I live in terror of not being misunderstood
—Arcane Allusions in The Importance of Being Earnest—
If Oscar Wilde really did live in terror of not being misunderstood—as he wrote in The Critic as Artist in 1891, he need not have worried. At least not so far as his plays are concerned, because there are parts of the texts now so arcane that they are almost bound to be misunderstood—if they are understood at all.
Take Wilde’s most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest.
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