#Algernon Moncrieff

[burnt-cheese-toastie]

The importance of being earnest

A trivial comedy for serious people

[kwistowee]

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (2002)

[potato-lord-but-not]

bet you weren’t expecting fanart of these two stories huh

[a-living-cartoon]

So I’m playing Algernon Moncrieff in a production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and I gotta say…

They give off similar energy

[lostcarnations]

I’ll preface this by saying that I hope and pray that this post reaches its extremely niche target audience (people that like Oscar Wilde, Good Omens, and paranormal/dark history Quite A Bit), as it’ll not be nearly as fun to people that don’t enjoy all three. That said,

I was going through the Wikipedia page for Eccles Cakes, because my brain had gotten stuck on the line and I’d been repeating “Eccles Cake?” to myself all day. Anyways, the point is, I’d gotten to the part about similar cakes they periodically get mixed up with when I spotted THIS:

This, in and of itself, is unremarkable. However, me being an Oscar Wilde fan first and reasonable second, I noticed a striking resemblance to the name for the ailing fictional character invented by Algernon Moncrieff in The Importance of Being Earnest (who conveniently suffers bouts of exceptionally bad health whenever Algy’s relations invite him to something dull.)

While this may seem like a stretch to the untrained eye, it is a well documented historical fact that Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is named for the seaside town in the south of England where Oscar Wilde wrote the play. As such, it is not an unnatural conclusion that he would do something similar with Bunbury’s name.

So, naturally, I went to the Wikipedia page for the Importance of Being Earnest. While I did not find anything in the page’s primary text, I did find this in the notes:

According to a Wikipedia note, I’d been corroborated by noted spiritualist and occult researcher Aleister Crowley (who, as an aside, Neil Gaiman has confirmed on tumblr that Our Crowley is named after, along with the town of Crawley). It is well documented that Aleister (as this is tumblr, and referring to him by his surname would inevitably lead to confusion) knew Wilde, which would hypothetically give him authority on the matter. Now, as much as I’d love to say that I’m the type of person to see that their theory has been corroborated and be happy and done with it, the American school system has done nothing if not engender an inherent distrust of Wikipedia in me. As such, I did some digging around the internet, and what I wound up finding was that every single site making this claim traced its evidence back to this book:

The book is $50. The author, Timothy D’Arch Smith, has a bio describing him as a “bibliographer, antiquarian bookseller (author’s note: oh my god he’s an antiquarian bookseller), and author, whose wit and scholarly predilections – Montague Summers (see Bibliographies), Aleister Crowley, rock 'n' roll, and cricket (see Games and Sports) – inform his contribution to the genre.” My question is,

Regardless, I think it’s really fun how all of my silly little interests intersected here and I needed to yell about it

[crypticmoth-art]

Kudos to Cecily Cardew, but I like the name of Algernon Moncrieff far more than any Earnest.

[jinxinabox]

POV: Jack

[metallitquotes]

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest

[enjamin-the-benitor]

the importance of being ernest au where everything’s the same except algernon is a simple, nonflowering, and typically aquatic plant of a large group and jack calls him algae.

[burnt-cheese-toastie]

Wha- wdym- I'm so sane rn so normal 😁

[a-living-cartoon]

I’m just gonna say it…

Algernon is a much sexier name than Ernest

[burnt-cheese-toastie]

Algernon is so real-

 “When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me.”

—The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

[lostcarnations]

making myself explode by rotating Mr. Algernon Moncrieff in my brain at Mach two <3

[ncutii-gatwa]

Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon Moncrieff in "The Importance of Being Earnest"

[thestarsarewiththevoyager]

I have just finished being in The Importance of Being Earnest, after which I am adapting Dracula into a script, so I have totally had this thought! Dracula would have a great time at first, playing among these oblivious nitwits of the highest echelons of society, but then he'd make the mistake of threatening Jack, and then it'd be all over. Gwendolen would stake him with her parasol. Or Cecily would invite him to tea and get Dr Chasuble to give her some holy water to slip into it. Algernon would be oblivious throughout until the Count didn't even reach for a cucumber sandwich at tea. In the meantime, Lady Bracknell would find to her distress that she and low-born Mina Harker share an obsession with trains and they end up bonding over it.

Maybe the pretty girl Mina and Dracula were both looking at was a Miss Gwendolen Fairfax?

just had the horrible intrusive thought "what if our dear 1890s friends jonathan & mina & lucy & jack switched places with our other dear 1890s friends algernon & gwendolyn & cecily & ... jack"

anyway if anyone has written something that crosses over or mashes up dracula and the importance of being earnest, please point me to it

[jinxinabox]

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

-Oscar Wilde

It’s that simple y’all.