'''The Importance of Being Earnest''' is a play by
Oscar Wilde, a
comedy of manners on the seriousness of society in either three or four acts (depending on edition) inspired by
W. S. Gilbert's ''
Engaged''.
[1] It was first performed for the public on
February 14,
1895 at the
St. James' Theatre in
London.
It is set in
England during the late
Victorian era, and its primary source of humour is based upon the main character Jack's fictitious younger brother Ernest. Jack's surname,
Worthing, is taken from the town where Wilde was staying when he wrote the play.
Wilde's plays had reached a pinnacle of success, and anything new from the playwright was eagerly awaited. The press were always hungry for details and would pursue stories about new plots and characters with a vengeance. To combat this Wilde gave the play a working title, ''
Lady Lancing''. The use of seaside town names for leading characters, or the locations of their inception, can be recognised in all four of Wilde's society plays.
Plot summary
Algernon, an aristocratic young Londoner, pretends to have a friend named Bunbury who lives in the country and is frequently in ill health. Whenever Algernon wants to avoid an unwelcome social obligation, or just get away for the weekend, he makes an ostensible visit to his "sick friend." In this way he can feign piety and dedication, while having the perfect excuse to get out of town, avoiding his responsibilities. He calls this practice "
Bunburying."
Algernon's real-life best friend lives in the country but makes frequent visits to London. This friend's name is Ernest...or so Algernon thinks. But when Ernest leaves his silver cigarette case in Algernon's rooms, Algernon finds an inscription in it: "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack".
This forces Ernest to disclose that his own visits to the city are also examples of "Bunburying," much to Algernon's delight. In the country, "Ernest" goes by his real name, Jack Worthing, and pretends that he has a wastrel brother named Ernest, who lives in London. When honest Jack comes to the city, he assumes the name, and behaviour, of the profligate Ernest. In the country Jack assumes a more serious attitude for the benefit of his young
ward, the 18-year old heiress Cecily.
Jack himself wishes to marry Gwendolen, who is Algernon's cousin, but runs into a few problems. First, Gwendolen seems to love him only because she believes his name is Ernest, which she thinks is the most beautiful name in the world. Second, Gwendolen's mother is the terrifying Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell is horrified when she learns that Jack was adopted as a baby after being discovered in a handbag at a railway station. In her opinion it is absolutely below the standards of her daughter to ''"marry into a cloakroom and form an alliance with a parcel"'', as she puts it.
Meanwhile, Jack's description of Cecily has so appealed to Algernon that he resolves to meet her, in spite of Jack's firm opposition. Algernon decides to visit Jack's house in the country, in the guise of the mysterious brother "Ernest." Thus Algernon-as-Ernest is able to meet Jack's ward, Cecily, who has for some time imagined herself in love with Ernest -- Jack's non-existent, scapegrace brother. As such, Cecily is soon swept off her feet by Algernon. In parallel, however, Jack, having decided to give up his Bunburying, has announced the tragic death of his brother Ernest to Cecily's governess Miss Prism, and Prism's secret admirer the Reverend Chasuble. Thus, by the time the two "brothers" meet, one is dressed in mourning for the other.
New confusion is created by the arrival of Gwendolen, who has fled London and her mother to be with her love. When she and Cecily meet for the first time, each indignantly insists that she is the one engaged to "Ernest". Once Lady Bracknell in turn arrives, in pursuit of her daughter, she and Jack reach stalemate as she still refuses to countenance his marriage to Gwendolen, while he, in retaliation, denies his consent to the marriage of Bracknell's penniless nephew Algernon to his heiress ward Cecily.
The impasse is broken, in deus ex machina fashion, by the reappearance of Miss Prism. As she and Lady Bracknell recognize each other with horror, it is revealed that, when working many years previously as a nursemaid for Lady Bracknell’s sister, Prism had inadvertently lost a baby boy in a handbag. When Jack produces the identical handbag, it becomes clear that he is Lady Bracknell's nephew and Algernon's older brother.
Only one thing now stands in the way of the young couples' happiness, in view of Gwendolen's continued insistence that she can only love a man named Ernest - what is Jack's real first name? Lady Bracknell informs him that he was named after his father, a general, but cannot remember what the general's name was. Jack looks eagerly in a military reference book and declares that the name is in fact Ernest after all, and he has all along been telling the truth inadvertently.
As the happy couples embrace in turn (including also Prism and Chasuble), Lady Bracknell complains to Ernest, "My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality." "On the contrary, Aunt Augusta," Ernest replies, "I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest."
Characters
★ John ("Jack") Worthing (Ernest): In love with Gwendolen. Bachelor. Adopted when very young by Thomas Cardew.
