and enthusiasm as the men have their spurious obligations and secret identities. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play.

Lady Bracknell: Gwendolen’s mother. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance. When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play.

Lane/ Merriman/ Miss prism: They are the manservant, the butler and the governess respectively.

Plot: John Worthing, the main character, has also pretended to have an irresponsible brother named Ernest. In fact, Ernest is merely Jack’s alibi, a phantom that allows him to disappear for days at a time and do as he likes. No one but John knows that he himself is Ernest. Ernest is the name John goes by in London. John is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the cousin of his best friend, Algernon Moncrieff. Algernon suspects that John may be leading a double life, a practice he seems to regard as commonplace and indispensable to modern life. He calls a person who leads a double life a “Bunburyist,” after a nonexistent friend he pretends to have, a chronic invalid named Bunbury, to whose deathbed he is forever being summoned whenever he wants to get out of some tiresome social obligation.

Lady Brackell, Gwendolin’s mother, is scandalized when she realised that John has been found in a handbag at station. One day, John decide that Ernest has outlived his usefulness, arrives home in deep mourning, full of a story about Ernest having died suddenly in Paris.

Algernon, who has fallen hopelessly in love with Cecily, asks her to marry him. He is surprised to discover that Cecily already considers that they are engaged, and he is charmed when she reveals that her fascination with “Uncle Jack’s brother” led her to invent an elaborate romance between herself and him several months ago. Algernon is less enchanted to learn that part of Cecily’s interest in him derives from the name Ernest, which, unconsciously echoing Gwendolen, she says “inspires absolute confidence.”

One day, Cecily explains that she is engaged to be married to Ernest Worthing. Gwendolen points out that this is impossible as she herself is engaged to Ernest Worthing. The tea party degenerates into a war of manners. Suddenly, John and Algernon arrive, Cecily informs Gwendolen that her fiancé is really named John

and Gwendolen informs Cecily that hers is really called Algernon. John is forced to admit that he has no brother and that Ernest is a complete fiction.

Space, time and others aspects: the play is represented in three acts. The space in the first act, is a room of Algernon’s flat. A luxuriously and artistically furnished room. In the second act, the space is the garden of Manor House. A garden full of roses, basket chairs, and a table covered with books. In the third act, is in the Manor House too. The time of this play is the present. The time of year, July, and the plot passes at morning. The language is formal.

Personal opinion: With this play, Wilde shows us a comedy of manners in which we can see the representation of the social classes in the Victorian period. I think that it is a good play, but in my opinion it is a strange play and it is difficult to understand it.