What inscription is on Jack's cigarette case?

• A. From Little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.
• B. To Jack, from his country-home friend Earnest.
• C. With best wishes to Jack from the theatre club.
• D. From Lady Bracknell, with affection to Uncle Jack.

Answer: (A)

The moment tests attention to a key detail that reveals character relationships and the play’s playful deception about identity. The inscription on Jack’s cigarette case literally says, “From Little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.” That means it’s Cecily writing to Jack, using the name by which she knows him as her ward and friend, and signaling her affectionate, almost romantic imagination of him as “Uncle Jack.” This tiny note is a piece of the larger joke Wilde threads through the comedy: characters create and inhabit fictions about who they are and who others are, often through letters, names, or roles they play. The case becomes a tangible clue that Cecily has romantic feelings for Jack and that Jack’s double life (as Earnest in the city, Uncle Jack at home) feeds these fantasies. Since the inscription explicitly identifies Cecily as the sender and Jack as the recipient, it cannot be attributed to Lady Bracknell, a theatre club, or a country-home friend.