Line #27 Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest


1	[[quoteright:313:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_importance_of_being_earnest.jpg]]
2
3	->''"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be quite tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility."''
4	-->-- '''Algernon Moncrieff'''
5
6	''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is an 1895 play by Irish playwright Creator/OscarWilde. It is a farce on the societal conventions and restrictions of late-Victorian society, and remains enormously popular today.
7
8	The play follows the lives of two best friends, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Jack lives in the country with his ward, Cecily Cardew, but spends much of his time in London -- where he calls himself "Ernest Worthing," so that he can do as he likes without anything getting traced back to his real identity. Furthermore, as luck would have it, his girlfriend Gwendolen (Algernon's cousin) has always dreamed of marrying a man named "Ernest." Algernon finds out Jack's ruse, but keeps Jack's secret for his own mischievous purposes: since he knows that there is no such person as "Ernest Worthing," he can sneak off to Jack's country home and pose as "Ernest Worthing," where he meets and falls in love with Cecily.
9
10	Jack, meanwhile, had "killed" his fictional brother Ernest, only to find that Cecily had already met "Ernest" in the form of Algernon. Not long after, Gwendolen arrives and meets Cecily, and the ladies soon find that both of them are engaged to a man named Ernest Worthing.
11
12	[[ItMakesSenseInContext It makes... more sense if you actually read it.]] And keep in mind that Wilde specifically ordered that the comedic script should be acted with [[TheComicallySerious the utmost seriousness]]. Plus the finale ending with the multiple plays on the word/name "Ernest" is much funnier if played seriously.
13
14	Adapted for the screen several times, most famously a 1952 film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Creator/MichaelRedgrave and a 2002 film directed by Oliver Parker and starring Creator/ColinFirth, Creator/RupertEverett, Creator/FrancesOConnor, Creator/ReeseWitherspoon and Creator/JudiDench.
15
16	Is not, in fact, one of the ''[[Film/ErnestPWorrell Ernest]]'' movies.
17
18	----
19	!!This play provides examples of the following tropes:
20
21	* AccidentalTruth: Jack and Algernon pretend to be [[spoiler:brothers, and it turns out they are. Jack also pretends to be named Ernest, and that was the name he was christened as, before he was lost as a baby.]]
22	--> '''Ernest''': It's a very serious thing for a man to suddenly discover that all his life he's been speaking the exact truth.
23	* AdaptationInducedPlotHole: The 2002 film switched [[spoiler:the brothers' birth order,]] leaving it unexplained how Algernon could have [[spoiler:forgotten that he had a younger brother]], and why [[spoiler:the second, not the first, son being christened after the father would be memorable for Lady Bracknell when she can't remember what the actual name was.]]
24	* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Cecily.
25	* AllWomenHateEachOther: Jack says that his ward Cecily and his fiancée Gwendolyn will be "calling each other sister" before the day is out. Algernon snarks that, "Women never call each other sister before they've called each other a lot of other things first." He's proven right when Gwendolyn and Cecily get into a verbal catfight later.
26	* AmbiguousSyntax: the source of many a pun.
27	-->'''Jack:''' How you can sit there calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can't make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.\
28	'''Algernon:''' Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.
29	* AncestralName: Jack is revealed to [[spoiler:have originally been named Ernest, after his father, before he was abandoned as a baby.]]
30	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Algernon drank a bottle of wine that Jack was saving, then he comes onto and eventually gets engaged to his ward Cecily, stays for tea and eats all the muffins.
31	* BecomingTheMask: Jack pretends to be another person (his own brother) named Ernest while in the city, and Algernon pretends to be Jack's fictional brother Ernest while visiting Jack's relative Cecily. Both end up actually having to become men named Ernest when their love interests both want them to actually be named Ernest.
32	* BigEater: Algernon
33	* BlatantLies: Jack and Algernon, constantly, and the others get their share as well.
34	* BrickJoke:
35	** "You will call me sister, will you not?"
36	** In the 2002 film, the credits play over [[spoiler:the characters holding a funeral for Mr. Bunbury, who Algernon later tells his aunt finally died.]]
37	* CollectiveIdentity: Both Jack and Algernon use the alias Ernest Worthing. Each proposes while using this identity and HilarityEnsues when Ernest's two fiancees meet each other.
