Oscar Wilde: A Writer of Wit

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” –Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde was the witty, perfectly dressed aesthete that his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, relishes in presenting to its audience. Living in and writing for a Victorian high society where social conventions and restrictions dictated all aspects of elite life, Wilde was the perfect aesthete while remaining an outsider in many ways. His plays were commercial pieces written for the fashionable West End theaters. The West End was—and is—London’s theater district as Broadway is today in New York City.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854, Wilde initially made his way to England in 1874 after winning a scholarship to Oxford. Four years later, in 1878, Wilde moved to London where, in the words of biographer Peter Raby, he was “the archetypal artist of late romanticism, one of the figures not only associated with the doctrines of aestheticism and their hothouse flowering in the decadent 1890s but someone who epitomized them.” Meticulously attentive to his own public appearance, Wilde was the social dandy* found in his plays (Jack and Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, for example).

England was at the height of its colonial power and Wilde funneled the aristocratic wealth and snobbery of London’s elite class into his plays. The lush Victorian setting of The Importance of Being Earnest provides the carefully mannered backdrop that sparks Wilde’s characters’ repartee (a lightening-fast exchange of witty remarks). Wit was Wilde’s forte; it gained him a place in English society and characterized the day in its presentational manner. Wit is composed of a carefully selected short phrase or sentence that is able to convey layer upon layer of meaning. It is fast and furious, never resting or repetitive, and immensely engaging.

In addition to being a foreigner (a Dubliner by birth), Wilde’s private life did not always align itself with Victorian social standards. In 1894, Wilde took his family to Worthing, England, where he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest. The play was produced the following year at the St. James’s Theater in London, opening February 14, 1895. A public scandal followed shortly thereafter. Wilde was arrested and his first trial, for homosexual offenses, began April 26th. Disagreement among the jurors led to a retrial May 25th and imprisonment for two years. Wilde was released in 1897 and left the country. The Importance of Being Earnest (along with another of his plays, An Ideal Husband) was published two years later in 1899. The following year, on November 30, 1900, Wilde died at the age of forty-six in Paris’s Hôtel d’Alsace.

While some of Wilde’s works clearly demonstrate the tensions between Wilde’s personal and public lives (his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, for example), The Importance of Being Earnest was subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People” and remains light-hearted and fun from the moment the curtain rises. Considered in some ways a farce, a “low” form of comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest was “triumphantly transformed… into a glittering and unique artifice.” While Wilde himself referred to The Importance of Being Earnest as “exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy,” there are some slight undertones of the pressures that would soon erupt in this cushy, privileged world of Victorian elites. While the “acts of violence in Grosvenor Square” (one of the more fashionable parts of London) that Lady Bracknell predicts did not come to be, the decades following Wilde’s death included WWI in addition to revolutions and uprisings around the globe. The comforts of the privileged English home would only last for so long.

And yet, The Importance of Being Earnest remains a delightful piece of international fame. From the butler who drinks the champagne (Lane) to the elderly woman (Miss Prism) who mistakenly places a baby in a handbag, Wilde creates characters that are naturally absurd. A poet and playwright who composed everything from novels to essays, Wilde- a Victorian dandy to the last- remains style and wit at its best.

*Dandy- A man who gives his personal appearance an exaggerated amount of attention 

FUN FACTS

■ It took approximately 600 people-hours to build and install the set

■ The set contains a half mile of steel.

■ The “show portal” around the edge of the proscenium is the only set piece that does not have a curve (at least in the design, the bottom portion across the stage actually does curve around the apron of the stage)

■ 12 pages of drafts and 3 models (built using approximately 35 exacto blades) were made by Rob Christiansen (set designer).