Oscar Wilde possessed an unmatched intuition about people that he wove into the fibers of his plays, which include An Ideal Husband, Salome, and Lady Windermere’s Fan. Moreover, he seemed to accept with resignation his role as the most daring of writers in his era, and though he spoke freely of marriage and male/female relationships, his own life contradicted those values. Instead he chose to poke fun at the society that embraced him with all his eccentricities.
Wilde mingled truth and humor using tongue-in-cheek and witty repartee, both of which fit beautifully into farce. And his adept use of truth in jest makes The Importance of Being Earnest a perennial favorite of Western theatre audiences and literary critics. The following quotes by characters in The Importance of Being Earnest reveal Oscar Wilde’s clever wit in holding the mirror up to reveal truth and human nature: