The Importance of Being Earnest and Five Other Plays

Witty playwright Oscar Wilde is most famous for his 1895 play "The Importance of Being Earnest." The two protagonists use a false identity, Earnest, as a way to escape from unwanted social obligations. However, they encounter difficulties keeping up their personas as their social circles draw closer together. Wilde drew upon what he thought were outrageous social conventions of the Victorian Era and used satire to show the absurdity of its beliefs, like how marriage was more of a boring bur...