Trivial Comedy for Serious People:

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

“Since we know The Importance of Being Earnest is a trivial play for serious people, our task as serious people is not to be content to say it’s funny, but to be careful when describing the fun” (Sale 479). First staged in February 1895 at the St. James Theatre, people packed the theater to see Oscar Wilde’s new play, The Importance of Being Earnest. The play “was an immediate hit” (Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams 2221). It was a promising time as Wilde’s plays had been the talk of the town for the past several years.

Generally, Wilde’s plays were “serious even when trying to evoke comedy; his previous plays ranged from social satire and criticism (Lady Windermere’s Fan), to themes that defied propriety and incited some moral indignation (Salome)” (Barnet xxix). In reply to criticism [surrounding Lady Windermere’s Fan,] printed in the St. James Gazette of February 26, 1892, Wilde wrote a letter to the editor published on February 27^th, under the heading “Mr. Oscar Wilde Explains”(Mason 390). In this letter, Wilde claimed “that he did not want the play to be viewed as ‘a mere question of pantomime and clowning,’ but that ‘he was interested in the piece as a psychological study’” (Mason 390). His “tendency was to make his people ‘real,’ and then to take his audience through the looking-glass into a world which seemed to reflect modern life” (Raby 159).

This new play, The Importance of Being Earnest, therefore, revealed a novel side of Wilde not exposed before. One of his contemporary critics, H. G. Wells, said “that it was much harder to listen to nonsense then to talk it, but not if it is good nonsense….and this is very good nonsense” (Beckson 187). Hamilton Fyfe, on the other hand, found it “slight in structure, devoid in purpose” nevertheless “extraordinarily funny” (Beckson 187).

“One critic failed to find it delightful; curiously this was Wilde’s fellow playwright from Ireland, Bernard Shaw”(Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams 2221). Although he claimed he did find it amusing, “George Bernard Shaw said that it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening” (Beckson 221). He even poked fun at those who praised the sheer nonsense of Wilde, remarking that “if the public ever becomes intelligent enough to know when it is really enjoying itself and when it is not, there will be an end of farcical comedy” (Beckson 221-222). Since George Bernard Shaw had a reputation for being a harsh critic, this criticism was characteristic of him. After reading the play, one might even agree with Shaw’s review.

However, the play does have an understandable plot (“a gross anachronism,” according to Shaw (Beckson 221). The main character, Jack Worthing, is courting the affections of Gwendolen Fairfax, but is impeded by her mother, Lady Bracknell, who opposes the match (Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams 2229-2231). This part of the plot is serious enough. Wilde then adds a comical aspect: Jack has been introducing himself as Ernest while in town, and when back at his country estate he refers to a “younger brother” named Ernest (Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams 2223). While Wilde tries to inject a sense of seriousness into the comedy, he allows his plot twists to develop into the ridiculous. For example, the case of Miss Prism’s losing an infant is nonchalantly explained as an absent minded switch between a book and a baby; the baby being placed in a handbag and the book in the perambulator (Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams 2261). There is also Algernon’s behavior and his imaginary friend called “Bunbury…which he invented as an invaluable permanent invalid in order that he might be able to go down into the country whenever he chooses” (Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams 2226), eventually Bunbury simply explodes.

As ridiculous as Wilde made his plots, is the way he resolved them: Algernon’s way of killing off Bunbury was to calmly say that he “was quite exploded” (Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams 2256). When pressed for a better answer, Algernon simply explains that the doctor found that Bunbu