The Importance of Being Earnest Trivial Comedy for Serious People

The play The Importance of Being Earnest has been called by its author “a trivial comedy of serious people”. This is, of course a witty and paradoxical description of the play. Serious people cannot be interested in a comedy. Serious people would be interested in serious matters and not in things which appeal to the comic sense. Again a comedy which derives its whole value form the originality and the brilliance of its wit cannot be called trivial. The word trivial has been used either form a feeling of modesty on the author’s part or in an ironical sense.

When the play is meant for serious people, perhaps the author expected that even serious people will laugh because of its wit. Perhaps the author is inspiring the serious people to witness the play on the stage so that they may derive from it some food for serious thought. Wilde poses here as a trifle who is capable of thinking and there is often a wonderful suggestiveness in his lightest banter and wildest paradox. For examples, the excessive consumption of wine by servants at parities at Algernon’s voices a well established face that, strictly speaking, romance ends when a proposal of marriage has been accepted, and accepted readily, Besides, the portrayal of Lady Bracknell is an indirect attack on social snobbery and class consciousness.