This chronicle of a century and more of criticism and theatrical production of ®The Importance of Being Earnest has come to rest at a transition point coinciding with the most recent millennium. Fixing this extended end point for a survey of criticism and production of Wilde’s most well-known work has served to open up an extraordinary vista, revealing an unprecedented range and succession of responses to a truly extraordinary play. What felt at first like an excursion into uncharted territory gradually assumed the guise of a hunt for an expanding treasure-trove of riches awaiting discovery. It often appeared that some of the best critical and creative minds of the time, among academic critics, journalists, and independent thinkers, as well as actors, producers, and a variety of theatre artists, were drawn to respond to the challenges offered by an author and a play whose complexities and depths seemed finally to be inexhaustible.
Undertaken under the impending shadow of the author’s trials and imprisonment and then his untimely death, a mere five years after the premiere of his best and best-known play, in 1895, this investigation unearthed abundant sources of criticism in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and other records of the time. Reviews of the first production were broadly helpful for their specific descriptive accounts, but also for the multitude of issues they raised, capturing the imaginations of contemporary readers and simultaneously creating a precedent for a century-long series of further responses. Those reactions substantiate a steadily growing and, as time went on, a rapidly bourgeoning interest in Wilde and his play on the part of readers, journalists, scholars and academic writers, producers, actors and other theatre artists, and, of course, the general theatregoing public, along with those individuals who possess an unapologetic taste for reading plays and sometimes are moved to record their discoveries and insights.
Important, trend-setting landmarks emerged along the way. Revivals of The Importance at the St James’s became a reliable renewable resource over the professional lifetime of its manager and lessee, George Alexander. As early as 1908 the publication by Wilde’s friend and literary executor Robert Ross of the first collected edition of his works established a permanent reference point for serious interest in the full range of Wilde’s writings; simultaneously it drew some of the most incisive and penetrating criticism of the man and his literary output yet to appear. The so-called “Black and White” production of the play at the Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre in 1930, a brilliantly original reaction to and implicit commentary on the premiere production of 1895, set its own precedent for continuing theatrical experimentation. Just after mid-century, in 1956, the publication by Sarah Augusta Dickson, curator of the Arents Collection of the New York Public Library, of a two-volume facsimile edition of manuscripts witnessing the composition of the first, four-act version of Wilde’s play, called Lady Lancing, had the effect of informing the world of the larger textual history of Wilde’s play, known up to that point mostly as a three-act work. It spurred a fresh series of scholarly, critical, and theatrical responses that continued to gather momentum as the second half of the century progressed. Meanwhile, despite intermittent efforts beginning in Wilde’s own lifetime to bring biographical and critical interests into some kind of meaningful relationship, another quarter-century had to pass before Richard Ellmann’s magnificent, long-awaited biography would appear, in 1987, enthusiastically welcomed and highly praised, and yet called to account, before long, for its comparative neglect of the theatrical dimension of Wilde’s unique contributions as the most singular author of his time. And yet the presence and the example of Ellmann’s capturing of the life and art of his subject in meaningful juxtaposition set rolling a rich, multifarious outpouring of criticism and theatrical production that, by the end of the century, showed no signs of diminishing.
In fact, to judge from the selective attention given by the present writer to criticism emergent in the first two decades of this new century, augmented by numerous fresh productions of the play, even more will need to be said at some further point about a play whose continued vigorous life, on stage, on screen, and in print, has never been remotely in doubt. Nothing about the future can be guaranteed, of course, but if the past is any guide at all The Importance of Being Earnest will still inspire welcoming audiences, eager readers, and freshly engaged critics for a century yet to come.