Oscar Wilde 3: "A Handbag?!" The Importance of Being Earnest

Secret Life of Books

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The Importance of Being Earnest, first performed in 1895 at the sumptuous St James' Theatre in London, was Wilde’s last, and without question his greatest piece of dramatic writing. The handbag, the cucumber sandwiches, the Bunburying and the first class ticket to Worthing all come together to create a timeless classic that has been rarely out of performance since its debut.

It was a smash-hit from the moment it opened, but even as the lights went up, Wilde was grabbing the spotlight in the press and the courts with his libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's young gay lover Bosie.

None of this is apparent on first viewing "Earnest," which seemingly refuses to be serious. It's a farce and a romance and a fairy tale -- but it's also a radical confession of homosexual attraction and a bitter satire on Victorian morality and domestic politics. It’s also a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience which was itself a parody of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement in England.

Content warning to listeners: reading this play – and possibly just listening to this episode - will cause you to irritate your family members by attempting aphoristic remarks and epigrammatic witticisms.

Books and writers mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, Vera, or, The Nihilists; Salome; The Importance of Being Earnest; Lady Windermere's Fan; A Woman of No Importance; The Ideal Husband.

Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."; "The Decay of Lying"; "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"; "The Critic as Artist"

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream; Much Ado About Nothing

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal; The Rivals

Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Henry Arthur Jones, The Silver King; Saints and Sinners

Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray

Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Emile Zola

Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; The Doll's House

George Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Pygmalion

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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