The Importance of Being Earnest Essay & Criticism

The Importance of Being Earnest Critical Overview

Two major issues predominate much of The Importance of Being Earnest's criticism. First, while audiences from the play's opening have warmly received it, Wilde's contemporaries questioned its seeming amorality. Playwright George Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara), after seeing the original London production, attacked the play's "real degeneracy" in an article reprinted in Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Shaw described Wilde's repartee as "hateful" and "sinister." A second and related concern arises about Earnest's dramatic structure, which exhibits elements of the farce, comedy of manners, and parody. Critics often disagree as to how the play should be categorized.

On the play's morality, critical opinion remains divided. In his book Oscar Wilde, Edouard Roditi, for example, believed that Wilde's comedy never rises above "the incomplete or the trivial." Because none of the characters see through the others or critique their values, Roditi believed the play lacks an ethical point of...
(read more)