38	* ContrivedCoincidence: The resolution of the plot hinges on a huge one. The Colin Firth film averts this. [[spoiler:Jack just lies. Lady Bracknell knows, but goes along with it.]]
39	* CoupledCouples: Jack and Gwendolen, and Algernon and Cecily.
40	* CrossCastRole: In contemporary theatre productions, the role of Lady Bracknell is frequently (although not always) played by a man.
41	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The whole play is supposedly full of elaborate puns on male homosexuality (though Wilde's contemporaries and John Gielgud have denied it), most of them are examples of GetTheeToANunnery now. Still, the whole 'double life' subtext is effective as ever today, and nothing could ever stop "Bunburying" sounding dirty.
42	* DoorstopBaby: Jack
43	* EmbarrassingTattoo: In the 2002 movie, Gwendolyn gets a tattoo of the name "Earnest" ... and ''then'' finds out his name is Jack. Oops.
44	* EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench: This is why Lady Bracknell ''doesn't'' want French songs played at her next reception. German, on the other hand, sounds "thoroughly respectable" -- and not just to Lady Bracknell. Cecily insists that studying German makes her look plain, and that's probably why Jack insists on her studying German extra hard whenever he's not there to chaperone her.
45	* FauxlosophicNarration: It's up to interpretation if what Algernon says is actually deep or if he just likes sounding that way. When Jack outright asks, he replies that it's "perfectly phrased."
46	* FawltyTowersPlot: It's already one of these by the first act. Jack has convinced Gwendolen that his name is Ernest and has become engaged to her behind Lady Bracknell's back, while Algernon unscrupulously acquires Jack's country address to approach Cecily. And it only gets worse from there.
47	* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In live productions, often when characters are talking with one another, anyone meandering on stage and not directly participating in the conversation are doing something hilarious, such as not-so-subtly listening in.
48	* GoldDigger: Lady Bracknell, on her own behalf and her nephew's.
49	* GorgeousPeriodDress: The 1952 film is full of these. So is the 2002 film.
50	* GrandeDame: Lady Bracknell is one of the grandest -- and one of the ''[[{{Pun}} dame]]''[[{{Pun}} -dest]].
51	* HaveAGayOldTime
52	* TheHelpHelpingThemselves: Having noticed that his butler's register notes eight bottles of champagne as having been consumed at his most recent party, Algernon asks his manservant Lane about the missing wine.
53	-->'''Algernon:''' Why is it that at a bachelor’s establishment, the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.\
54	'''Lane:''' I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
55	* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: Played with; Gwendolen claims that her "first impressions of people are never wrong" when really they are ''consistently'' wrong.
56	* HotForPreacher: Miss Prism.
57	* IceCreamKoan: An awful lot of the wittiest lines ''sound'' profound at first, but fall apart when you [[FridgeLogic think about them]] too hard. The characters even comment on this fact.
58	* IdleRich: Jack claims to make most of his money from investments to the point where Lady Bracknell seriously considers smoking to be his occupation.
59	* [[IHaveNoSon I Have No Brother]]: Cecily thinks Jack is invoking this trope, but really Jack's almost revealed that his brother never existed.
60	* ImagineSpot: In the 2002 movie, Cecily has several involving her as a maiden being rescued by a knight. When she meets "Ernest" (Algie), she imagines him as a knight [[spoiler:and then imagines his visor snapping shut when she learns he isn't really named Ernest]].
61	* ImplausibleDeniability: Jack keeps insisting that the suspicious cigarette case was a gift from his aunt even after it's obvious that Algernon has read the whole inscription.
62	* TheIngenue: Gwendolen and Cecily are parodies. {{Lampshade\|Hanging}}d by Lady Bracknell for Gwendolen, and Jack for Cecily.
63	* InsultBackfire: How Gwendolyn wins the catfight with Cecily.
64	-->'''Cecily''': This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.\
65	'''Gwendolyn''': I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
66	* InternalReveal: Gwendolen and Cecily have a falling out over both being engaged to Ernest, which the audience knows already is the pseudonym adopted by both Jack and Algernon. The women quickly discover the truth when their boyfriends arrive on the scene together.
