The Importance of Being Earnest, first performed in 1895 at the sumptuous St James' Theatre in London, was Wilde’s last, and without question his greatest piece of dramatic writing. The handbag, the cucumber sandwiches, the Bunburying and the first class ticket to Worthing all come together to create a timeless classic that has been rarely out of performance since its debut.

It was a smash-hit from the moment it opened, but even as the lights went up, Wilde was grabbing the spotlight in the press and the courts with his libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's young gay lover Bosie.

None of this is apparent on first viewing "Earnest," which seemingly refuses to be serious. It's a farce and a romance and a fairy tale -- but it's also a radical confession of homosexual attraction and a bitter satire on Victorian morality and domestic politics. It’s also a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience which was itself a parody of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement in England.

Content warning to listeners: reading this play – and possibly just listening to this episode - will cause you to irritate your family members by attempting aphoristic remarks and epigrammatic witticisms.

Books and writers mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, Vera, or, The Nihilists; Salome; The Importance of Being Earnest; Lady Windermere's Fan; A Woman of No Importance; The Ideal Husband.

Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."; "The Decay of Lying"; "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"; "The Critic as Artist"

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream; Much Ado About Nothing

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal; The Rivals

Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Henry Arthur Jones, The Silver King; Saints and Sinners

Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray

Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Emile Zola

Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler; The Doll's House

George Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Pygmalion

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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Gretchen Rubin is one of America’s best known and best-loved writers on how to be happy. She published her evergreen classic The Happiness Project in 2009, and it was an instant hit. She’s followed it with many more books on the habits of happiness, and she’s also co-host of a hit podcast Happier, which she hosts with her sister, the writer Elizabeth Craft.

Today we’re talking about Gretchen’s take on Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s only novel, which is packed with sometimes brilliant and sometimes merely glib aphorisms and witticisms. We talk about why pithy sayings are so appealing, whether they are ever really true, and why Wilde was so obsessed with this kind of writing. A companion episode to episode 63 on the book itself.

Mentioned on this episode:

Gretchen Rubin: The Happiness Project, Life in Five Senses, Happier and Home and Secrets of Adulthood.

Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft: Happier the podcast.

Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s only novel, and it caused a sensation. It was used as evidence in Wilde’s trial for the crime of “gross indecency” in 1895. The conceit of the story is famous – a portrait grows old and corrupt while its human subject remains eternally youthful. But who knows what really happens in this famous modern myth?

Sophie and Jonty talk about the influence of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Jonty throws around some exciting legal phrases like the Criminal Law Amendment Act. There’s plenty of discussion of Wilde’s personal obsession with home interiors, as well as a debate about why Wilde is so indebted to Dickens when he’s always going on about his contempt for matters of morality. Find out how a novel that is quintessentially about London is also about Wilde’s Irish identity, and what kind of wallpaper Oscar Wilde had in his student digs at Oxford. As the arch-aphorist and aesthetic rogue Henry Wotton would say, this podcast episode “has all the surprise of candour,” so find out what really happens in this legendary modern myth.

Books referenced or mentioned in this episode:

Oscar Wilde: A LIfe (2021) by Matthew Sturgis

Sodomy on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (2012) by Morris B Kaplan

Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” and “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889)

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838)

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870); Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

H.G. Wells The Time Machine (1895) War of the Worlds (1898)

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