Wilde's final comedy is his most perfect, a play where wit replaces character and epigram replaces action. Jack and Algernon invent fictional identities to escape social obligations; their fiancées both want to marry men named Ernest. The satire on Victorian earnestness is complete: nothing is serious, and that is the point. Wilde wrote it in 1894, at the height of his fame; within a year he would be destroyed. The play remains, its surface so brilliant that you might not notice there is no depth beneath it. There does not need to be.