The Importance of Being Earnest

Subtitled A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, this farce is set among the Victorian upper classes. Two young gentlemen, Jack and Algernon, each invent a fictitious person to escape their duties and enjoy a freer life. When both pretences follow them into the countryside and into their courtships of Gwendolen and Cecily, the muddles multiply. Wilde pokes fun at marriage, social rank, respectability and earnestness itself, with dialogue of remarkable speed and wit. It is generally considered his masterpiece and one of the most loved comedies in the English language.