At a Glance
Two young men — Algernon Moncrieff in London and Jack Worthing in the country — both use the fictional alias 'Ernest' to escape social obligations. When both pursue women who have vowed to marry only a man named Ernest, their deceptions collide. A handbag, a missing baby, and a very determined dowager later, Jack discovers he actually was christened Ernest all along — a resolution Wilde makes deliberately absurd, suggesting earnestness matters less than the performance of it.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The Importance of Being Earnest is considered the finest English-language comedy of manners and one of the most perfectly constructed plays in the language. It was immediately successful in 1895 but was closed after Wilde's arrest. Revived after his death, it became a permanent fixture of the theatrical repertoire. Unlike almost everything else from the 1890s, it has not aged: the epigrams are still funny, the satire still accurate, and the plot still generates genuine laughter.
Diction Profile
High surface formality — the characters speak in complete, polished sentences even when being absurd — with a consistent undercurrent of subversion through inversion
Low on traditional metaphor, very high on rhetorical figures