The Importance Of Being Earnest And Other Plays

Synopsis

Lady Windermere's Fan/Salomé/A Woman of No Importance/An Ideal Husband/A Florentine Tragedy/The Importance of Being Earnest

'To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose <i>both</i> looks like carelessness'

<i>The Importance of Being Earnest</i> is a glorious comedy of mistaken identity, which ridicules codes of propriety and etiquette.

Snobbery and hypocrisy are also laid bare in <i>Lady Windermere's Fan</i>, <i>A Woman of No Importance</i> and <i>An Ideal Husband</i>, while in <i>Salomé</i> and <i>A Florentine Tragedy</i>, Wilde uses historical settings to explore the complex relationship between sex and power.

The range of these plays displays Wilde's delight in artifice, masks and disguises, and reveals the pretensions of the social world in which he himself played such a dazzling and precarious part.

Edited with Introduction, Commentaries and Notes by Richard Allen Cave

Themes

• Foundlings
• Foundlings--Drama
• Identity (Psychology)
• PR5812 .C38 2000