Oscar Wilde's Game of Being Earnest

Abstract

WRITING TO A FRIEND in 1895, Wilde dismissed The Importance of Being Earnest as a play "written by a butterfly for butterflies," and for many years this has been the usual response of playgoers and critics alike. Wilde's linguistic virtuosity is so complete and so consciously flaunted that the play exists for most people as a dazzling, if insubstantial tissue of pun and paradox. In producing the play, the director usually makes it his chief purpose to project the wit, creating primarily a verbal style that highlights the flashing repartee and plays down the intellectual content (a notable example of the style being the Olivier-Thorndike recording of the play). However successful this kind of production may be as entertainment, it stops short of revealing other, broader dimensions of meaning in the play, such as the sociological concern noted by Eric Bentley, or the ethical framework explored by Nassaar. But even these sensitive studies tend not to approach these levels of meaning through the design of the play's theatrical presence. Earnest offers a powerful view of society precisely because it is a subtly planned formal structure, and more thought needs to be given to the elements of design in the play to understand it as a stage-event.