A trivial comedy for serious people; this is what Oscar Wilde subtitled his comedy The Importance Of Being Earnest. This subtitle can be interpreted in many different ways, as it forces the reader to question what we understand from the play itself, and how characters are portrayed throughout. I understand this in two different ways: one of which that Oscar Wilde was stating that this play is in fact for serious people, going to be trivial. The second way this could be interpreted is that he meant the subtitle in a very witty and sarcastic way.
Triviality affects what it is done to the audience; in this case to purely entertain them. Similarly to when each and every one of us turns on our TV, probably more than we actually should. Why? Because it simply wastes our time away when we believe that we have nothing better to do with our lives. And even though we probably do, it is belittled against the fact that we are a world of want and desire. Oscar Wilde, being the kind of writer that he was, could have wrote this extremely amusing play just to distract people from their lives and to let his audience enjoy what was put in front of them. One element that could have made this so much more effective is by the use of satire embedded within. Satire was not only used for the purpose of amusement, but also to make people aware of issues that were occurring every day for normal people of that time period. So if triviality is what he wished to put forward, then this subtitle would be taken quite literally.
The Importance Of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, the heart of the Victorian time period. This time period brought many everyday stresses into the homes of the average family; the Industrial Revolution was impacting the world, and political as well as economic unrest was engulfing all of Europe. This detrimental disturbance, made it that much more important for Oscar Wilde to produce a play in which people could sit down, and hav...