Happy Valentine's Day, Courtesy of Oscar Wilde!

With help from our very literate friend, Rod Pump: 

On this day in 1895, Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London. He wrote the first draft in just 21 days, the fastest he’d ever written anything. The play tells the story of a man named Jack Worthing, who pretends to have a younger brother named Earnest. Jack uses the imaginary Earnest as an excuse for getting out of all kinds of situations, and even pretends to be Earnest when that suits his purposes. At the same time, Jack’s friend Algernon Moncrieff also begins impersonating the imaginary Earnest. When two women fall in love with Jack and Algernon, they both think they are in love with a man named Earnest. It comes out in the end that Jack and Algernon are themselves actually long lost brothers.

Wilde said that The Importance of Being Earnest expressed his philosophy that “we should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."
Wilde showed up at a rehearsal for the play a few days before the opening, wearing his trademark green carnation pinned onto a three-piece maroon suit. After watching the actors for a few minutes he said: “Yes, it is quite a good play. I remember I wrote one very like it myself, but it was even more brilliant than this.”