Oscar Wilde as a playwright at his best, A Woman of No Importance exhibits all the vices of his method with irritating clearness". The Pall Mall Gazette complained of "much want of originality in matter, and some want of originality in manner", but thought it "a play with many strong situations, with much – indeed with too much – amusing dialogue". The Times commented: Reviewing the play in 1934, W. B. Yeats quoted Walter Pater's comment that Wilde "wrote like an excellent talker"; Yeats agreed and found the verbal wit delightful, but the drama falling back on popular stage conventions. Reviewing a 1953 production, J. C. Trewin wrote, "This revival proved once more that Wilde wrote one sustained play and one only: The Importance of Being Earnest. Nothing else, I fear, matters". Wilde's biographer Richard Ellmann has described A Woman of No Importance as the "weakest of the plays Wilde wrote in the Nineties". After a 1991 revival, The Times called the play "as fatuous a melodrama as ever eminent playwright penned". In 1997, Wilde's biographer Peter Raby commented: Adaptations The play has been adapted for the cinema in at least four versions: British (1921), German (1936), French (1937) and Argentine (1945). The BBC has broadcast six adaptations of the play: one for television (1948) and five for radio (1924, 1949, 1955, 1960 and 1992). A 1960 television adaptation broadcast by Independent Television starred Griffith Jones and Gwen Watford as Illingworth and Mrs Arbuthnot. Notes, references and sources Notes References Sources External links A Woman of No Importance plot summary and character descriptions at StageAgent.com Plays by Oscar Wilde 1893 plays Irish plays adapted into films