67	* IntimateMarks: The 2002 movies has Gwendolyn get "Ernest" tattooed on one of her buttocks. The end credits show Jack at the same parlor getting a matching tattoo of her name as she holds his hand for support.
68	* InventedIndividual: Algernon's Ernest is the nonexistent and perpetually sickly "Mr Bunbury"; Jack's is, naturally, his brother Ernest.
69	* InventedInvalid: Algernon claims to be visiting his invalid friend Mr Bunbury, who suffers from "curiously bad health", allowing him to avoid his engagements with his relatives. Amusingly, Algy tries to [[ForcedMeme popularize]] with Jack the word "Bunburyist" to describe people who invent faraway, needy friends as excuses. The fanciful Bunbury, however, inspires minor pity in others and mostly just irritates Lady Bracknell, so he's not the Trope Namer.
70	* IronicEcho: "My first impressions of people are never wrong."
71	* TheJailBaitWait: Algernon and Cecily can't marry without Jack's consent until Cecily is ''thirty-five''. Algernon is willing to wait that long, but Cecily isn't. Although that may have been yet another lie on Jack's part. In any case, he's clearly only withholding consent to blackmail Lady Bracknell into letting him marry Gwendolen.
72	* KissingCousins: At the end of the play, [[spoiler:since Jack is Algernon's brother, Jack's girlfriend Gwendolyn is his cousin. Of course, in Wilde's time this wasn't a particularly big deal.]]
73	* TheKlutz: Miss Prism is this, especially as played by Creator/MargaretRutherford. There's a moment in the film where she gets her watch chain tangled with her eyeglass chain holder and Cecily either hides a giggle, or Dorothy Tutin is {{Corpsing}} and they [[ThrowItIn threw it in]]
74	* TheLawFirmOfPunPunAndWordplay: When Jack defends his ward Cecily's social status against Lady Bracknell's questions, he notes the late Thomas Cardew's three addresses (which "always inspire confidence, even among tradesmen," according to Lady Bracknell); in support of this fact, he adds that her solicitors are the firm of Markby, Markby, and Markby. They also meet with her approval ("A firm of the very highest position in their profession. Indeed I am told that one of the Mr Markbys is occasionally to be seen at dinner parties.")
75	* LeaveTheTwoLovebirdsAlone: Algernon volunteers to get Gwendolen's mother out of the way so Jack can propose -- although he does insist that Jack take him out to dinner as payment.
76	* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: Depends on the production how far they take this, but Algernon's offstage piano playing in the first act tends to come in at dramatically appropriate moments, much to Jack's annoyance.
77	* LighterAndSofter: Probably the lightest of all Wilde's plays, moreso than even his earlier comedies.
78	* LivingADoubleLife: The entire concept of "Bunburying". Jack is Ernest in town and Jack in the country.
79	* LockedIntoStrangeness: Played with. The unseen Lady Harbury's hair is said to have "turned quite gold [[SarcasmMode from grief]]" at her husband's death.
80	-->I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger.
81	* LoveAtFirstSight: Algernon's for Cecily. (Her love for him, of course, is of an even [[LoveBeforeFirstSight earlier origin]].)
82	* LoveBeforeFirstSight: With someone who doesn't even exist.
83	* LukeIAmYourFather: The comedy reveals at the end.
84	* MeaningfulName:
85	** Dr. Chasuble's name refers to a piece of clerical clothing.
86	** The names of Algernon and Lady Bracknell allude to Wilde's lover Alfred Douglas and his mother -- the latter lived in the town of Bracknell and Moncrieff was the name of an ancient Scottish family just like that of Douglas.
87	** And Miss Prism's name is a reference to the word ''misprision'', as well as suggesting "prim" and alluding to the phrase "prunes and prisms."
88	* MirrorCharacter: TheReveal that Jack and Algernon are brothers after all is hardly surprising given how similar they are. Both use fake names to indulge in somewhat scandalous double lives, both are single men looking to marry the loves of their lives. They even repeat each other's lines on a few occasions, underscoring not only their similarities, but the matching motivations.
89	* MoralLuck: Lady Bracknell embodies this. She admonishes Jack for being an orphan because it shows "contempt for the decencies of family life"; disapproves of sympathising with ill people because "illness is hardly a thing to be encouraged"; and even congratulates an offstage character for finally "making up his mind" to die.
