The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde's most dazzling comedy of manners. Two gentlemen invent fictional alter egos to escape their social obligations, romantic confusion reigns, and everyone discovers that in matters of love, a name can be everything.
A play, not a novel — which makes it the purest test in the catalogue. There is no narration to hide behind: strip the speaker labels and it is three acts of people talking, at speed, in complete sentences designed to be delivered. A single-narrator recording of a play is fundamentally a reading of a script; a full cast is closer to a performance. Lady Bracknell's interrogation, the tea scene between Gwendolen and Cecily, the muffins — all of it is timing between two voices, and timing is the thing a cast gets for free.
The voices that carry it
Lady Bracknell has the most quoted line in English comedy and the recording plays it straight, which is the only way it works. Gwendolen and Cecily are cast close enough to be sisters in manner and far enough apart to tell instantly who is being polite about what.
Chapter one plays without an account. Start listening to The Importance of Being Earnest.
Voice cast
9 characters plus the narrator, each with their own voice. All the voices of The Importance of Being Earnest.
- Jack Worthing — A respectable country gentleman who leads a double life — earnest and responsible in the country, inventing a dissolute brother called Ernest in town. Secretly an orphan of unknown parentage.
- Algernon Moncrieff — Jack's witty, idle, pleasure-seeking friend in London. Invents an invalid friend named Bunbury to escape social obligations. Charming, amoral, and effortlessly superior.
- Gwendolen Fairfax — Lady Bracknell's daughter and Jack's beloved. Confident, fashion-conscious, and utterly devoted to the name Ernest — which she regards as the only truly safe name for a husband.
- Cecily Cardew — Jack's ward, living at his country estate. Romantic, imaginative, and headstrong. Has been secretly keeping a diary of an entirely imaginary engagement to Ernest.
- Lady Bracknell — Gwendolen's mother, the play's great comic tyrant. Magnificently imperious, class-obsessed, and entirely convinced of her own authority. Her interrogation of Jack is one of the most celebrated scenes in English comedy.
- Miss Prism — Cecily's governess — prim, morally earnest, and secretly romantic. Harbours a dark secret: she once lost a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station. Clearly smitten with Canon Chasuble.
- Canon Chasuble — The local clergyman — pompous, scholarly, and oblivious. Fond of classical allusions and prepared christening sermons. Clearly and mutually smitten with Miss Prism.
- Lane — Algernon's manservant — deadpan, unflappable, and entirely unmoved by his employer's absurdities. Delivers information with perfect composure.
- Merriman — Jack's butler at the Manor House — dignified and brief. Announces arrivals and delivers messages with impeccable decorum.
Chapters
- Act I
- Act II
- Act III
About this recording
Is this a play rather than a novel?
Yes — Wilde's three-act comedy, presented as three chapters of about thirty minutes each. The stage directions are read by the narrator; everything else is the characters themselves.
Does a play work as an audiobook?
It works better here than in a single-narrator reading, because a play is written for separate voices. This is the shortest complete work in the catalogue at about an hour and forty minutes.