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The Importance of Being Earnest

Part of the New mermaids series
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'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.

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Product Details
Methuen Drama
071363040X / 9780713630404
Paperback / softback
822.8
28/04/1988
United Kingdom
176 pages, c 5 photographs/line drawings
129 x 198 mm, 154 grams
General (US: Trade)/A / AS level/Undergraduate Learn More