A trivial comedy for serious people

Thirty-first book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge.

Yet again, I have taken up a play by Oscar Wilde and yet again, I’m amazed by the layer upon layer of depth and meaning that the satirical work contains. You wouldn’t think that a comedy of errors would have anything to offer in the way of moral commentary or philosophical meanderings, but when you’re reading Wilde, you better expect profundity in his most trivial statements.

This is a play about two men who pretend to have unstable siblings that they have to tend to, to avoid getting into social obligations with friends and relatives who have an obnoxious way of butting into their personal lives. They call it bunburying.

On one such bunburying incident, they both happen to get into a fix that can only be gotten out of if they come clean about their act. But this doesn’t happen without its fair share of surprises and delightful ones at that!

This is a sweet and simple satire about our tendency to be excessively proud of our lineage and heritage, as if we had anything to do with it. It is also a story that underlines.. well.. the importance of being earnest! That is, in addition to many smaller and important observations that are too subtle to just write about. Indeed, there might be many things that I might have imbibed from Wilde’s writing that I haven’t even realized.

I will stop now and just ask you to go ahead and read this small, powerful and funny play or watch it, if you stay in a place where they’re still true to the old traditions. I have collected a few good quotes from the play as usual. And being an Oscar Wilde play, it’s available at project Gutenberg too. It’s short and sweet. Go read it now!