What’s more important in the play–its social criticism or its conventional, even conservative structure? Why do you think this?

Much of the humor in “The Importance of Being Earnest” comes as Wilde makes fun of Victorian culture, with its superficiality and snobbery. But the play does still use the traditional form of a romantic comedy. Wilde criticizes popular fiction as stories in which “the good ended happily and the bad unhappily” (1815), but his own play ends with attractive and witty rich people all marrying each other.