The Importance of Being Earnest

First performed at London’s St James’s Theatre on 14 February 1895, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of mistaken identities, romantic complications and impeccable social absurdity. Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff have each invented an alternative identity to escape the demands of respectable society, but their deceptions become increasingly difficult to maintain when love enters the picture. As Jack pursues Gwendolen Fairfax and Algernon takes an interest in the young Cecily Cardew, a country-house visit brings their carefully constructed worlds into comic collision. Wilde turns the conventions of Victorian courtship, family and social propriety into a sparkling game of paradoxes, misunderstandings and wonderfully precise dialogue.

Described by its author as “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People”, the play is both a brilliant social satire and a celebration of artifice, wit and theatrical invention. Its apparently frivolous world conceals a sharp understanding of the absurdities of class, respectability and romantic expectation. First published in book form in 1899, it has since become one of the most frequently performed comedies in the English language, and the crowning achievement of Wilde’s dramatic career.

From the book

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

On The Importance of Being Earnest

“Beneath the unbroken surface of wit and absurdity there lies a vein of genuine, if deliberately concealed, meaning.”

— The Times, 15 February 1895