The Importance of being Earnest
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-19001988
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Features play script, including biographical notes, textual details and information about the staging of the play. 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People': its subtitle is the best summary of a play that is the theatrical equivalent of a butterfly. The verbal brilliance of its highly self-conscious characters hides deep anxieties about social and personal identity: Jack Worthing, found as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station and named after a railway ticket, is prepared to be re-christened to obtain the Christian name - Earnest - his beloved Gwendolen requires in a husband; he then has to confront the stigma of being the illegitimate child of a servant, before fortune, and a benevolent dramatist, reveal his true and entirely respectable identity. This is the only one-volume edition of the play to include an appendix with earlier versions and additional scenes that allow an appreciation of Wilde's creative process.
Main title:
The Importance of being Earnest / Oscar Wilde ; edited by Russell Jackson.
Author:
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900, authorJackson, Russell, editor
Imprint:
London : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1988.
Collation:
176 pages : c 5 photographs/line drawings ; 20 cm.
Series:
New Mermaids
ISBN:
9780713630404
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
264478
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