The Importance of Being Earnest Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
90 free The Importance of Being Earnest trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Oscar Wilde's Trivial Comedy for Serious People has been called the second most quoted play in English after Hamlet, and this quiz covers it from every angle: the plot of the two men who both pretend to be Ernest, the imaginary invalid Bunbury, the baby in the handbag at Victoria Station, the Valentine's Day premiere of 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry's rotten vegetables, and the actors from George Alexander to Edith Evans, Judi Dench and Stephen Fry who have made the play their own. Easy questions ask which two names Jack goes by and where he was found as a baby; harder ones dig into the character Wilde cut from the four-act version, the W. S. Gilbert farce he borrowed from, why Wilde's name was missing from the first edition, and how translators cope with the pun in the title. It is written for students of the play, theatregoers and literature quiz nights, and it works whether you know the text by heart or have only seen the 2002 film with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett. If you want the wider story of the playwright, BrainPickle's Oscar Wilde quiz picks up where this one leaves off. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the play, its author, its films and its leading performers, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the subtitle of The Importance of Being Earnest?
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. The joke runs to the final curtain, where Lady Bracknell scolds Jack for showing signs of triviality just as he declares himself earnest at last.
Q 02The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London in 1895 on which day of the calendar?
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day. The comedy has a 14 February of its own: Cecily announces that she accepted 'Ernest' on that very date, months before she had even met him.
Q 03Which Wilde play opened weeks before The Importance of Being Earnest, the last of his four drawing-room comedies?
An Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband. It opened that January, so Wilde had two hits playing in the West End at once when he was arrested in April, at the very height of his success.
Q 04In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell says losing one parent is a misfortune, but losing both looks like what?
Carelessness
Carelessness. The line caps her interview of Jack as a suitor, conducted notebook in hand against a list of eligible young men she shares with the Duchess of Bolton.
Q 05In The Importance of Being Earnest, what is the name of Algernon's invented invalid friend?
Bunbury
Bunbury. Whenever a dull invitation looms, Algernon announces that his friend has had a relapse and must be visited at once, a dodge he proudly calls Bunburying.
Q 06The cigarette case that exposes Jack's double life is inscribed with love from whom?
Little Cecily, to her dear uncle
Little Cecily, to her dear uncle. Jack first insists Cecily is a small aunt in Tunbridge Wells, until Algernon asks why any aunt would call him uncle.
Q 07Where was Jack found as a baby, according to his own account?
In a handbag at Victoria Station
In a handbag at Victoria Station. Jack adds hopefully that it was the Brighton line, and Lady Bracknell replies that the line is immaterial.
Q 08What does Lady Bracknell find wrong with Jack's town house at 149 Belgrave Square?
It is on the unfashionable side
It is on the unfashionable side. When Jack asks whether she means the fashion or the side, she answers sternly: both, if necessary.
Q 09According to Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, what is every woman's tragedy?
Becoming like her mother
Becoming like her mother. Algernon adds that no man becomes like his, which is his tragedy, and Jack, dreading a future Lady Bracknell, asks only whether that was clever.
Q 10What is the name of Cecily's governess?
Miss Prism
Miss Prism. Lady Bracknell recognises her as the nursemaid who left the family's house with a baby in a pram 28 years earlier and never came back.
Q 11Who is the rector at Woolton whom Algernon asks to rechristen him?
Dr Chasuble
Dr Chasuble. Jack books a christening with him for the same afternoon, so the rector ends up expecting two grown men who both want to be renamed Ernest.
Q 12How does Jack claim his brother Ernest died when he arrives in mourning in Act II?
Of a severe chill in Paris
Of a severe chill in Paris. Jack's first idea was apoplexy, but Algernon warned him that it runs in families, so a chill it was.
Q 13What did the governess put in the perambulator instead of the baby?
The manuscript of her novel
Q 21What did the Marquess of Queensberry plan to throw at Wilde on the opening night?
A bouquet of rotten vegetables
A bouquet of rotten vegetables. Wilde was tipped off and had the Marquess barred from the theatre, but within four months their feud had put Wilde in prison.
