The Importance of Being Earnest - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

In contrast to much theatre of the time, The Importance of Being Earnest's light plot does not tackle serious social and political issues, something of which contemporary reviewers were wary. Though unsure of Wilde's seriousness as a dramatist, they recognised the play's cleverness, humour and popularity with audiences. George Bernard Shaw, for example, reviewed the play in the Saturday Review, arguing that comedy should touch as well as amuse, "I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter." Later in a letter he said, the play, though "extremely funny" was Wilde's "first really heartless ". In The World, William Archer wrote that he had enjoyed watching the play but found it to be empty of meaning, "What can a poor critic do with a play which raises no principle, whether of art or morals, creates its own canons and conventions, and is nothing but an absolutely wilful expression of an irrepressibly witty personality?"

In The Speaker, A. B. Walkey admired the play and was one of few to see it as the culmination of Wilde's dramatical career. He denied the term "farce" was derogatory, or even lacking in seriousness, and said "It is of nonsense all compact, and better nonsense, I think, our stage has not seen." H. G. Wells, in an unsigned review for the Pall Mall Gazette, called Earnest one of the freshest comedies of the year, saying "More humorous dealing with theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine." He also questioned whether people would fully see its message, "..how Serious People will take this Trivial Comedy intended for their learning remains to be seen. No doubt seriously." The play was so light-hearted that many reviewers compared it to comic opera rather than drama. W.H.Auden called it "a pure verbal opera", while The Times wrote that "The story is almost too preposterous to go without music." Mary McCarthy, in Sights and Spectacles (1959), however, and despite thinking the play extremely funny, would call it 'a ferocious idyll' ; 'depravity is the hero and the only character.'

Of the theatre of the period, only the work of Wilde and his fellow Irishman Shaw has survived, as well as the farce Charley's Aunt. The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's most popular work and continually revived today. Max Beerbohm called this play Wilde's "finest, most undeniably his own", saying that in his other comedies—Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband—the plot, following the manner of Victorien Sardou, is unrelated to the theme of the work, while in Earnest the story is "dissolved" into the form of the play.