★ Algernon Moncrieff (Algy): First cousin of Gwendolen. Bachelor. Nephew of Lady Bracknell.
★ Lady (Augusta) Bracknell.
★ Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax: daughter of Lady Bracknell.
★ Cecily Cardew: granddaughter of Thomas Cardew and ward of Jack Worthing. Lives at Jack's country house in Hertfordshire.
★ Miss Prism: governess to Cecily.
★ Rev Dr. Frederick Chasuble: a minister who lives near Jack’s country house.
★ Lane: butler to Algernon.
★ Merriman: butler to Jack.
Translations
The comedy has been successful even when performed in translation. The title being translatable only to a few languages—it relies on "Ernest" and "earnest" being
homophones in English—it is then usually staged under the title ''Bunbury'', referring to deceit in general.
In some languages, the literal title is maintained, but loses its character as a pun. In
Norwegian it is staged as ''Hvem er Ernest?'', which means "Who is Ernest?" In
Spanish-speaking countries, the title is translated as ''La importancia de llamarse Ernesto'' (The Importance of Being Named Ernest).
Several languages—German, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Czech—offer equivalent puns. In Germany the play and the 2002 movie are called ''Ernst sein ist alles'' ("Being Earnest is everything"), keeping precisely the original pun (''Ernst'' being both a first name and a German word for earnest). In Dutch it has been translated as ''Het belang van Ernst'', in which the pun is also fully functional. In French, the play is known as ''De l'importance d'être Constant'', ''Constant'' being both a mildly uncommon first name and the quality of steadfastness; the pun is preserved but with a slightly different meaning.
The Italian ''L'importanza di essere Franco'', or ''The Importance of Being Frank'', similarly preserves punning with a slight twist.
The same approach has been used in Hungarian: the title has been translated as ''Szilárdnak kell lenni'' ("One Must Be Steadfast"), ''Szilárd'' being also an uncommon first name meaning "steadfast". In Czech, the title is translated as ''Jak je důležité míti Filipa'' ("The Importance of Having Phillip"), which is an idiom for being clever, and ''Filip'' is a quite common name.
Four-act version
When Wilde handed his final draft of the play over to theatrical impresario George Alexander it was complete in four acts. The actor manager of the St. James' Theatre soon began a reworking of the play. Whether to provide space for a 'warmer' or a musical interlude, as was often the bill, it is not entirely clear. However, Wilde agreed to the cuts and various elements of the second and third acts were combined. The "missing" extra act, coming between the current second and third, was heavily cut. The greatest impact was the loss of the character Mr Gribsby, a solicitor, who turns up from London to arrest the profligate "Ernest" (Jack) for his unpaid dining bills. Algernon - who is going by the name "Ernest" at this point - is about to be led away to Holloway Jail unless he settles his accounts immediately. The four-act version was first played on the radio in a BBC production and is still sometimes performed. The 2002 film includes the Gribsby scene from the missing act.
Possible in-jokes
Some have implied that Wilde's use of the name ''Ernest'' might possibly be an in-joke.
John Gambril Nicholson in his poem ''"Of Boy's Names"'' (''Love in Earnest: Sonnets, Ballades, and Lyrics ''(1892)) contains the lines: " Though Frank may ring like silver bell, And Cecil softer music claim, They cannot work the miracle, –'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame." The poem was promoted by
John Addington Symonds and Nicholson and Wilde contributed pieces to the same issue of ''
The Chameleon'' magazine.
[2]. Theo Aronson has suggested that the word "earnest" became a code-word for homosexual, as in: "Is he earnest?", in the same way that "Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were also employed.
[3]
The words ''bunbury'' and ''bunburying'', meanwhile, which are used to imply double lives and as excuses for absences are, according to a letter from
Aleister Crowley to Sir
R. H. Bruce Lockhart, an in-joke conjunction that came about after Wilde boarded a train at Banbury on which he met a schoolboy. They got into conversation and subsequently arranged to meet again at Sunbury.
[4]
Contrary to claims of explicit homosexual terminology, the actor Sir
Donald Sinden, who had met two of the play's original participants in the 1940s:
Irene Vanbrugh, the first Gwendolen;
Allan Aynesworth, the first Algy; as well as Wilde's lover Lord
Alfred Douglas, wrote to ''The Times'' to dispute that the words 'Earnest' or 'bunburying' held any sexual connotations, or that 'Cecily' was a synonym for a rentboy: "Although they had ample opportunity, at no time did any of them even hint that Earnest was a synonym for homosexual, or that Bunburying may have implied homosexual sex. The first time I heard it mentioned was in the 1980s and I immediately consulted Sir
John Gielgud whose own performance of Jack Worthing in the same play was legendary and whose knowledge of theatrical lore was encyclopaedic. He replied in his ringing tones: "No-No! Nonsense, absolute nonsense: I would have known."