90	* MyBelovedSmother: Lady Bracknell
91	* NamesToTrustImmediately: Cecily and Gwendolen both think the name "Ernest" is one of these.
92	* OneDegreeOfSeparation: Although like many of the tropes in this play, this is something of a satire on common dramatic conventions.
93	* ParentalMarriageVeto: Lady Bracknell refuses to allow Jack and Gwendolen to marry after learning he doesn't know who his parents are. Jack forces her to change her mind by invoking a clause in Cecily's grandfather's will that allows him to prevent her from marrying Algernon until she's 35.
94	* PassiveAggressiveKombat: When Gwendolen and Cecily mistakenly come to believe that they are both engaged to the same man, they engage in an incredibly vicious yet polite catfight. The unstated rule is that they must insult each other while maintaining the appearance of civility and the one who loses her temper first loses. [[spoiler:Cecily wins.]]
95	* PerfectHealth: Cecily can't even cough on demand.
96	* PunBasedTitle: Meaning, of course, both "The importance of being named Ernest" and "the importance of being sincere."
97	* RapidfireNameGuessing
98	* TheReveal: Jack's parentage.
99	* RunningGag: There are several food-related ones, such as Algernon's constant eating and love of muffins, and the dislike of cake that appears to be shared by all four lovers.
100	* SatchelSwitcheroo: Resulting in the aforementioned DoorstopBaby
101	* ShotgunWedding: The 2002 movie implies this to be how Lady Bracknell (then a dancing girl) got Lord Bracknell to marry her.
102	* SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan: invoked by Gwendolen and Cecily when they address the men they love.
103	* SpeechCentricWork: Stacks of dialogue, most of it [[WorldOfSnark snarky]].
104	* SpiritedYoungLady: Cecily; watch her in the tea scene.
105	* StandardSnippet: Algernon strikes up the Wedding March--prematurely, it [[ParentalMarriageVeto turns out]]--after Jack proposes.
106	* StealthInsult: After Jack complains about Algernon's FauxlosophicNarration, saying that all the clever people running around are becoming 'an absolute public nuisance'.
107	-->'''Jack:''' I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.\
108	'''Algernon:''' We have.\
109	'''Jack:''' I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?\
110	'''Algernon:''' The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
111	* TalkAboutTheWeather: Gwendolen can tell Jack is working up to something serious when he starts out by commenting on the weather.
112	* TechnicianVersusPerformer: Algernon claims to be the latter.
113	-->'''Algernon:''' I don't play accurately--anyone can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression.
114	* ThatMakesMeFeelAngry: Cecily at one point announces that she "feel[s] very happy."
115	* ThickerThanWater: Inverted. When Jack apologizes for insulting Algernon's aunt, Algernon reassures him that he can't stand his relatives and loves hearing people insult them.
116	* TitleDrop: The last line.
117	-->'''Lady Bracknell:''' My nephew, you seem to be displaying distressing signs of triviality.\
118	'''[=Jack/Ernest:=]''' On the contrary, Aunt Augusta -- I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital importance of being earnest.
119	** Written in title case in some editions, [[ViewersAreMorons just in case the reader didn't pick up on it.]]
120	* TrialBalloonQuestion: "Couldn't you love me if my name wasn't Ernest?"
121	* TurnOutLikeHisFather:
122	** "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.”
123	** {{averted}}: "No man does; that's his."
124	* TheVicar: Dr. Chasuble
125	* VerbalBackspace:
126	** "I must get christened at once--I mean we must get married at once."
127	** "Oh! I killed Bunbury this afternoon. I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon."
128	* VitriolicBestBuds: Jack and Algernon.
129	* WifeHusbandry: {{Lampshaded}} and {{averted}}. Jack has a nubile ward, whom he ''isn't'' planning on marrying--although Gwendolen suspects otherwise when she first meets Cecily, and it doesn't help that Jack has hidden Cecily's existence from her and from Algy.
130	* WringEveryLastDropOutOfHim: Quoth [[GrandeDame Lady Bracknell]] about Algernon's "sick friend" Bunbury --who Algernon made up as an excuse to avoid unwanted social engagements, and has been using as an excuse for years. "I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he is going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd."
131	* ZanyScheme

Context Theatre / TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest