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Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest opened at the St. James's Theatre in London on February 14, 1895, only a month after Wilde's previous success, An Ideal Husband. The packed-in audience rollicked with laughter at the on-stage caricatures. Considered Wilde's best play, many hail it as the greatest stage comedy of all time.
Part of The Importance of Being Earnest's success comes from Wilde's seemingly infinite supply of piquant epigrams. Though some of the concise, often paradoxical statements refer to contemporary events (the state of 19th-century French drama, for instance), most are universal, reflections on beauty, art, men, women, and class; they are endlessly quotable and continue to delight audiences with their blend of sophistication and absurdity.
One feature of epigrams which ensure their durability is that they can be separated from the play's narrative. Epigrams have little effect on the story because they encapsulate many of Wilde's beliefs on how art should function: above all, art should be beautiful and serve little use. The epigram is the epitome of this ideal; beautiful in its elegant construction, it is also dramatically useless to the play.
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