Drama and further texts: Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest…

The idea

Wilde's 1895 comedy of manners exposes Victorian earnestness through punning and paradox. Jack Worthing invents a brother, Ernest, to escape country duties; Algernon Moncrieff invents Bunbury to escape London engagements. Both woo women who insist on marrying a man named Ernest, so Jack undergoes christening. Lady Bracknell's interview and Gwendolen's diary block and then permit the match. The handbag origin reveals Jack is Algernon's brother and genuinely named Ernest. Study how epigrams invert moral platitudes, how farce timing drives Act II confusion, and how the dandy critiques marriage, class and respectability. Consider Wilde's use of stage directions, the butler's announcements and the three-act structure to sustain comic momentum.

What earns the marks

• Analyse how Wilde's epigrams invert conventional moral statements, showing that the wit exposes rather than merely decorates Victorian values.
• Examine the function of the Ernest/Bunbury inventions as structural devices that generate mistaken identity and satirise social obligation.
• Discuss Lady Bracknell as a comic authority figure whose pronouncements on class, money and marriage reveal the society she polices.
• Consider how the resolution through the handbag and christening satisfies romantic comedy conventions while mocking their artificiality.
• Explore Wilde's dramatic methods, including stage directions, entrances and the butler's announcements, in creating and releasing tension.

Common mistakes and how to put them right

• Treating the play as a simple love story.

  Put it right by arguing that the marriages are satirical vehicles for critiquing Victorian social rituals.

• Quoting epigrams without analysing their linguistic construction.

  Put it right by examining paradox, antithesis and inversion in the wording itself.

• Ignoring the Pre-1900 context.

  Put it right by linking attitudes to marriage, class and respectability to late-Victorian society and Wilde's own position.

Exam tips

• Plan responses around dramatic methods and comic effects rather than retelling the plot.
• Integrate short quotations into analytical sentences and comment on specific word choices.
• Connect every point to the comedy genre, showing how Wilde creates laughter and what that laughter critiques.