The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Characters in The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
7 characters, main characters first.Main characters
Jack Worthing
A country landowner who invents a disreputable younger brother named Ernest as a pretext for escaping to town.
Algernon Moncrieff
Jack's idle, epigrammatic friend, who has invented a permanently ailing acquaintance called Bunbury for the same purpose.
Supporting characters
Gwendolen Fairfax
Algernon's fashionable cousin and Lady Bracknell's daughter, convinced she can only love a man named Ernest.
Cecily Cardew
Jack's young ward in the country, who has been romancing his fictitious brother in her diary long before meeting anyone.
Lady Bracknell
Gwendolen's mother and the play's formidable arbiter of Victorian propriety, who interviews suitors like a customs officer.
Miss Prism
Cecily's governess, prim, novel-writing, and rather taken with the local rector.
Canon Chasuble
The rector of Woolton, a genial clergyman with a recycled sermon for every occasion.