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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the AP English Literature blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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AP English Literature, Common Core ELA 10-12 reading drama, IB English A: Literature
CoStudy's The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
The women's truce in Act 2 is brokered when:
Answer: A — Jack and Algernon enter, expose the lies, and both are revealed as 'not Ernest'
A) The men's lies revealed, the women immediately ally against them — Wilde's structural inversion in action.
Jack and Algernon mirror each other through:
Answer: B — Each maintaining a fictitious alibi figure — Ernest for Jack, Bunbury for Algernon
B) Both are 'Bunburyists' — Wilde's term for performers of the Victorian double life.
A paraphrased Wildean inversion about truth might read:
Answer: C — 'Truth, when interesting, is rarely simple — and modern life would be tedious if it were'
C) Paraphrased echo of the famous epigram — Wilde's habitual inversion of moral commonplaces.
The play has been read as queer-coded primarily because:
Answer: A — 'Bunburying' + the double-name structure + Wilde's coded vocabulary lend themselves to that reading
B) Insufficient on its own. A) Correct — textual + biographical readings reinforce each other. C/D) Wrong.
The play's closing line is Jack realizing:
Answer: D — 'The vital Importance of Being Earnest'
A/B/C) Wrong. D) Correct — title pun + thematic capstone.
Jack's stated reason for coming to town in Act 1 is:
Answer: C — Pleasure, specifically to propose to Gwendolen
C) He proposes to Gwendolen the moment Lady Bracknell leaves the room.
Lady Bracknell's pronouncements about 'the right people' satirize:
Answer: D — Late-Victorian social policing of class, marriage, and acceptable streets
D) She is Wilde's caricature of the gatekeeper class — and she is hilariously certain.
Which Act 3 revelation rests on a handbag previously seen in Act 1's discussion?
Answer: A — Jack's foundling origin and aristocratic descent
A) The handbag links Act 1 (Lady Bracknell's horror) to Act 3 (the family reconciliation).
What about Cecily changes Lady Bracknell's mind?
Answer: A — Her substantial inheritance and prospects
A) Lady Bracknell suddenly finds Cecily 'a most attractive young lady' once the fortune is on the table.
The central thematic inversion of the play is:
Answer: D — The trivial treated as serious, the serious treated as trivial
D) The subtitle declares it: 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.' The reversal is structural and verbal.
Why is Algernon's arrival especially awkward for Jack?
Answer: C — Jack has just returned 'mourning' for his fictitious dead brother Ernest
C) Jack arrives in deep mourning, ready to bury 'Ernest' — only to find Algernon claiming to be him in the garden.
What is the comic engine of the play's middle act in formal terms?
Answer: B — Mistaken identity and converging fiancees in a closed garden setting
B) Two 'Ernests,' two engagements, one tea table — perfect farce mechanics.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
Why are Jack + Algernon both planning to be re-christened?
Both have committed to fiancées who can only love a man named Ernest. Both go to Canon Chasuble to be christened with the name.
Theme: Victorian respectability as performance.
Both Jack + Algernon openly maintain double lives. Wilde insists the entire society runs on poses. 'Ernestness' is itself impersonation.
Subtitle?
'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.' Sets up Wilde's signature inversion: 'trivial' play = serious social critique.
Jack's true identity?
He is the lost baby — Lady Bracknell's nephew + Algernon's elder brother. His real first name, by family record, was always Ernest.
Why does Gwendolen want to marry 'Ernest'?
She claims the name 'Ernest' itself 'inspires absolute confidence.' Wilde's joke: the name = the virtue.
Why is the play called 'trivial'?
Wilde's subtitle is double-edged. 'Trivial' = light + 'trivial' = unimportant. The play insists triviality is exactly what serious people need.
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
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The The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.