While couples in love celebrate and marinate in the festivities that is Valentine's Day, let me inform you of something else that happened on this day back in 1895.
On Feb 14, 1895, Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest opened at St. James's Theatre in London. He wrote the first draft in just 21 days, the fastest he'd ever written anything.
The play tells the story of a man named Jack Worthing who, as a pillar in his community, is laden with social responsibilities. In an attempt to escape tiresome social obligations, Jack pretends to have a younger brother named Earnest, who leads a scandalous life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting into trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush grimly off to his assistance. Jack even pretends to be Earnest when that suits his purposes.
At the same time, Jack's friend Algernon Moncrieff also begins impersonating the imaginary Earnest. When two women fall in love with Jack and Algernon, they both think they are in love with a man named Earnest. It comes out in the end that Jack and Algernon are themselves actually long-lost brothers.
Wilde said that The Importance of Being Earnest expressed his philosophy that "we should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality." To a friend he wrote that The Importance of Being Earnest was "a trivial play ... written by a butterfly for butterflies."
But it was his greatest success.With witty dialogue and high farce, The Importance of Being Earnest is one of Wilde's most popular and endearing plays.
Wilde showed up at a rehearsal for the play a few days before the opening, wearing his trademark green carnation pinned onto a three-piece maroon suit. After watching the actors for a few minutes he said, "Yes, it is quite a good play. I remember I wrote one very like it myself, but it was even more brilliant than this."
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