Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.

His father, William

Wilde, was an acclaimed doctor who was knighted for his work as medical advisor for the Irish censuses.
William Wilde later founded St. Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, entirely at his own personal expense, to treat
the city's poor. Oscar Wilde's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a poet who was closely associated with the
Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, a skilled linguist whose acclaimed English translation of Pomeranian
novelist Wilhelm Meinhold's Sidonia the Sorceress had a deep influence on her son's later writing. Wilde
was a bright and bookish child. He attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen where he fell in love
with Greek and Roman studies. He won the school's prize for the top classics student in each of his last two
years, as well as second prize in drawing during his final year. Upon graduating in 1871, Wilde was awarded
the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. At the end of his first year at Trinity, in
1872, he placed first in the school's classics examination and received the college's Foundation Scholarship,
the highest honor awarded to undergraduates. Upon his graduation in 1874, Wilde received the Berkeley
Gold Medal as Trinity's best student in Greek, as well as the Demyship scholarship for further study at
Magdalen College in Oxford. At Oxford, Wilde continued to excel academically, receiving first class marks
from his examiners in both classics and classical moderations. It was also at Oxford that Wilde made his first
sustained attempts at creative writing. In 1878, the year of his graduation, his poem "Ravenna" won the
Newdigate Prize for the best English verse composition by an Oxford undergraduate. Upon graduating from
Oxford, Wilde moved to London to live with his friend, Frank Miles, a popular portraitist among London's
high society. There, he continued to focus on writing poetry, publishing his first collection, Poems, in 1881.
While the book received only modest critical praise, it nevertheless established Wilde as an up-and-coming
writer. The next year, in 1882, Wilde traveled from London to New York City to embark on an American
lecture tour, for which he delivered a staggering 140 lectures in just nine months. While not lecturing, he
managed to meet with some of the leading American scholars and literary figures of the day, including
Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman. Wilde especially admired Whitman. "There is
no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honor so much,'' he later wrote to his idol.
Upon the conclusion of his American tour, Wilde returned home and immediately commenced another
lecture circuit of England and Ireland that lasted until the middle of 1884. Through his lectures, as well as
his early poetry, Wilde established himself as a leading proponent of the aesthetic movement, a theory of
art and literature that emphasized the pursuit of beauty for its own sake, rather than to promote any
political or social viewpoint. On May 29, 1884, Wilde married a wealthy Englishwoman named Constance
Lloyd. They had two sons: Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886. A year after his wedding, Wilde
was hired to run Lady's World, a once-popular English magazine that had recently fallen out of fashion.
During his two years editing Lady's World, Wilde revitalized the magazine by expanding its coverage to
"deal not merely with what women wear, but with what they think and what they feel. The Lady's World,"
wrote Wilde, "should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's opinions on all subjects
of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure."

Acclaimed Works

Beginning in 1888, while he was still serving as editor of Lady's World, Wilde entered a seven-year period of
furious creativity, during which he produced nearly all of his great literary works. In 1888, seven years after
he wrote Poems, Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a collection of children's stories. In
1891, he published Intentions, an essay collection arguing the tenets of aestheticism, and that same year,
he published his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel is a cautionary tale about a
beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, who wishes (and receives his wish) that his portrait ages while he
remains youthful and lives a life of sin and pleasure. Though the novel is now revered as a great and classic
work, at the time critics were outraged by the book's apparent lack of morality. Wilde vehemently
defended himself in a preface to the novel, considered one of the great testaments to aestheticism, in
which he wrote, "an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style" and "vice and
virtue are to the artist materials for an art." Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened in February
1892 to widespread popularity and critical acclaim, encouraging Wilde to adopt playwriting as his primary
literary form. Over the next few years, Wilde produced several great plays—witty, highly satirical comedies
of manners that nevertheless contained dark and serious undertones. His most notable plays were A
Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his
most famous play.

Personal Life and Prison Sentence

Around the same time that he was enjoying his greatest literary success, Wilde commenced an affair with a
young man named Lord Alfred Douglas. On February 18, 1895, Douglas's father, the Marquis of
Queensberry, who had gotten wind of the affair, left a calling card at Wilde's home addressed to "Oscar
Wilde: Posing Somdomite," a misspelling of sodomite. Although Wilde's homosexuality was something of
an open secret, he was so outraged by Queensberry's note that he sued him for libel. The decision ruined
his life. When the trial began in March, Queensberry and his lawyers presented evidence of Wilde's
homosexuality—homoerotic passages from his literary works, as well as his love letters to Douglas—that
quickly resulted in the dismissal of Wilde's libel case and his arrest on charges of "gross indecency." Wilde
was convicted on May 25, 1895 and sentenced to two years in prison. Wilde emerged from prison in 1897,
physically depleted, emotionally exhausted and flat broke. He went into exile in France, where, living in
cheap hotels and friends' apartments, he briefly reunited with Douglas. Wilde wrote very little during these
last years; his only notable work was a poem he completed in 1898 about his experiences in prison, "The
Ballad of Reading Gaol."

