The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

About the book

Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff have developed convenient ways to escape social obligations, but their arrangements become more complicated when romance depends on the names and histories they present. Gwendolen and Cecily bring firm expectations of their own, while Lady Bracknell subjects marriage to a memorable practical scrutiny. Wilde builds the comedy from reversals in which trivial matters are treated with grave authority and supposedly serious principles reveal an astonishing flexibility. Food, diaries, engagements, and family explanations all become instruments of competition. The play's tight construction gives its verbal brilliance consequences: a joke can also advance a deception or expose a preference. It rewards reading aloud for the rhythm of exchanges that make social convention appear both beautifully polished and wonderfully absurd.

• Identity and invention
• Marriage
• Social convention

Why read it

For exceptionally economical comic dialogue in which nearly every polite statement turns an accepted value upside down.

English text