SOURCE: Sammells, Neil. “Earning Liberties: Travesties and The Importance of Being Earnest.” Modern Drama 29, no. 3 (September 1986): 376-87.

In the following essay, Sammells links Tom Stoppard's play Travesties with Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

David Rod has argued in Modern Drama that critics of Stoppard's Travesties have paid insufficient attention to the views on art and politics of Henry Carr, the minor consular official who regales us with his version of life as it most certainly was not in Zürich during the Great War.¹ Carr, Rod insists, rejects the various idealisms of Tristan Tzara, James Joyce and Lenin to present an independent position of his own, founded upon a practical consideration of what art has been and what it has accomplished; Carr contributes tellingly to the debate as Stoppard creates a balance “among the four opposing aesthetic viewpoints presented in the play, a balance that does not...