The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ in order to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Contemporary reviews all praised the play's humour, though some were cautious about its explicit lack of social messages, while others foresaw the modern consensus that it was the culmination of Wilde's artistic career so far. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas, an intimate friend of Wilde, planned to present Wilde a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Soon afterwards, however, their feud came to a climax in court, where Wilde's homosexual double life was revealed to the Victorian public and he was eventually sentenced to imprisonment. Wilde's notoriety caused the play, despite its success, to be closed after just 86 performances. After his release, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no further comic or dramatic work. The Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times since its premiere. It is a classical example of 'the well made play'. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Dame Edith Evans reprised her celebrated interpretation of Lady Bracknell; The Importance of Being Earnest (1992) by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast; and Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) incorporated some of Wilde's original material cut during the preparation of the original stage production.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Literature & Fiction

Wilde, Mr Oscar

Dramas & Plays

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. The action is set in London, in "the present", and takes place over the course of twenty-four hours. "Sooner or later," Wilde notes, "we shall all have to pay for what we do." But he adds that, "No one should be entirely judged by their past." Together with The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often considered Wilde's dramatic masterpiece. After Earnest it is his most popularly produced play. In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband, and he completed it later that winter. His work began at Goring-on-Thames, after which he named the character Lord Goring, and concluded at St. James Place. He initially sent the completed play to the Garrick Theatre, where the manager rejected it, but it was soon accepted by the Haymarket Theatre, where Lewis Waller had temporarily taken control. Waller was an excellent actor and cast himself as Sir Robert Chiltern. The play gave the Haymarket the success it desperately needed. After opening on 3 January 1895, it continued for 124 performances. In April of that year, Wilde was arrested for 'gross indecency' and his name was publicly taken off the play. On 6 April, soon after Wilde's arrest, the play moved to the Criterion Theatre where it ran from 13–27 April. The play was published in 1899, although Wilde was not listed as the author. This published version differs slightly from the performed play, for Wilde added many passages and cut others. Prominent additions included written stage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public.

An Ideal Husband

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is a pillar of the community in Hertfordshire, where he is guardian to Cecily Cardew, the pretty, eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the late Thomas Cardew, who found and adopted Jack when he was a baby. In Hertfordshire, Jack has responsibilities: he is a major landowner and justice of the peace, with tenants, farmers, and a number of servants and other employees all dependent on him. For years, he has also pretended to have an irresponsible black-sheep brother named Ernest who leads a scandalous life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting into trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush grimly off to his assistance. 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 Jack knows that he himself is Ernest. Ernest is the name Jack goes by in London, which is where he really goes on these occasions—probably to pursue the very sort of behavior he pretends to disapprove of in his imaginary brother.

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

Woman opening window and seeing bird  High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.  He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.  He was very much admired indeed.  “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.  “Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?” asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon.  “The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.”  “I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy,” muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.

The Happy Prince And Other Tales

Mythology & Folk Tales

Oscar Wilde lived during the Victorian era, a time in which women had very few rights compared to men. In the play 'A Woman of No Importance,' the characters wrestle with some of the double standards of the 1800s. In the play A Woman of No Importance, Oscar Wilde explores the double standards that existed between men and women in the Victorian Era. Men were forgiven for their indiscretions far more readily than women, and women were more condemned for moral failings. Women had few rights, as well. Through our exploration of the characters in this play, we will also unfold the plot. The plot is very simple, but it is the psychological interactions between the characters that reveal a darker side to the Victorian Era. The theme of this story really is that a double standard existed for women and men during this time period. Women were not treated equally.

A Woman Of No Importance

Lady Windermere’s Fan, the first of Wilde’s social comedies, opened on February 20, 1892, in London to lukewarm reviews. A four-act play that employs what are often regarded in drama as cheap tricks—mistaken identity, the lost child restored to the rightful parent, the conversation overheard while hidden, and the romantic triangle—this play ultimately succeeds because it twists the clichés with which it is working. The mistaken identity remains mistaken, the lost child (Lady Windermere) never knows that Mrs. Erlynne is her true mother, and the romantic triangle is really not a romantic triangle, but only appears to be. The play revolves around Lady Windermere’s twenty-first birthday. Her husband is giving a ball in honor of the occasion. Lady Windermere, trusting and innocent, receives information that “poor, dear Windermere” has been seeing another woman and has apparently set her up in style. At first, Lady Windermere does not believe the reports, but the seed of suspicion has been sown.

Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About A Good Woman

Suffering is one very long moment.  We cannot divide it by seasons.  We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.  With us time itself does not progress.  It revolves.  It seems to circle round one centre of pain.  The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change.  Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing. For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.  The very sun and moon seem taken from us.  Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard.  It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart.  And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.  The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow.  Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing.

De Profundis

Biographies & Memoirs

This book provides a selected collection of 204 quotes by Oscar Wilde, the artist's background and further reading. ‘Quotes…’ is an original series from The Secret Libraries. "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train." "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Quotes... Vol.1 - Oscar Wilde - Published by The SECRET Libraries Motivational &amp; Inspirational Life Quotes by Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray / The Happy Prince and Other Tales / The Importance of Being Earnest) 1st Edition 2016 Related book subjects: (Interesting artists/ Biographical life about Wilde / The Life and Works of the World's Favorite writers/ funny wit quotes / Interesting facts about Oscar Wilde / Lord Arthur Savile's Crime/ A House of Pomegranates / The Canterville Ghost / The Sphinx Without A Secret / The Model Millionare / Lady Windermere's Fan / An Ideal Husband/ The Ballad of Reading Gaol / De Profundis) Thank you for your purchase! We hope you enjoy it.

Oscar Wilde Quotes... Vol.1: Motivational & Inspirational Life Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Reference

Libraries, The Secret

Quotations

He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed.  He walked amongst the Trial Men In a suit of shabby grey; A cricket cap was on his head, And his step seemed light and gay; But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day.  I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky, And at every drifting cloud that went With sails of silver by.

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Science & Math

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilde, Mr Oscar. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wilde, Mr Oscar

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilde, Mr Oscar. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Importance of Being Earnest

An Ideal Husband

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

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

The Happy Prince And Other Tales

A Woman Of No Importance

Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About A Good Woman

De Profundis

Oscar Wilde Quotes... Vol.1: Motivational & Inspirational Life Quotes by Oscar Wilde

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol