Becoming the Mask: Jack pretends to be another person (his own brother) named Ernest while in the city, and Algernon pretends to be Jack's fictional brother Ernest while visiting Jack's relative Cecily.Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Algernon drank a bottle of wine that Jack was saving, then he comes onto and eventually gets engaged to his ward Cecily, stays for tea and eats all the muffins.Ancestral Name: Jack is revealed to have originally been named Ernest, after his father, before he was abandoned as a baby.The butter would probably get on my cuffs. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.Īlgernon: Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. Jack: How you can sit there calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can't make out.

Jack also pretends to be named Ernest, and that was the name he was christened as, before he was lost as a baby.

Accidental Truth: Jack and Algernon pretend to be brothers, and it turns out they are.

This play provides examples of the following tropes: Is not, in fact, one of the Ernest movies. Plus the finale ending with the multiple plays on the word/name 'Ernest' is much funnier if played seriously.Īdapted for the screen several times, most famously a 1952 film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Michael Redgrave and a 2002 film directed by Oliver Parker and starring Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Frances O Connor, Reese Witherspoon and Judi Dench. And keep in mind that Wilde specifically ordered that the comedic script should be acted with the utmost seriousness. Not long after, Gwendolen arrives and meets Cecily, and the ladies soon find that both of them are engaged to a man named Ernest Worthing. Jack, meanwhile, had 'killed' his fictional brother Ernest, only to find that Cecily had already met 'Ernest' in the form of Algernon.

Furthermore, as luck would have it, his girlfriend Gwendolen (Algernon's cousin) has always dreamed of marrying a man named 'Ernest.' Algernon finds out Jack's ruse, but keeps Jack's secret for his own mischievous purposes: since he knows that there is no such person as 'Ernest Worthing,' he can sneak off to Jack's country home and pose as 'Ernest Worthing,' where he meets and falls in love with Cecily. Jack lives in the country with his ward, Cecily Cardew, but spends much of his time in London - where he calls himself 'Ernest Worthing,' so that he can do as he likes without anything getting traced back to his real identity.

The play follows the lives of two best friends, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. It is a farce on the societal conventions and restrictions of late-Victorian society, and remains enormously popular today. The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is an 1895 play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde.

On the importance of being earnest