The Importance of Being Earnest

Name: The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde

text from Standard Ebooks · read by Gord Mackenzie, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), John Gonzalez, Betsie Bush, Hugh McGuire, Kristen McQuillin, Paula Berinstein, Peter Yearsley, Chris Goringe, Deana Duncan for LibriVox

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Dramatis Personae

John Worthing, J. P.
Algernon Moncrieff
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.
Merriman, Butler
Lane, Manservant
Lady Bracknell
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax
Cecily Cardew
Miss Prism, Governess

The Scenes of the Play

Act I: Algernon Moncrieff’s Flat in Half-Moon Street, W.

Act II: The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.

Act III: Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton.

Time: The present.

Act I

Scene: Morning-room in Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street. The room is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a piano is heard in the adjoining room.

fetching the rest…

More by Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance
Wilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.
An Ideal Husband
You get Wilde at his sharpest in the drawing-room sparring between Lord Goring and the dangerously composed Mrs Cheveley, while Sir Robert Chiltern’s spotless public image starts to crack. It’s funny, fast, and more forgiving about human weakness than its polished manners initially suggest.
Children’s Stories
Fair warning: these fairy tales will wreck you a little. The swallow staying with the Happy Prince through the frost, the giant's garden thawing when the children sneak back in, it's all gorgeous and melancholy at once, sadder and stranger than anything you'd actually read to a kid.

Dramatis Personae

John Worthing, J. P.

Algernon Moncrieff

Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.

Merriman, Butler

Lane, Manservant

Lady Bracknell

Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax

Cecily Cardew

Miss Prism, Governess

More by Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance

Wilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.

An Ideal Husband

You get Wilde at his sharpest in the drawing-room sparring between Lord Goring and the dangerously composed Mrs Cheveley, while Sir Robert Chiltern’s spotless public image starts to crack. It’s funny, fast, and more forgiving about human weakness than its polished manners initially suggest.

Children’s Stories

Fair warning: these fairy tales will wreck you a little. The swallow staying with the Happy Prince through the frost, the giant's garden thawing when the children sneak back in, it's all gorgeous and melancholy at once, sadder and stranger than anything you'd actually read to a kid.