 Though Wilde deployed characters that were by now familiar — the dandy lord , the overbearing matriarch , the woman with a past , the puritan young lady — his treatment is subtler than in his earlier comedies . Lady Bracknell , for instance , embodies respectable , upper @-@ class society , but Eltis notes how her development " from the familiar overbearing duchess into a quirkier and more disturbing character " can be traced through Wilde 's revisions of the play . For the two young men , Wilde presents not stereotypical stage " dudes " but intelligent beings who , as Jackson puts it , " speak like their creator in well @-@ formed complete sentences and rarely use slang or vogue @-@ words " . Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism are characterised by a few light touches of detail , their old @-@ fashioned enthusiasms , and the Canon 's fastidious pedantry , pared down by Wilde during his many redrafts of the text . 
