The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde

In this 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, Jack Worthing escapes his social obligations by leaving home to deal with his wastrel brother “Earnest” whose wild life is the inverse of Jack’s. Once away from home, Jack becomes Earnest, who doesn’t really exist. Jack’s ploy is discovered by his friend Algernon, and what follows is a farcical series of events as the two young men navigate themselves towards marriages to the women they love.

Major thematic elements: marriage, the importance of earnestness, morality and hypocrisy, deception, names and identity.

IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections

First performance: St. James’s Theatre, London, England
Language: English
Era: 19th century
Genre: Drama
Author: Male

Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts

Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation

Full text, basic summaries, and overviews

The Importance of Being Earnest | Full text
Project Gutenberg has the whole play in HTML. We couldn’t find a PDF that we loved and that we felt like was on the internet with the permission of the publisher. This one published by The Pennsylvania State University is pretty good, though.

The Importance of Being Earnest | Audiobook
LibriVox does have audiobooks of this play, but our favorite is the 2018 BBC Radio Broadcast posted on YouTube by Audiobook echo.

The Importance of Being Earnest | Full Play and Additional Clips
Bethany Lutheran College produced this play in 2018 and have the full play on YouTube. The 1952 film staring Michael Redgrave is on YouTube as is the 1986 adaptation starring John Woodnut and Rupert Frazer. MovieClips has a playlist of clips from the 2002 adaptation starring Rupert Everett and Colin Firth.

Study Guide for The Importance of Being Earnest | Spark Notes
This study guide includes summaries, character lists, literary devices, quick quizzes, essay topics, and more.
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Study Guide for the Importance of Being Earnest | Course Hero
This guide has a great infographic, plot and character summaries, important quotes, literary devices, and more.
Course Hero’s study guide for this play is available in three formats: on their website, on YouTube, and in this PDF.

The Importance of Being Earnest in 4 Minutes | YouTube | Kirsten Wittich | 3:56
This looks a little like a student-produced video, but it’s great: illustrations accompany the narration, and it covers the plot in an easy-to-understand manner.
Watch here

The Importance of Being Earnest | Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s page is full of information on the play’s composition, productions, synopsis, characters, themes, analysis, and more.
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About the author

Oscar Wilde documentary | YouTube | Write Like | 57:41
This documentary, formally titled Oscar Wilde, Spendthrift Genius, covers Wilde’s childhood, education, personal life, and professional victories and defeats. The pace of the film is what you’d expect out of a 1980s documentary, but the information is great, and the writing and direction emphasize what a fascinating man Oscar Wilde was.
Watch here

Wilde, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
This lengthy biography covers Wilde’s entire life, from his boyhood and education to his posthumous reputation.
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15 Things You May Not Know About Oscar Wilde | Culture Trip | Mary Sheehan, December 2016
Easy to read document with pictures. This article would be a less daunting way to introduce Wilde to students than the above works.
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Articles, essays, and videos about The Importance of Being Earnest

An Introduction to Victorian England | English Heritage
To understand what Wilde is poking fun at in his play, students need to know a bit about Victorian England. This page gives an overview with links to read more deeply about a wide-range of topics. If you’d like more resources, we like this timeline from rmg.co.uk, the documentary Life in Victorian Britain via Documentary Base on YouTube, and these primary source materials from British Library.
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The Victorian Era: An introduction to a period of seismic social change and poetic expansion | Poetry Foundation
This is a shorter introduction to the Victorian era (8 paragraphs). What we like about this article is how packed with hyperlinks to additional sources it is. Poetry Foundation ends the article with extensive lists of Victorian poets, poems, articles, and more for students to explore.
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Parody, Paradox and Play in The Importance of Being Earnest | Burkhard Niederhoff | Connections Vol. 13.1-2
This essay examines the connection between parody and paradox in the play and argues that the connection between the two is “essential to the unique achievement of [the] play.”
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When Life Imitates Art: Aestheticism in The Importance of Being Earnest | The Oswald Review | Drake DeOrnellis | 2019
DeOrnellis argues that through the “creation and interpretation of fictional identities, Jack, Algernon, Gwendolen, and Cecily become Wildean aesthetic artists and critics, ultimately nuancing Wilde’s theory [of aestheticism] by representing truth as a criterion for beauty.”
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Spectacle and Artifice: Victorian Advertisement and its Impact on the Importance of Being Earnest | Commonplaces
This essay argues that though the female character s in the play “seem willingly to create the artifice of their lives, they are in reality victims of the overwhelming and prevailing expectations imposed on them by the advertising industry of the day.”
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Wilde, Society, and Society Drama | Cary M. Mazer
This essay, prepared for the production of the play at People’s Light & Theatre Company in Malvern, PA, describes opening night and the initial reception of the play in 1895. This essay is a fun read and touches on a wide-range of social realities that make up the context for the play.
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Lesson plans and other teaching resources

Prime Stage Theater Co | The Importance of Being Earnest Resource Guide
This thirty-page document has resources for all aspects of the play: a summary of all three acts, Oscar Wilde background, character overviews, context, a timeline, a map, information on aestheticism and comedy of manners, the first stage production, themes, motifs and symbols, and more. Classroom activities are included throughout the document.
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ASF Study Materials and Activities for The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde | Dr. Susan Willis
This 16-page document is another great resource packet. Willis provides background information on characters names, things to watch/consider in the plot and production, details of the social milieu of the play, insight into Wilde’s use of language, and more.
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LitCharts.com | The Importance of Being Earnest
Our favorite part of this guide is the overview of themes. Six themes are identified and then tracked in the act and scene summaries.
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A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classics Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde | Lise Kloeppel
This guide includes pre-, during-, and post-reading activities.
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Prestwick House Teaching Unit Sample for The Importance of Being Earnest
We found two samples from Prestwick House. Sample 1 includes questions for essay and discussion (page 4) and vocabulary activities. Sample 2 provides an overview of New Historicism, Feminist Criticism, and Psychoanalytic/Freudian Criticism and how they apply to the play.
Read Sample 1 | Read Sample 2

Shopping List

Texts and other resources you may find helpful.

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The Importance of Being Earnest (Dover Thrift)
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Norton Critical Editions)
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) 
DVD on Amazon.com
Oscar Wilde: A Life by Matthew Sturgis
Hardcover on Amazon.com
The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Importance of Being Earnest (Norton Critical Editions)
 Paperback on Amazon.com
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
DVD on Amazon.com
The Invention of Oscar Wilde by Nicholas Frankel
Hardcover on Amazon.com