Oscar Wilde is remem­bered these days for being 1) wit­ty (“I have noth­ing to declare but my genius”) and 2) gay, in a far-from-ide­al peri­od of his­to­ry in which to be gay (Bosie, Read­ing gaol and all that). I sup­pose all writ­ers can be boiled down to a sim­ple phrase (Orwell: edgy polit­i­cal alle­go­ry and warn­ing to future gen­er­a­tions; Tolkien: medieval­ist pur­vey­or of elf-lore, etc). How­ev­er, whilst describ­ing Wilde in a sen­tence or two is all well and good, it’s good to know that his actu­al work con­tin­ues to be con­sumed on stage and screen — all four of his so-called draw­ing-room plays have been made into films (not to men­tion operas and musi­cals) and all four have reg­u­lar­ly been per­formed on stage up and down the land. And to any­one who enjoys their wit sharp and acer­bic, his plays are bril­liant.

Wilde wrote nine plays in all (not quite the 39 that are attrib­uted to Shake­speare but then Wilde did die at 46, and in fact wrote noth­ing much after his spell in prison) and of these it is the four afore­men­tioned draw­ing-room plays that are the most promi­nent: Lady Win­der­mere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Impor­tance (1893), An Ide­al Hus­band (1895) and The Impor­tance of Being Earnest (1895). The lat­ter, sub-titled a Triv­ial Com­e­dy for Seri­ous Peo­ple, was first per­formed on 14ᵗʰ Feb­ru­ary 1895 at the St James’s The­atre in Lon­don. It is a far­ci­cal com­e­dy fea­tur­ing two young men-about-town assum­ing dou­ble lives — and the name Ernest — whilst woo­ing the two young women of their affec­tions.

The play par­o­dies con­tem­po­rary social mores and man­ners, and intro­duces two great sup­port­ing char­ac­ters in the form of the for­mi­da­ble Lady Brack­nell and the fussy gov­erness Miss Prism. With the best quips, Lady Brack­nell is a bit­ing­ly comedic char­ac­ter, played over the years in var­i­ous incar­na­tions by Edith Evans, Judi Dench, Mag­gie Smith and Gwen Tay­lor (and even David Suchet). Hers is the line “To lose one par­ent, Mr Wor­thing, may be regard­ed as a mis­for­tune; to lose both looks like care­less­ness” and of course the famous­ly haughty excla­ma­tion “A hand­bag?!”. Watch Judi Dench’s ver­sion in the “inter­ro­ga­tion” clip below (though she choos­es to almost whis­per the hand­bag line instead of going for the full-blown out­raged excla­ma­tion of Edith Evans et al).

The suc­cess­ful open­ing night marked the zenith of Wilde’s career but even as he was bask­ing in the plau­dits from the appre­cia­tive audi­ence, forces were gath­er­ing that would lead to his down­fall. The Mar­quess of Queens­ber­ry, whose son Lord Alfred Dou­glas (Bosie) was Wilde’s lover, was schem­ing to throw a bunch of rot­ten veg­eta­bles at the play­wright at the end of the per­for­mance. This act of ret­ri­bu­tion was thwart­ed by secu­ri­ty but soon the feud would lead to a series of legal tri­als between March to May 1895 which would result in Wilde’s con­vic­tion and impris­on­ment for homo­sex­u­al acts. Despite the play’s ear­ly suc­cess, Wilde’s dis­grace sad­ly caused it to be closed in May after 86 per­for­mances.