Death and Legacy

Wilde died of meningitis on November 30, 1900 at the age of 46. More than a century after his death,
Wilde is still better remembered for his personal life—his exuberant personality, consummate wit and
infamous imprisonment for homosexuality—than for his literary accomplishments. Nevertheless, his witty,
imaginative and undeniably beautiful works, in particular his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and his play
The Importance of Being Earnest, are considered among the great literary masterpieces of the late
Victorian period. Throughout his entire life, Wilde remained deeply committed to the principles of
aestheticism, principles that he expounded through his lectures and demonstrated through his works as
well as anyone of his era. "All art is at once surface and symbol," Wilde wrote in the preface to The Picture
of Dorian Gray. "Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at
their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art
shows that the work is new, complex and vital."

Triviality

Arthur Ransome described The Importance... as the most trivial of Wilde's society plays, and the only one
that produces "that peculiar exhilaration of the spirit by which we recognise the beautiful." "It is", he
wrote, "precisely because it is consistently trivial that it is not ugly."Ellmann says that The Importance of
Being Earnest touched on many themes Wilde had been building since the 1880s—the languor of aesthetic
poses was well established and Wilde takes it as a starting point for the two protagonists. While Salome, An
Ideal Husband and The Picture of Dorian Gray had dwelt on more serious wrongdoing, vice in Earnest is
represented by Algy's craving for cucumber sandwiches.[n 9] Wilde told Robert Ross that the play's theme
was "That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere
and studied triviality."[10] The theme is hinted at in the play's ironic title, and "earnestness" is repeatedly
alluded to in the dialogue, Algernon says in Act II, "one has to be serious about something if one is to have
any amusement in life" but goes on to reproach Jack for 'being serious about everything'".[63] Blackmail
and corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert Chiltern (in An Ideal Husband),
but in Earnest the protagonists' duplicity (Algernon's "bunburying" and Worthing's double life as Jack and
Ernest) is undertaken for more innocent purposes—largely to avoid unwelcome social obligations.[10]
While much theatre of the time tackled serious social and political issues, Earnest is superficially about
nothing at all. It "refuses to play the game" of other dramatists of the period, for instance Bernard Shaw,
who used their characters to draw audiences to grander ideals.[22]

As a satire of society[edit]

The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs, marriage and the pursuit of love in
particular.[64] In Victorian times earnestness was considered to be the over-riding societal value,
originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes, it spread to the upper ones too throughout the
century.[65] The play's very title, with its mocking paradox (serious people are so because they do not see
trivial comedies), introduces the theme, it continues in the drawing room discussion, "Yes, but you must be
serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them," says Algernon in
Act 1; allusions are quick and from multiple angles.[63]

Gwendolen and Cecily discover that they are both engaged to "Ernest"

Wilde managed both to engage with and to mock the genre, while providing social commentary and
offering reform.[66] The men follow traditional matrimonial rites, whereby suitors admit their weaknesses
to their prospective brides, but the foibles they excuse are ridiculous, and the farce is built on an absurd
confusion of a book and a baby.[67] When Jack apologises to Gwendolen during his marriage proposal it is
for not being wicked:[68]

JACK: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking
nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

GWENDOLEN: I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.

In turn, both Gwendolen and Cecily have the ideal of marrying a man named Ernest, a popular and
respected name at the time. Gwendolen, quite unlike her mother's methodical analysis of John Worthing's
suitability as a husband, places her entire faith in a Christian name, declaring in Act I, "The only really safe
name is Ernest". This is an opinion shared by Cecily in Act II, "I pity any poor married woman whose
husband is not called Ernest" and they indignantly declare that they have been deceived when they find out
the men's real names. Wilde embodied society's rules and rituals artfully into Lady Bracknell: minute
attention to the details of her style created a comic effect of assertion by restraint. In contrast to her
encyclopaedic knowledge of the social distinctions of London's street names, Jack's obscure parentage is
subtly evoked. He defends himself against her "A handbag?" with the clarification, "The Brighton Line". At
the time, Victoria Station consisted of two separate but adjacent terminal stations sharing the same name.
To the east was the ramshackle LC&D Railway, on the west the up-market LB&SCR—the Brighton Line,
which went to Worthing, the fashionable, expensive town the gentleman who found baby Jack was
travelling to at the time (and after which Jack was named).

