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At a house party in an English country house, the witty, cynical Lord Illingworth offers to make young Gerald Arbuthnot his secretary, a chance that would…
At a house party in an English country house, the witty, cynical Lord Illingworth offers to make young Gerald Arbuthnot his secretary, a chance that would launch the young man's career. Gerald's mother, Mrs Arbuthnot, a quiet, devout woman, is horrified, for Lord Illingworth is the man who seduced and abandoned her twenty years before and is Gerald's father, a secret she has kept from her son. Around them flows a stream of brilliant, heartless conversation.
Context and significance
Oscar Wilde's play was first performed in 1893, and it mixes melodrama with some of his most dazzling epigrams, such as 'The youth of America is their oldest tradition.' Read Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband.
About the author
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, studied classics at Trinity College and Oxford, and became the most quotable man in London, the leading voice of the movement that preached art for art's sake. Between 1892 and 1895 his comedies filled the theatres, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, caused a sensation.
At the height of his fame he was convicted for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years of hard labour, an experience he wrote about in De Profundis. He died in exile in Paris, poor and broken, at forty-six. The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of the funniest plays in English.