The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

It isn't often that I read plays. Really I only do it when I have to, for study, although I love the theatre and I always enjoy them when I do read them, so I don't know why I hardly ever read them. This play is of course a classic, but until I read this I had never read any of Oscar Wilde's work, and neither have I ever seen any film adaptations of any of his work. So I came to this wondering what to expect, with only vague ideas about the writer's life and no idea about what it was he actually wrote.

Sometimes this is the best way to come to a piece of literature, as it allows you to enjoy it as it is without reading it through a blinkering lens. I don't care about Wilde's homosexuality and his being an outsider in Victorian society. I don't care about what the readers of today can draw from it. The only thing that matters is that I absolutely loved this play. It's short but packed full of wicked one-liners (of the sort you often wish you could snap back with in real life. If only!) and a plot with plenty of twists. It actually had me laughing out loud, something that only rarely happens when I read (what with being a serious student of literature, ahem) since I stopped reading the adventures of Captain Underpants when I was 12. But - dare I say it? - Wilde's infamous wit is funnier even than Captain Underpants. By miles. And easy to read and get into as well. He was clearly a writer who appreciated the pure unbridled enjoyment that a piece of literature or theatre can offer, as well as its ability to drive home a point. Both are entwined marvelously in Wilde's writing.

Also he has a wonderful ability to inspire hunger in his reader, or so I found. Reading about Algernon tucking into muffins uninvited made me crave muffins. Just one way in which a skilled writer can bring their story to life. Wilde was a very skilled writer.

I'll read this play again before I have to write about it, paying attention to the use of language and the writer's purpose etc. etc. but whether you read for work or pleasure, whether you read plays or avoid them like the plague, read this, and if you read it many moons ago, reread it, becuase it is a work of genius and British humour at its best.