The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde first performed in 1895. The comedy satirizes Victorian manners and the importance attached to social respectability.

The play is set in England during the Victorian era and the plot revolves around John “Jack” Worthing and Ernest, the fictional brother he invents.

Jack adopts a different identity when he travels to London, where he hopes to marry Gwendolen under the name Ernest. His friend Algernon “Algy” Moncrieff then assumes the same identity when he visits Jack’s country home and courts Cecily.

Both men pretend to be Ernest, while Gwendolen and Cecily are each strongly attached to that name. Their deceptions produce a series of comic misunderstandings that expose Victorian attitudes toward marriage, class, and respectability.