Product Description

Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #641 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Synopsis
Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.

About the Author
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society Comedies -- Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the West End stage between 1892 and 1895. Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895, when his success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an unsuccessful libel action against Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde lost the case and two trials later was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. As a result of this experience he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy in 1900.

Customer Reviews

A very witty masterpiece
In my quest to read more work by Irish literary greats this year, I recently purchased a newly repackaged Penguin Popular Classic version of Oscar Wilde's 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest. This edition, with its vibrant green cover and tracing-paper thin paper (all 100 per cent recycled), retails for a meagre £2 -- that's a very cheap price for a masterpiece, in my opinion.

I had seen a film version of this play a couple of years ago (the 2002 version starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor, Reese Witherspoon and Judi Dench) and I remember laughing out loud at a lot of it. But seeing the words in black-and-white print makes them seem even funnier -- if that is possible.

For those who don't know the storyline, the brief synopsis goes something like this: Country gentleman Jack Worthing invents a younger brother, Ernest, whom he pretends to be when he visits the city. This gives him free reign to pursue the beautiful Gwendolen. Meanwhile his city-based friend, Algernon Moncrieff, invents a poorly relative, Bunbury, whom he pretends to visit in the country in order that he can leave his dull city existence behind for a bit of fun and frivolity. One day Algernon pretends to be Ernest and visits Jack's pretty charge, Cecily, in the country, which leads to all kinds of confusion about identity. Obviously, Jack is not happy, but when his own deceptive behaviour is called into question, the scene is ripe for much farce and hilarity.

In three short acts, this play delivers so many laughs and classic one-liners it's difficult to appreciate the genius of it in just one reading. Fortunately, it's short enough -- just 67 pages in this edition -- to read cover-to-cover twice in a very short amount of time.

How many people haven't heard this line?

* (Delivered by Lady Bracknell to Jack): To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune: to lose both looks like carelessness.

Or this one:
* (Delivered by Gwendolen to Cecily): I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

But it's not just the lines which are funny, but the setting and the ways in which they are delivered that makes certain scenes especially comedic. This scene, in which Cecily serves tea and cake to her new rival in love, Gwendolen, is a good example of Wilde's ability to capture the little details in people's behaviour that conveys so much about their character and mood.

Cecily [sweetly]: Sugar?
Gwendolen [superciliously]: No thank you. Sugar is not fashionable any more. [Cecily looks angrily at her, takes up the tongs and puts four lumps of sugar in the cup.]
Cecily [severely]: Cake or bread and butter?
Gwendolen [in a bored manner]: Bread and butter, please. Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.
Cecily [cuts a very large slice of cake and puts it on the tray]: Hand that to Miss Fairfax.

Without wishing to wax lyrical, this is a sumptuous, dazzling read -- a wonderfully clever farce to brighten up the dullest day. It's tightly written, with not a word wasted, and there's a delightful conclusion in which all the lose ends are brought together and tied up with an unexpected flourish. Masterpiece, indeed.

absolutely brilliant!
everything about this book is perfect, the timing, the comedy, the situation. I can't even go into how fantastic it is, but i know that Osar Wilde is a genius and i wish he was still around, read this book, and don't loose out another second without it!

A very enjoyable reading, witty and full of "English" humor
Despite the fact that I usually like to watch plays, not so much to read them on paper, I found "The Importance of Being Earnest" a very enjoyable reading. The plot is greatly witty and I had a real fun reading several scenes described in this book. Given the theatrical style, the overall plot is not quite realistic, yet it is highly brilliant and full of "English" humor. After having read the book, I also bought the Audio-CD version of it, which I also enjoyed sincerely.