'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 & personal identity: Jack Worthing found as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station & 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 & a benevolent dramatist reveal his true & entirely respectable identity. This is the only one-volume edition of the play to include an appendix with earlier versions & additional scenes that allow an appreciation of Wilde's creative process.