The Importance of Being Earnest: Summary

In his flat in Half-Moon Street, Algernon Moncrieff eats the cucumber sandwiches meant for his aunt, Lady Bracknell, while his manservant Lane explains why the servants in a bachelor's household drink the champagne. A friend Algernon knows as Ernest Worthing arrives and announces that he has come to town to propose to Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon produces a cigarette case the friend left behind, inscribed from 'little Cecily' to 'her dear Uncle Jack', and demands an explanation.

The friend confesses that he is Jack in the country, where he is guardian to Cecily Cardew, granddaughter of the late Thomas Cardew who adopted him. Because a guardian must keep up a high moral tone, he has invented a disreputable younger brother called Ernest who lives in the Albany and whose scrapes call him up to town. Algernon is delighted: he is a Bunburyist himself, with an imaginary invalid friend, Bunbury, whose relapses let him slip away to the country whenever he chooses. Jack says he will kill off Ernest if Gwendolen accepts him.

Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen arrive. Lane gravely reports that there were no cucumbers in the market, and Algernon excuses himself from his aunt's dinner because Bunbury is ill again. While he takes Lady Bracknell into the music-room, Jack proposes, and Gwendolen accepts him before he has quite asked, explaining that her ideal has always been to love someone called Ernest. Lady Bracknell returns, sends her daughter down to the carriage and questions Jack from her list of eligible young men. His income, politics and town house pass, but when he admits that he was found in a handbag in the cloakroom at Victoria Station, she advises him to acquire some relations and sweeps out. Gwendolen slips back for his country address, which Algernon quietly writes on his shirt-cuff before telling Lane that he is going Bunburying.

In the garden of the Manor House at Woolton, in Hertfordshire, the governess Miss Prism tries to keep Cecily at her German grammar, mentions that she once wrote a three-volume novel whose manuscript was lost, and goes for a stroll with the rector, Canon Chasuble. The butler, Merriman, announces Mr Ernest Worthing. Algernon, playing the wicked brother, charms Cecily, who tells him that Uncle Jack means to send him to Australia. Jack then arrives early, dressed in deepest mourning, and tells Miss Prism and Chasuble that his brother Ernest has died in Paris of a severe chill. He asks Chasuble to christen him that afternoon. Cecily comes out of the house with the news that Ernest is in the dining-room, and Jack is made to shake his 'brother' by the hand.

Jack orders the dogcart to take Algernon away and goes to change his clothes. Left alone with Cecily, Algernon declares his love and learns that she has been engaged to him for three months: she accepted him on 14 February, broke it off in March, bought a ring in his name, wrote his love letters for him and recorded it all in her diary. She loves him above all for the name Ernest, so he hurries off to arrange his own christening. Gwendolen then calls to see Jack. The two young women swear friendship, discover that each is engaged to Ernest Worthing, and fight a war of manners over tea, with sugar and cake as weapons.

Jack and Algernon walk in on the quarrel, and each young woman unmasks the other's suitor. Cecily names Jack as her guardian, John Worthing, and Gwendolen names Algernon as her cousin, Algernon Moncrieff. The girls embrace as sisters and ask where Ernest is, and Jack admits that he has no brother at all. They sweep into the house. Left alone, the men squabble over the muffins and discover that both have arranged with Chasuble to be christened Ernest that afternoon.

Indoors, Gwendolen and Cecily accept the men's explanations but hold out over their Christian names, until both men declare they will be christened. Lady Bracknell arrives, having followed Gwendolen by luggage train, and Algernon announces that Bunbury is dead, 'quite exploded'. She quizzes Jack about Cecily, and her doubts vanish when she hears of a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. Jack now refuses to let Cecily marry Algernon, whom he calls untruthful, and reveals that under her grandfather's will Cecily does not come of age until she is thirty-five. He offers a bargain: he will consent the moment Lady Bracknell lets him marry Gwendolen. She refuses and prepares to leave.

Chasuble comes in to say that the christenings are ready and that Miss Prism is waiting for him. At the name, Lady Bracknell summons her and demands to know where the baby is. Twenty-eight years earlier Miss Prism left Lord Bracknell's house in Upper Grosvenor Street with a baby boy in a perambulator and never came back; the perambulator was found holding the manuscript of a three-volume novel. Miss Prism confesses that in a moment of mental abstraction she put the manuscript in the perambulator and the baby in her handbag, which she left in the cloakroom at Victoria Station, on the Brighton line. Jack rushes upstairs and returns with the handbag, which she identifies as hers.

Jack embraces Miss Prism as his mother, but she is unmarried and points him to Lady Bracknell, who reveals that he is the son of her sister, Mrs Moncrieff, and so Algernon's elder brother. As the eldest son he was christened after his father, a General, and the Army Lists show that the General's Christian names were Ernest John. Jack's name is Ernest after all. Chasuble embraces Miss Prism, Algernon embraces Cecily and Jack embraces Gwendolen, and when Lady Bracknell complains of triviality, Jack replies that he now understands the vital Importance of Being Earnest.