Publication and Historical Background:
It was at the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde’s success that The Importance of Being Earnest first debuted on the London stage in February 1895. An instant sensation among viewers at the St. James Theatre (Jackson 161), Wilde was still bathing in the success of his three preceding Society plays, a series of comedies that had recently placed Wilde at the forefront of the theatre world (Gladden 17). The Importance of Being Earnest ran a total of 
eighty-six performances before being abruptly removed from the theatre when Wilde was prosecuted and subsequently incarcerated under charges of sodomy in the spring of the same year (Roditi 204). Scandalous connotations then associated with Wilde’s work left George Alexander—who was then staging The Importance of Being Earnest—with little choice but to remove the play from the London theatre (Hyde 326). It was several years before any producer or publisher would touch the play again (Roditi 204).
Though Wilde had originally planned to write “more serious” plays following his release from Reading Gaol, a rapid deterioration in his health succeeding his two years of solitary confinement and grim prison work put a forcible end to these dreams (Murrey). This left The Importance of Being Earnest as the final, albeit unintentional climax of Wilde’s career (Jackson165). In 1899, just a year prior to Oscar Wilde’s death, the play was finally published in London by Leonard Smithers and Company, a publication that was infamous for their printing of subversive and potentially erotic works (Guy and Small 183). Wilde’s choice to publish under Smithers is indicative both of the downfall of Wilde’s stardom, and of the disruptive decadence of the themes in his work (Gladden 18). Despite these connotations, The Importance of Being Earnest was met with serendipitous success when it was returned to the stage two years following Wilde’s death, and the play has since become a well beloved literary classic (Bristow, “Introduction” 22).
Literary Significance:
Besides being widely regarded as Wilde’s most humorous and enjoyable play, The Importance of Being Earnest was also a relevant social critique. Conflict within the play was based largely around Earnest/Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff’s “bunburying,” a word defined most easily as the practice of using false identities in order to escape social responsibilities. Under this term, “bunburying,” the play examines hypocrisy and the “comic implications of the double life,” a theme now closely associated with Wilde’s own “double” life as a homosexual man (Beckson), but which can just as easily be connected to many of the hypocritical superficialities he saw in Victorian society. Wilde’s markedly popular epigrams based their humour in the deconstruction of Victorian moral and social values and were successful primarily because they were performed during the end of the nineteenth century, when traditional Victorianism dangled precariously under fin de sirécle scrutiny. Through the use of “sensationalist imagery hyperbole, dandyism and decadence,” The Importance of Being Earnest mocked the “earnestness” and self-discipline of the Victorian age in favour of modern decadence and aestheticism (Fridell 2-3).
This is not to say that The Importance of Being Earnest was the only play of this kind, or that it did not have significant influences from the works of other writers. As with most great literature, Wilde’s Society plays borrowed from a number of predececors, who once highly praised are now practically unknown to the literary world (Powell 13). During its heyday, The Importance of Being Earnest was often associated with what was in the 1890s termed the “well-made play.” Characteristic of these plays was the use of “amusing double talk,” witty banter, dramatic irony and the jollification of false or mistaken identities —each of which traits are distinctively visible in The Importance of Being Earnest (Gladden 13).
The Importance of Being Earnest 