Oscar Wilde"s play "The Importance of Being Earnest" is perhaps the best verbal farce ever written. Although it is more deliberate and less frantic than your typical farce it still has the basic elements: mistaken identities, the mocking of high society, and a few bits of outrageous physical humor. One of the great strengths of this play is the dynamic set up by the playwright between character and language. From the opening moments (the marvelous banter between Jack and Algy over the cucumber sandwiches sets the tone for the entire performance), a tone which must be sustained by the players. .

             This play is encompassed in the keeping up of social morals at all costs. The characters continually lie to keep an indignant moral high ground. They feel that without lying they would be unable to achieve their pleasures of life. Two men, John Jack Earnest Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, use the deception (a bunbury) that both their names were Ernest, in order to secure marriage to the women that they love. Without the two men lying, not only to each other but also to the other characters, this play wouldn"t be as comical. The two male characters help this play become a farce by the many stories they tell to make the plot confusing but yet funny. .

             Algernon is this frivolous playboy that sees nothing wrong with bending the truth if it will help him to life"s pleasures. He cheerfully dispenses cynical bon mots, such as "Divorces are made in heaven," with casual fluidity. What makes Algernon so funny is the comedy that he portrays while he is pretending to be someone else or, as he likes to call it "bunburry." As incorrigible as Algernon may be he is also the wittiest, derisive imparting truth in his biting comments. "Women call each other sisters only after they call each other many other things." This is definitely not p.c. dialogue, and is largely due to the fact that Wilde enjoyed exaggerating the people"s vices.