Q 22Where was Wilde on holiday during most of the rehearsals for The Importance of Being Earnest?
Algeria
Algeria. He had gone there with Lord Alfred Douglas, and in Algiers the pair ran into the young French writer André Gide.
Q 23Which flower did Oscar Wilde make his trademark buttonhole, giving an 1894 satirical novel about him its title?
A green carnation
The manuscript of her novel. Police found the pram at midnight in a remote corner of Bayswater, holding a three-volume work that Lady Bracknell calls revoltingly sentimental.
Q 14Jack turns out to be the son of which relative of Lady Bracknell?
Her late sister, Mrs Moncrieff
Her late sister, Mrs Moncrieff. Jack, who has spent three acts inventing a brother, discovers that his friend Algernon really is one.
Q 15Where does Jack look up his father's name to discover he really was christened Ernest?
The Army Lists
The Army Lists. His father was a general, so Jack tears the volumes from the bookcase and finds the entry: Christian names, Ernest John.
Q 16In The Importance of Being Earnest, which instrument does Algernon say he plays with wonderful expression rather than accuracy?
The piano
The piano. He has been playing in the next room as the play opens, and when he asks whether Lane heard, the manservant replies that he didn't think it polite to listen.
Q 17In which Sussex seaside town was Wilde staying in 1894 when he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest?
Worthing
Worthing. Wilde gave the resort's name to his hero: the old gentleman who found baby Jack happened to have a first-class ticket for it in his pocket.
Q 18Which 1877 W. S. Gilbert farce is widely seen as the biggest influence on The Importance of Being Earnest?
Engaged
Engaged. Gilbert insisted its absurd lovers be played with perfect earnestness and gravity throughout, and Wilde's comedy calls for the same straight face.
Q 19Which character was cut when The Importance of Being Earnest was trimmed from four acts to three?
Mr Gribsby, a solicitor
Mr Gribsby, a solicitor. He arrives at the country house with a writ against 'Ernest' for unpaid debts, a scene dropped before the first night that the 2002 film put back in.
Q 20Which actor-manager staged the 1895 premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest and played Jack himself?
George Alexander
George Alexander. He needed a new play in a hurry after a flop at his St James's Theatre, and persuaded Wilde to cut the comedy from four acts to three.
A green carnation. Robert Hichens's novel The Green Carnation mocked Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas so recognisably that it was withdrawn when the scandal broke in 1895.
Q 24What did the manager strike from the playbills in 1895 to try to keep The Importance of Being Earnest running?
Oscar Wilde's name
Oscar Wilde's name. The ploy failed: takings collapsed after the author's arrest that April, and the hit came off within weeks.
Q 25Which playwright and critic called The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde's "first really heartless play"?
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw. He never relented: long after Wilde's death he was still calling it heartless, and admitted that Wilde had been disgusted with him for saying so.
Q 26In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon says only relatives or creditors ring the doorbell in the manner of which composer?
Wagner
Wagner. The 'Wagnerian' ring announces Lady Bracknell, and Algernon at once plots to get her out of the room for ten minutes so that Jack can propose.
Q 27Which Tom Stoppard comedy is built around a wartime Zurich production of The Importance of Being Earnest?
Travesties
Travesties. Its hero Henry Carr was a real British consular official who played Algernon for James Joyce's company in Zurich, quarrelled with him and was mocked in Ulysses.
Q 28In The Importance of Being Earnest, Gwendolen says the name Ernest inspires what in her?
Absolute confidence
Absolute confidence. Cecily later says almost the same of the name, which is awkward for two suitors who are really called Jack and Algernon.
Q 29In which language does the Ernest/earnest pun translate most simply?
German
German. Ernst is both an everyday man's name and the adjective for serious, so a common German title, Ernst sein ist alles, keeps the joke intact.
Q 30Under what title is The Importance of Being Earnest most often performed in French?
L'Importance d'être Constant
L'Importance d'être Constant. Ernest is no pun in French, so translators look for a first name that is also a virtue, and settle most often on Constant, meaning steadfast.