English
Oliver Zürn
Characters in Oscar Wilde's 'The
Importance of Being Earnest'
Seminar paper
University of Passau
Faculty of Philosophy
Chair of English Literature and Culture
HS English Comedies, 1500 to 2000
Winter Term 2004/05
Characters in Oscar Wilde’s
The Importance of Being Earnest
Studies: Sprachen, Wirtschafts- und Kulturraumstudien
Semester: 05
1
Contents
1. The serious people in Oscar Wilde’s trivial comedy
2. Oscar Wilde and his work
3. Characters
3.1. Lane and Merriman
3.2. Algernon Moncrieff
3.3. John Worthing
3.4. Lady Bracknell
3.5. Gwendolen Fairfax
3.6. Cecily Cardew
3.7. Miss Prism
3.8. Reverend Canon Chasuble
4. Oscar Wilde’s good society
Bibliography
2
1. The serious people in Oscar Wilde’s trivial comedy
When The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed on 14th of February 1895
in St. James’s theatre, it was a huge success and one of the actors said: “In my fiftythree years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than the first night of The
Importance of Being Earnest. The audience rose in their seats and cheered and cheered
again.” (Quoted in Bird 1977, 164) Of course, the first one who extoled the play was
Oscar Wilde himself: “the first act is ingenious, the second beautiful, the third
abominably clever.” (Quoted in Kohl 1980, 412) Indeed, it is his masterpiece or –
posthumously – most sucessful play and has enjoyed most revivals up to the present
day.
However, the play is not only “good fun” (Reinert 1956, 153), Wilde put also a
philosophy in it, as he explained: “That we should treat all the trivial things of life very
seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.” (Quoted
in Eltis 1996, 171) Furthermore, in the play’s subtitle “A Trivial Comedy for Serious
People” he directly addressed the mainly upper-class audience of his time and there is
maybe no better or more appropriate expression than “serious” or “earnest” to describe
Victorianism or the Victorian society. (cf. Kohl 1980, 421) Hence, the play may help us
to understand the society at Oscar Wilde’s time.
Although the play’s performance is realistic or naturalistic, i.e. the characters are
dressed in contemporary dresses and look exactly like the audience at that time, there
must be a reason why a hundred years later we can still laugh about this great farce and
wonderful social satire. Maybe the wide range of themes (marriage, love, money,
religion, birth and so on)1 or the character’s peculiarities and follies helped the play to
remain up-to-date.
But with what kind of characters did Oscar Wilde on the one hand amuse and
entertain his audience, on the other hand criticize and satirize spectators and society he
lived in? How do the character’s follies shed light on the Victorian society at the end of
the 19th century?
1
Somehow it is not that dissimilar from Shakespeare’s comedies because it is also concerned with young
people, love and marriage. Furthermore we have two settings and one of them is in open air. Bird, Alan
(1977), The Plays of Oscar Wilde, London: Vision Press Ltd., 176.
3