Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) (Playwright of The Importance of Being Earnest) was an Irishman.  Born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie to Jane (a revolutionary poet) and William (a knighted doctor and patron of medical social justice), Oscar lost his beloved sister Emily to a fever when she was ten.  He carried a lock of her hair in a sealed envelope for the rest of his life.  After graduating with highest honors from Dublin’s Trinity College, he wrote short stories, plays, and poems that were, and remain, wildly popular.  Early in his career, he barnstormed America as a lecturer on Aesthetics, wrote children’s stories, revitalized Women’s World Magazine, and penned his novel titled The Picture of Dorian Gray, meeting a storm of Victorian protest for its implied homoerotic theme.  His first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, opened in 1892 to such success that it prompted him to write more: A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and in 1895 our play.  Oscar was arrested and convicted of gross indecency (“homosexuality”) and sentenced to two years of hard labor.  Upon his release, he wrote the poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” in response to his agony in prison.  His had lost his family, children, and intimates; he then wandered Europe for three years until meningitis set in.  “The world is a stage,” he wrote, “but the play is badly cast.”