Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest

Noted by the author himself as being a ‘trivial play for serious people’, The Importance of being Earnest embodies one of those rare occasions when the writer doesn’t seem to take themselves too seriously.

The general plotline follows two men, Algernon and Jack, who both seem to lead double lives in a sort of country-mouse, town-mouse manner. Upon falling for two different women, each man confesses that his name is ‘Earnest’, since the women in question refuse to marry a man with any other name. Cue the ‘mistaken identity’ motif here for the audience to have a good laugh at, and allow the characters to have a happy ending.

It isn’t the farcical nature of the play which particularly amuses me, especially since these reviews are about the scripts themselves instead of any performances I may have seen. Rather, it’s the fact that Oscar Wilde subverts so many of the contemporary sensibilities, as well as making a statement by then rounding off with an utter subversion at the end. ‘But you said it ends happily!’ I hear you cry, dear reader. This is absolutely true. Taking the line (from the play itself, no less), “The good end happily, and the bad unhappily. This is what fiction means”, strangely shows the audience the transparent ‘fourth wall’ within the play…by making it absolutely clear that the play is a work of fiction. An odd way of doing things perhaps, but for me, it certainly shows Wilde’s penchant for being both unconventional, and also his ability to mess around with conventions instead of having to strictly adhere to them.

For the first three quarters of the play, the writing is light and witty, and even simply reading it on a page conjures up the setting and the people in the mind’s eye almost as clearly as seeing them moving about on an actual stage. I say the first three quarters of the play, because that was when it started to get a little too farcical even for me. The amusement I felt at the opening unfortunately began to turn into a sort of bafflement by the end of the piece, which was a shame considering how well I believed it had carried itself up until that point. The ‘mistaken identity’ motif gave way to actual silliness (“A handbag!?!” still rings in my mind, thank you Dr. Dawson). Perhaps this is just me, but I think it spoils it a little. Mr. Wilde, I feel, could have done a lot better.

The characters themselves have not only a levity to them (as one would expect from this work), but also a liveliness which I personally don’t see that often in such piece of literature. (Perhaps I’m reading the wrong ones? Answers on a postcard). Plays are usually brought to life by the actors, but in this particular written work, the characters seem to have a life of their own, as it were. This isn’t to necessarily say that they are ‘lifelike’, but there’s a certain vivacity there which ensures that the characters aren’t hollow ‘vessels for dialogue’ who have to be dragged along, kicking and screaming, by the plot.

In terms of readability, it’s one of those plays that you could quite comfortably read in one afternoon, reclined in an armchair with a nice cup of tea. A light, amusing foray into the almost playful subversion of Victorian sensibilities, it’s really a pleasure to read. Although I wish I had been pre-warned about just how farcical the ending finishes up being. It did leave me a little disappointed on that score, but I do believe that the rest of the play more than made up for it. I can honestly state the opinion that this piece of literature is a part of the literary canon for a very good reason.

A good read for someone who doesn’t take such things too seriously.