SOURCE: Parker, David. “Oscar Wilde's Great Farce: The Importance of Being Earnest.” Modern Literature Quarterly 35, no. 2 (June 1974): 173-86.

In the following essay, Parker offers a thematic and stylistic examination of The Importance of Being Earnest and places it within the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century farces.

It is generally agreed that The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde's masterpiece, but there is little agreement on why it should be thought so or on how it works as a play. Though we can sense a solid substance beneath the frothy surface, the nature of that substance remains an enigma. Surprisingly little real criticism has been written about the play, and much of that which has is sketchy or tedious. One of the few critics whose mind seems to have been genuinely engaged by the play is Mary McCarthy, but she has written about it only briefly, and despite...