 Arthur Ransome described The Importance ... as the most trivial of Wilde 's society plays , and the only one that produces " that peculiar <unk> of the spirit by which we recognise the beautiful . " " It is " , he wrote , " precisely because it is consistently trivial that it is not ugly . " Ellmann says that The Importance of Being Earnest touched on many themes Wilde had been building since the 1880s — the <unk> of aesthetic poses was well established and Wilde takes it as a starting point for the two protagonists . While <unk> , An Ideal Husband and The Picture of Dorian Gray had dwelt on more serious wrongdoing , vice in Earnest is represented by Algy 's <unk> for <unk> sandwiches . Wilde told Robert Ross that the play 's theme was " That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously , and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality . " The theme is hinted at in the play 's ironic title , and " earnestness " is repeatedly alluded to in the dialogue , Algernon says in Act II , " one has to be serious about something if one is to have any amusement in life " but goes on to <unk> Jack for ' being serious about everything ' " . <unk> and corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert <unk> ( in An Ideal Husband ) , but in Earnest the protagonists ' duplicity ( Algernon 's " <unk> " and Worthing 's double life as Jack and Ernest ) is undertaken for more innocent purposes — largely to avoid unwelcome social obligations . While much theatre of the time tackled serious social and political issues , Earnest is superficially about nothing at all . It " refuses to play the game " of other <unk> of the period , for instance Bernard Shaw , who used their characters to draw audiences to <unk> ideals . 
