The Importance of Being Earnest

Two young men of good society have each invented a fictitious relative to escape their obligations. Jack calls himself Ernest in town, Algernon keeps an invalid friend in the country, and these lies open doors that should stay shut. Two young women, each equally determined to love no one but a man named Ernest, bring the two impostures together. The play explores marriage, Victorian respectability and the conventions that its lines overturn one by one. Wilde builds a tightly wound comedy in which every witticism carries the plot forward.