lways appear at the wrong time?"(Wilde 90). This question became ironic upon the appearance of Douglas father within Wildes life; Queensbury--Douglas father--wrote an abusive letter to his son explicitly denouncing his relationship with Wilde, threatened to make outlandish scenes that implicated Wilde as a sodomite (Beckson 298), and left Wilde bankrupt from court costs from his lengthy, painful trials (Holland 159). Just as Wilde was beginning to become wildly popular and even wealthy, Queensbury precipitated his downfall (Holland 159)--certainly illustrating the bad timing that Goring alluded to. An Ideal Husband offered Wildes most serious and most closely relating to real life play on the subject of deception; one writer even went so far as to say that "the propensity for self-dramatisation which was so outstanding an aspect of Wildes character and which manifests itself in all his plays is perhaps present most insidiously in this play" (Bird 156). Wildes fear most clearly exuded within An Ideal Husband because of its serious treatment of the topic of deception. The Importance of Being Earnest, while not the serious and clearly expressive work that An Ideal Husband was, made many important references to Wildes life and mentality during the last stage of Wildes life before his downfall. In this farce, characters lied on whim, without consequence or regret, and the two leading males, Jack and Algernon, frequently deceived in order to protect the women they loved. Wilde may not have been unmarried, and his love may not have been a woman wanting to get married, but nevertheless, the concept of lying for a lover certainly seems pertinent in the context of Wildes furtive affair. As one reviewer put it, The Importance of Being Earnest "was, after all, the play in which Wilde completely hid his feelings, concentrating instead, through the role playing of Jack and Algernon, on the deceptions that his sexuality forced him to play" (qtd. ...
