Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest

Victorian England of the Fin de Siècle: Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing both invent a personified excuse to escape from their everyday lives. Algernon's ailing friend Bunbury allows him to take a trip to the countryside, while Jack's brother Ernest is his alibi for pleasure trips to the city. When the two fall in love - Jack with Algernon's cousin Gwendolen and Algernon with Jack's ward Cecily - Gwendolen's desire to marry someone named Ernest and Algernon's Aunt Augusta's claim to find a suitable husband for her daughter lead to all sorts of ironic and comical entanglements. Oscar Wilde's last and most successful play, which premiered in 1895, deals with themes such as " morality ", " truth " and " social manners " and mercilessly exposes Victorian values as hypocritical. So se.