Critical quotations from Peter Raby.‘Introduction’ to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays.’Oxford University Press (First published as a World’s Classics paperback 1995)

Wilde was conscious that he was writing a very different kind of play, a ‘farcical comedy’—‘admirable for style, but fatal to handwriting’, he informed Douglas.

Wilde created something that transcended the genre of farce, delighting his contemporary audience though disconcerting some of his admirers, most notably Shaw, who found it ‘heartless’.

The play is neither superficial, nor trivial, but purely surface, purely play.

Appearance, style, fiction are treated as essence…’

From the lie of the disappearing cucumbers to the flurry of proposed christenings, the ceremonies of social life are stylishly exploded…

‘…death, birth, engagement, marriage, celibacy, fidelity, receive the same treatment.

1

Everything must be arranged into an aesthetic pattern which satisfies the egoists who inhabit the story and who are endowed with the disarming innocence and ruthless tunnel vision of children.

Wilde has fashioned a comic verbal style which embraces every character.

Max Beerbohm, reviewing the 1902 revival, observed that the characters ‘speak a kind of beautiful nonsense—the language of high comedy, twisted into fantasy…’

‘Throughout the dialogue is the horse-play of a distinguished intellect and a distinguished imagination—a horse play among words and ideas, conducted with poetic dignity’ (Max Beerbohm).

Here he succeeds in subjugating plot to dialogue so conclusively that one feels literally anything could happen without affecting his characters’ aplomb.

He achieves the total suspension of belief, creating a polished mirror into which his contemporary audience could gaze and see, if they chose, disconcerting reflection, or inversion, of themselves.

2

To achieve the full effect, it is crucial that the cast act with complete seriousness: every statement, however preposterous or absurd, must be delivered with conviction.

If the serious business of society was the achievement of satisfactory marriages, and generous marriage settlements, the closing tableau of The Importance of Being Earnest provides it with a superbly trivialized image.

Even such gestures as a kiss or an embrace are purely conventional, undertaken for effect, not spontaneous.

…the play remains…a critique of the absurdity of all forms and conventions.

None of the characters act as if they have any but the most superficial knowledge of each other…

…celebration of high artifice…

3