[5] The latter remark gains additional salience from the fact that Gielgud himself was well-known in theatrical circles to be gay.
All of this said, the fact that Jack and Algernon both lead "double lives" would undoubtedly have held special meaning for a married homosexual in Victorian London, like Wilde himself.
Trivia
★ The play contains many examples of Wilde's famous wit. Many readers and scholars have agreed that Algernon represents Wilde's surrogate; he delivers many of the witty one-liners.
★
John Gielgud was considered to be the greatest Jack Worthing of the twentieth century, and his
1947 Broadway production won the only
Tony Award ever given for Best Foreign Production.
★ Lady Bracknell's phrase ''A handbag?'' has been claimed to be the single quotation in English drama that has given rise to the most varied
readings, ranging from incredulous through scandalized to just plain baffled. There is scarcely an actress who has not tried to put her own personal stamp on it, but the most famous is that of
Edith Evans in
Anthony Asquith's film, who delivered the line loudly in a mixture of horror, incredulity and condescension.
★
The Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde's male lover Lord
Alfred Douglas, attempted to enter the theatre on the play's opening night to publicly expose Oscar Wilde's homosexuality, but Wilde was tipped in advance and Queensberry was refused a ticket. Due to Wilde's personal troubles, however, the play was closed after only 83 performances, despite its success.
★ The name 'Miss Prism' is a pun on 'misprision', the word for concealing an error from
authority.
★ When Jack tells Lady Bracknell that Cecily has a fortune of 'about a hundred and thirty thousand pounds' that is roughly the equivalent of £10,000,000 or US$18,000,000 in 2005.
★ At the time the play was written
Victoria Station in London was actually two adjacent terminal stations sharing the same name. To the east was the terminal of the decidedly ramshackle
London, Chatham and Dover Railway and to the west, the much more fashionable
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway—the Brighton Line. Although the two stations shared a dividing wall, there was no interconnection: it was necessary to walk out into the street to pass from one station to the other. Jack explains that he was found in a handbag in the cloakroom at Victoria Station and tries to mitigate the circumstance by assuring Lady Bracknell that it was the more socially acceptable "Brighton line."
★ In 2004's
Spider-Man 2,
Mary Jane Watson (
Kirsten Dunst) appears on Broadway in ''Earnest''.
★ The famous
Spanish singer,
Enrique Bunbury, named himself after Algernon's imaginary friend Bunbury.
★ In the pilot episode of
Radio Free Roscoe,
Ray Brennan auditioned for the role of Algernon in a school performance.
★ The names of Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon in Neil Simon's comedy ''The Odd Couple'' were inspired by the Cecily and Gwendolen of Wilde's play.
Film versions
★ ''
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952 film)'' was directed by
Anthony Asquith and stars
Michael Denison (Algernon),
Michael Redgrave (Jack), Dame
Edith Evans (Lady Bracknell),
Dorothy Tutin (Cecily),
Joan Greenwood (Gwendolen), and
Margaret Rutherford (Miss Prism).
★ ''
The Importance of Being Earnest (1992 film)'' was directed by
Kurt Baker.
★ ''
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002 film)'' stars
Colin Firth (Jack),
Rupert Everett (Algy), Dame
Judi Dench (Lady Bracknell),
Reese Witherspoon (Cecily),
Frances O'Connor (Gwendolen),
Anna Massey (Miss Prism), and
Tom Wilkinson (Dr. Chasuble) and was directed by
Oliver Parker.
Adaptations
★ A musical based on the play called ''
Ernest in Love'' opened off-Broadway in 1960 to glowing reviews. It starred John Irving as Jack and
Louis Edmonds as Algernon.
[6] The show was later revived and translated into Japanese in 2005 for the
Takarazuka Revue in Japan.
References
1. Feingold, Michael, "Engaging the Past" (Note the last paragraph, where Feingold writes, "Wilde pillaged this piece for ideas.")
2. D'arch Smith, Timothy: ''Love In Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English "Uranian" Poets from 1889 to 1930'' (1970)
3. Aronson, Theo: ''Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld'' (1994).
4. D'arch Smith, Timothy: ''Bunbury - Two Notes on Oscar Wilde'' (1998).
5. ''The Times'', 2 February 2001
6. http://www.darkshadowsonline.com/fea_ernest.html
External links
★
''The Importance of Being Earnest'' on
Project Gutenberg
★
The full script
★
The Importance of Being Earnest - full text and reviews.
★
The Importance of Being Earnest - Audio Book on
LibriVox
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