1. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Ernest
Princess & Connor

2. Author Background
Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is seen as one of the greatest playwrights of the whole Victorian Era.  In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and a large number of poems, short stories, and essays.  Wilde was a supporter of the Aesthetic movement, which brought attention to aesthetic values more than moral or social themes. It emphasised the visual and sensual qualities of art and design over practical, moral or narrative considerations. Besides literary accomplishments, he is also famous for his wit, flamboyance, and affairs with other men. He was put to trial and imprisoned for his homosexual relationship (back then considered a crime) with the son of an aristocrat. 

3. Contextual Information
The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy with the main goal to amuse the audience, rather than to make them think. As a comedy, it is rooted much less in a specific history or place than many plays. Nevertheless, the play does contain a references to historical events, which suggest unrest underneath the of the characters that Wilde portrays. One of the primary critiques of Wilde's play is that it is form without content, and does not deal seriously with any social issues (this, of course, is consistent with Wilde's doctrine of Aestheticism). In a contemporary review, the socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw reacted to The Importance of Being Earnest's seeming heartlessness--he would prefer to think that people are capable of speaking something other than nonsense.

4. Text Reaction Production: Reception:
The play’s tone was farcical and lighthearted, unlike most theatre of its time, and received mixed reviews. The audience was famously full of ministers, academics and writers; W.H.Auden described the performance as ‘pure verbal Opera’, reviewing it among other writers such as Bernard Shaw and H.G.Wells. The performance didn’t come without its objections however. There was one notable disruption from The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas, who planned to throw rotten vegetables at Wilde after the show. The police heard of the plan and barred him from entering the theatre. 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”. 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?”.
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