While I personally prefer The Picture of Dorian Gray, this is arguably the most popular thing Oscar Wild ever wrote. It is also a rare example of something that I have read twice. I already liked it on the first read, but as is often the case, I think my appreciation for it was even deeper the second time – partly because the witty dialogue is a sheer joy to consume.
The whole thing is built around two men who weave webs of lives to cover up their wayward behaviour. There’s a man who goes by Ernest in the city and Jack in the country. He has a young woman who is his ward and so when he sees her in the countryside, he lives in a very sensible way, but tells her he has a brother called Ernest in the city who he has to take care of. The other man, Algernon, tells people he has a horribly unwell friend called Bunbury and uses him as an excuse to be absent whenever he wants.
Jack sees himself as superior to Algernon, partly because he feels some level of shame for what he does, while Algernon doesn’t care in the slightest. Their arguments with each other are often really funny. The tangled web of deception ends up developing a few knots when Algernon decides he wants to meet Jack’s ward, so he heads down to the countryside and introduces himself as Ernest, Jack’s brother… Meanwhile, Jack has just announced to everyone that his brother Ernest has died. To make matters even more complicated, Jack’s fiancé, Gwendolen, knows him as Ernest, and she’s Algernon’s cousin, and she knows Jack’s ward, Cecily, who is herself becoming enamoured with Algernon as ‘Ernest’.
In a moment of completely absurdist comedy, both women reveal to the men that a big part of the reason they are attracted to them is because they are called ‘Ernest’. It’s all so funny and so silly. It’s also quite clever though, because the way everything carefully ties together in the end, and the way all the different plot threads end up getting tangled is not something that will have been easy to write. If you’ve not read many classics, this is an easy entry-point because the writing style is accessible and it’s not very long. If you already love classics, then you definitely don’t want to miss this one. An excellent demonstration of Oscar Wilde’s abilities.
Rating: 9.2/10
