Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products. This functionality is provided solely for your
convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any
representations or warranties with respect to the machine generated PDF. The PDF is automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS
AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. CENGAGE LEARNING AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY
AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY,
ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. Your use of the machine generated PDF is subject to all use restrictions contained in The Cengage Learning
Subscription and License Agreement and/or the Gale In Context: High School Terms and Conditions and by using the machine
generated PDF functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against Cengage Learning or its licensors for your use of the
machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.
Wilde's `The Importance of Being Earnest,'
Author: John Drinkwater
Date: 2003
From: DISCovering Authors
Publisher: Gale
Document Type: Critical essay; Excerpt
Length: 591 words
Content Level: 4
Lexile Measure: 1240L
Full Text:
"Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest,'" in his The Muse in Council, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1925, pp. 225-29.
[In the following excerpt, the English dramatist, poet, biographer, and critic Drinkwater calls The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's
sole dramatic masterpiece.]
The Importance of Being Earnest is not really a comedy of manners in the sense of being primarily a criticism of the follies into which
a society is betrayed by its conventions, and a tearing off of the masks. Nor is it primarily a comedy of wit, sure and sustained as the
wit is. Attempts have been made to derive the play in some measure from the Restoration masters, but without much conviction, and
while the manner employed by Wilde has clearly influenced some later writers, notably St. John Hankin, The Importance of Being
Earnest really forms a class in English drama by itself. It is in mere simplicity that one says that it seems to be the only one of Wilde's
works that really has its roots in passion. Every device of gaiety and even seeming nonsense is employed to keep the passion far
back out of sight, and if it were otherwise the play would not be the masterpiece it is. But the passion is there. That is to say that the
play is directly an expression of that part of Wilde's own experience which was least uncontaminated and in which he could take most
delight. And this meant that all his great gifts as a craftsman were for once employed in work, where with insincerity almost as the
theme, there was more sincerity than in anything else he did. Plays like Salome and A Florentine Tragedy are at best little more than
virtuosity, while A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere's Fan, and An Ideal Husband, although they may have many of the
qualities that mark Wilde's one great achievement, are on the whole frank surrenders to a fashion of the theatre which Wilde had too
good a brain not to despise. But in The Importance of Being Earnest there is neither virtuosity nor concession. It is a superb and
original piece of construction with several moments of stage mastery which can hardly be excelled in comedy, and packed throughout
with a perfect understanding of dramatic speech. One has only to recall any scene in the play and place it beside almost any of the
successful comedies that one sees in the ordinary run of theatre production to see how definitely apart that greatness is set which
comes of having not three words in seven dramatically right but seven in seven. But when art comes to this excellence of form it can
only mean excellence of life at the springs, and flowing through The Importance of Being Earnest is the surest and clearest part of
Wilde's life. There was much, perhaps everything, in the more profoundly moving story of man that Wilde saw always imperfectly or
not at all. But he did see, with a subtlety that can hardly be matched in our dramatic literature, that the common intrigues of daily life
are not really the moralist's province at all, but interesting only for the sheer amusement that can be got out of them. Shakespeare
gave to the English stage a comedy as full of poetic passion as great tragic art, Ben Jonson the comedy of humours, and Congreve
and his fellows the true comedy of manners, but Wilde in his one masterpiece brought into the same company of excellence the
comedy of pure fun.
"Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest,'" in his The Muse in Council, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1925, pp. 225-29.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
Drinkwater, John. "Wilde's `The Importance of Being Earnest,'." DISCovering Authors, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: High School,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2101208472/SUIC?u=esuhs_main&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=8d125271. Accessed 16 May 2026.
Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ2101208472