Suggested homosexual subtext

It has been argued that the play's themes of duplicity and ambivalence are inextricably bound up with
Wilde's homosexuality, and that the play exhibits a "flickering presence-absence of… homosexual desire".
On re-reading the play after his release from prison, Wilde said: "It was extraordinary reading the play over.
How I used to toy with that Tiger Life."As one scholar has put it, the absolute necessity for homosexuals of
the period to "need a public mask is a factor contributing to the satire on social disguise." The use of the
name Earnest may have been a homosexual in-joke. In 1892, three years before Wilde wrote the play, John
Gambril Nicholson had published the book of pederastic poetry Love in Earnest. The sonnet Of Boys' Names
included the verse: "Though Frank may ring like silver bell / And Cecil softer music claim / They cannot work
the miracle / –'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame."The word "earnest" may also have been a code-word for
homosexual, as in: "Is he earnest?", in the same way that "Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were employed.
Sir Donald Sinden, an actor who had met two of the play's original cast (Irene Vanbrugh and Allan
Aynesworth), and Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote to The Times to dispute suggestions that "Earnest" held any
sexual connotations: Although they had ample opportunity, at no time did any of them even hint that
"Earnest" was a synonym for homosexual, or that "bunburying" may have implied homosexual sex. The first
time I heard it mentioned was in the 1980s and I immediately consulted Sir John Gielgud whose own
performance of Jack Worthing in the same play was legendary and whose knowledge of theatrical lore was
encyclopaedic. He replied in his ringing tones: "No-No! Nonsense, absolute nonsense: I would have
known". A number of theories have also been put forward to explain the derivation of Bunbury, and
Bunburying, which are used in the play to imply a secretive double life. It may have derived from Henry
Shirley Bunbury, a hypochondriacal acquaintance of Wilde's youth. Another suggestion, put forward in
1913 by Aleister Crowley, who knew Wilde, was that Bunbury was a combination word: that Wilde had
once taken train to Banbury, met a schoolboy there, and arranged a second secret meeting with him at
Sunbury.

Use of language

While Wilde had long been famous for dialogue and his use of language, Raby (1988) argues that he
achieved a unity and mastery in Earnest that was unmatched in his other plays, except perhaps Salomé.
While his earlier comedies suffer from an unevenness resulting from the thematic clash between the trivial
and the serious, Earnest achieves a pitch-perfect style that allows these to dissolve. There are three
different registers detectable in the play. The dandyish insouciance of Jack and Algernon—established early
with Algernon's exchange with his manservant—betrays an underlying unity despite their differing
attitudes. The formidable pronouncements of Lady Bracknell are as startling for her use of hyperbole and
rhetorical extravagance as for her disconcerting opinions. In contrast, the speech of Dr. Chasuble and Miss
Prism is distinguished by "pedantic precept" and "idiosyncratic diversion". Furthermore, the play is full of
epigrams and paradoxes. Max Beerbohm described it as littered with "chiselled apophthegms—witticisms
unrelated to action or character", of which he found half a dozen to be of the highest order. Lady
Bracknell's line, "A handbag?", has been called one of the most malleable in English drama, lending itself to
interpretations ranging from incredulous or scandalised to baffled. Edith Evans, both on stage and in the
1952 film, delivered the line loudly in a mixture of horror, incredulity and condescension.Stockard
Channing, in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2010, hushed the line, in a critic's words, "with a barely audible
'A handbag?', rapidly swallowed up with a sharp intake of breath. An understated take, to be sure, but with
such a well-known play, packed full of witticisms and aphorisms with a life of their own, it's the little things
that make a difference."

Characterisation

Though Wilde deployed characters that were by now familiar—the dandy lord, the overbearing matriarch,
the woman with a past, the puritan young lady—his treatment is subtler than in his earlier comedies. Lady
Bracknell, for instance, embodies respectable, upper-class society, but Eltis notes how her development
"from the familiar overbearing duchess into a quirkier and more disturbing character" can be traced
through Wilde's revisions of the play. For the two young men, Wilde presents not stereotypical stage
"dudes" but intelligent beings who, as Jackson puts it, "speak like their creator in well-formed complete
sentences and rarely use slang or vogue-words".Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism are characterised by a few
light touches of detail, their old-fashioned enthusiasms, and the Canon's fastidious pedantry, pared down
by Wilde during his many redrafts of the text.

Structure and genre

Ransome argues that Wilde freed himself by abandoning the melodrama, the basic structure which
underlies his earlier social comedies, and basing the story entirely on the Earnest/Ernest verbal conceit.
Now freed from "living up to any drama more serious than conversation" Wilde could now amuse himself
to a fuller extent with quips, bons-mots, epigrams and repartee that really had little to do with the business
at hand. The genre of the Importance of Being Earnest has been deeply debated by scholars and critics alike
who have placed the play within a wide variety of genres ranging from parody to satire. In his critique of
Wilde, Foster argues that the play creates a world where "real values are inverted [and], reason and
unreason are interchanged". Similarly, Wilde's use of dialogue mocks the upper classes of Victorian England
lending the play a satirical tone. Reinhart further stipulates that the use of farcical humour to mock the
upper classes "merits the play both as satire and as drama".