Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and The Importance of Being Ernest (1895)

The Irish born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was hailed as one of London's brightest literary figures, and this his most most brilliant play.

It is a "comedy of manners": a play normally targeting the upper class's -- or a specific religious or cultural group's -- obsession with superficial manners.  In this case his target is Victorian era British snobbery, materialism, and classism.

It is also a "comedy of errors": a play usually revolving around mistaken identity.

We're mainly watching it as an antidote to all the depressing crap normally associated with Modernism, but, still, there are some serious questions we need to address:

Discussion Questions:

Central and perhaps easiest question: the title: is it ironic or literal, or both?

Comedy of Manners: Compare The Importance of Being Ernest to Voltaire's satire: Candide.  What are the similar targets shared by the two? At the risk of making it too easy: what stands in the way of marriage in both?

Comedy of Errors: Like Don Quixote, like Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure...in fact, like Shakespeare's very first play: his Comedy of Errors, the play obviously centers around mistaken, double and false identities or assumed personas.  How does this element itself work to critique Victorian social and class sensibilities?  Also, how might this element relate to Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Marlow's critique of Brussels, the "whited sepulcher", where Kurtz is widely considered "an emissary of pity, science and progress," but Kurtz discovers he is in fact someone else entirely?

What would Marx have to say about the play, especially the elements addressed in the previous two questions?