Audiobook · read by volunteers
Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Read by Gord Mackenzie, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), John Gonzalez, Betsie Bush, Hugh McGuire, Kristen McQuillin, Paula Berinstein, Peter Yearsley, Chris Goringe, Deana Duncan · 3 chapters · 2 h 18
About the book
Two young gentlemen in Victorian London lead double lives. Jack is serious in the country and Ernest in town; Algernon invents an invalid friend named Bunbury to escape tiresome obligations. Each of them falls in love with a lady who is determined to marry a man named Ernest, and a series of mistaken identities and formidable relatives turns a polite drawing-room into a battlefield.
Oscar Wilde called it a trivial comedy for serious people, and it remains one of the funniest plays in English. This recording is a full-cast performance of a classic comedy of manners, in three acts and about two hours and twenty minutes, full of epigrams, absurd logic, outrageous snobbery and perfectly timed lines. It is a ready pleasure for anyone who enjoys wit that never stops moving.
Introduction
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) wrote The Importance of Being Earnest as his last and most successful stage comedy. It was first performed in London in February 1895, and it was published in 1899. Within weeks of the first night, Wilde’s career collapsed in scandal, which gives the play’s dazzling surface an unintended poignancy.
The play is a classic comedy of manners. In order to impress their beloveds, two flippant young men pretend that their name is Ernest, which both young ladies believe confers magical qualities on its possessor. The plot builds on mistaken identity, concealed origins and family drama, and it makes fun of Victorian ideas of respectability and earnestness. Wilde’s particular gift is the epigram: lines such as the observations of Lady Bracknell have become part of the language. Underneath the absurdity, he is poking fun at the social rules of his time, including marriage, class and the value placed on appearances.
The recording is structured in three sections, one for each act, and runs for about two hours and twenty minutes. It is read by LibriVox volunteers, who take the parts as actors would, so the dialogue is distributed among different voices. This suits a play that depends on rapid exchanges between characters.
Why listen today? Because it is a comedy that has never really aged, and because hearing the lines spoken is the best way to catch their timing. The jokes still work, the characters are memorable, and the language is a delight to hear. It is an easy choice for an evening, a journey, or an introduction to the theatre of the 1890s.
Public domain
Oscar Wilde died in 1900: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text