On “The Importance of Being Earnest”

Oscar Wilde's most successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest, became an instant hit when it opened in London, England, in February, 1895, running for eighty−six performances. The play has remained popular with audiences ever since, vying with Wilde's 1890 novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray as his most recognized work. The play proves vexing to critics, though, for it resists categorization, seeming to some merely a flimsy plot which serves as an excuse for Wilde's witty epigrams (terse, often paradoxical, sayings or catch−phrases). To others it is a penetratingly humorous and insightful social comedy.