The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Part 1

Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” opens, subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.” The cast: John Worthing (a Justice of the Peace), Algernon Moncrieff, Canon Chasuble, butler Merriman, manservant Lane, Lady Bracknell, her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew, governess Miss Prism. The action moves from Algernon’s Half-Moon Street flat to a Woolton garden and drawing-room. St. James’s Theatre, under George Alexander, opened the play on February 14th, 1895.

Act One opens in Algernon’s morning-room to piano music next door. Lane prepares tea while Algernon boasts he plays with expression, not accuracy, reserving “science for Life.” Lane mentions cucumber sandwiches for Lady Bracknell; Algernon takes two and sinks onto the sofa. The ledger shows eight champagne bottles at a recent dinner with Lord Shoreman and Mr. Worthing. Lane attributes their disappearance to “the superior quality of the wine”—married households rarely stock first-rate champagne. Algernon finds marriage “so demoralising”; Lane admits he married once, “in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.” Algernon dismisses the topic.

Lane returns to announce “Mr. Ernest Worthing.” Jack enters and exchanges pleasantries. He claims to have come for “pleasure” and ribs Algernon about refreshment. Country life is “excessively boring”—in town one amuses oneself, in the country other people—and he has horrid Shropshire neighbours he never speaks to.

Spotting cucumber sandwiches and tea, Jack is astonished at Algernon’s “reckless extravagance.” Algernon explains Aunt Augusta and Gwendolen are coming—Augusta will disapprove of Jack’s flirtation with Gwendolen. Jack admits he came expressly to propose; Algernon finds this unromantic—“the very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I’ll certainly try to forget the fact.” Jack retorts the Divorce Court was invented for people with such memories.

Cucumber sandwiches are for Aunt Augusta, bread and butter for Gwendolen. Algernon snaps at Jack, forbidding the match: girls never marry men they flirt with, and Gwendolen is his first cousin. He demands Jack explain “the whole question of Cecily,” but Jack protests he knows no one of that name. Algernon asks Lane for the cigarette case Mr. Worthing left, inspects the inscription, and reads: “From little Cecily with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.” Jack squirms, claiming Cecily is his aunt at Tunbridge Wells, then chasing Algernon for the case. Algernon notes a small aunt cannot call her nephew “uncle,” and produces a card reading “Mr. Ernest Worthing, B. 4, The Albany,” pocketing it as proof.

Cornered, Jack explains: old Mr. Thomas Cardew adopted him and made him guardian to granddaughter Miss Cecily Cardew; the place is “not in Shropshire.” As guardian, Jack maintains “a very high moral tone,” hence invented brother Ernest, who gets into scrapes in town. Algernon—believing “the truth is rarely pure and never simple”—labels him a Bunburyist and explains his own invention: a permanent invalid named Bunbury whose ailing health excuses boring dinners. He lectures on “Bunburying” and declares married life is “three is company and two is none.” Jack plans to “kill” Ernest by week’s end and replies this is what the corrupt French Drama has propounded for fifty years—Algernon adds that the happy English home has proved it in half the time.

The electric bell rings “in that Wagnerian manner,” and Algernon offers to spirit Aunt Augusta away for ten minutes if Jack will let him dine at Willis’s. Jack agrees, provided he is serious about meals.

Part 2

Lane announces Lady Bracknell and Miss Fairfax. Algernon hurries to greet them; Lady Bracknell greets him maternally, bowing icily at Jack. Accepting tea, Algernon lifts the empty plate in horror; Lane reports no cucumbers in the market, even for ready money. Lady Bracknell graciously notes it doesn’t matter—she had crumpets with Lady Harbury, whose hair has turned gold from grief.

She plans to seat Algernon next to Mary Farquhar, “so attentive to her husband,” horrifying him. He produces a telegram claiming his poor friend Bunbury is very ill, begging off dinner. Lady Bracknell scathingly declares Mr. Bunbury must decide “whether he was going to live or to die,” pronouncing sympathy with invalids “morbid.” Health, she insists, “is the primary duty of life.” She demands to review Algernon’s music programme for her final reception, banning French songs as improper but approving German as “a thoroughly respectable language.” She and Algernon retire to the music-room, leaving Gwendolen behind.

Gwendolen and Jack seize the moment. She warns him never to discuss the weather—people always mean something else, and he confesses he does. Jack nervously declares he has admired her more than any girl. Gwendolen knows, and confesses her ideal is to love someone named Ernest—“there is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence.” She alludes to her journal, in which she wrote about him “long before we met.” Jack asks if she could love him under a different name; she dismisses this as metaphysical speculation. Jack admits he doesn’t care for Ernest, but Gwendolen insists it has music and vibrations, while Jack has none and belongs to all the plain Jacks of the world.

He blurts they must marry at once. Gwendolen notes he hasn’t actually proposed. He drops to his knees; she accepts, noting men often propose for practice, and admires his blue eyes.

Lady Bracknell sweeps in, ordering him to rise from “semi-recumbent posture.” Gwendolen restrains Jack and announces the engagement. Lady Bracknell icily denies it—an engagement should be a surprise—and sends Gwendolen to the carriage with questions. The lovers blow kisses behind her back.

The interview is Wilde at his most withering. Lady Bracknell produces notebook and pencil, approving Jack smoking, considering twenty-nine a good age, and praising his knowing nothing—“ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.” Seven or eight thousand a year satisfies her; a country house with fifteen hundred acres is acceptable. A town house at 149 Belgrave Square distresses her—“the unfashionable side”—but might be altered. She takes his Liberal Unionism as a Tory, then asks about his parents.

Jack admits he has lost both. To lose one parent, Lady Bracknell observes, may be a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Who was his father? Jack confesses his parents seem to have lost him—he doesn’t know who he is by birth. He was found. In a hand-bag. A large black leather hand-bag with handles. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew found it in the cloak-room at Victoria Station, Brighton line, and named him Worthing because he had a first-class ticket for that Sussex seaside resort.

Lady Bracknell is aghast. To be born in a hand-bag, with or without handles, displays “a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.” A railway cloak-room might conceal social indiscretion but can hardly form “an assured basis for a recognised position in good society.” She advises him to acquire relations and produce at least one parent before the season ends, sweeping out in majestic indignation.