title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA, ) is a replication-incompetent variant of "vaccinia" that was developed in West Germany through serial passage. The original Ankara strain of "vaccinia" was maintained at the vaccine institute in Ankara, Turkey on donkeys and cows. The Ankara strain was taken to West Germany in 1953, where Herrlich and Mayr grew it on chorioallantoic membrane at the University of Munich. After 572 serial passages, the "vaccinia" virus had lost over 14% of its genome and could no longer replicate in human cells. MVA was used in West Germany in 1977–1980, but the eradication of smallpox ended the vaccination campaign after only 120,000 doses.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: MVA stimulates the production of fewer antibodies than replicating vaccines. During the smallpox eradication campaign, MVA was considered to be a pre-vaccine that would be administered before a replicating vaccine to reduce the side effects, or an alternative vaccine that could be safely given to people at high risk from a replicating vaccine. Japan evaluated MVA and rejected it due to its low immunogenicity, deciding to develop its own attenuated vaccine instead. In the 2000s, MVA was tested in animal models at much higher dosages. When MVA is given to monkeys at 40 times the dosage of Dryvax, it stimulates a more rapid immune response while still causing lesser side effects.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: MVA-BN (also known as: Imvanex in the European Union; Imvamune in Canada; and Jynneos) is a vaccine manufactured by Bavarian Nordic by growing MVA in cell culture. Unlike replicating vaccines, MVA-BN is administered by injection via the subcutaneous route and does not result in a vaccine "take." It can also be administered intradermally to increase the number of available doses. It is safer for immunocompromised patients and those who are at risk from a "vaccinia" infection. MVA-BN has been approved in the European Union, Canada, and the United States. Clinical trials have found that MVA-BN is safer and just as immunogenic as ACAM2000.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: LC16m8 is a replicating attenuated strain of "vaccinia" that is manufactured by Kaketsuken in Japan. Working at the Chiba Serum Institute in Japan, So Hashizume passaged the Lister strain 45 times in primary rabbit kidney cells, interrupting the process after passages 36, 42, and 45 to grow clones on chorioallantoic membrane and select for pock size. The resulting variant was designated LC16m8 (Lister clone 16, medium pocks, clone 8). Unlike the severely-damaged MVA, LC16m8 contains every gene that is present in the ancestral "vaccinia". However, a single-nucleotide deletion truncates membrane protein B5R from a residue length of 317 to 92. Although the truncated protein decreases production of extracellular enveloped virus, animal models have shown that antibodies against other membrane proteins are sufficient for immunity. LC16m8 was approved in Japan in 1975 after testing in over 50,000 children. Vaccination with LC16m8 results in a vaccine "take," but safety is similar to MVA.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Vaccinia is infectious, which improves its effectiveness, but causes serious complications for people with impaired immune systems (for example chemotherapy and AIDS patients) or history of eczema, and is not considered safe for pregnant women. A woman planning on conceiving should not receive smallpox immunization. Vaccines that only contain attenuated vaccinia viruses (an attenuated virus is one in which the pathogenicity has been decreased through serial passage) have been proposed, but some researchers have questioned the possible effectiveness of such a vaccine. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "within 3 days of being exposed to the virus, the vaccine might protect you from getting the disease. If you still get the disease, you might get much less sick than an unvaccinated person would. Within 4 to 7 days of being exposed to the virus, the vaccine likely gives you some protection from the disease. If you still get the disease, you might not get as sick as an unvaccinated person would."


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In May 2007, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted unanimously that a new live virus vaccine produced by Acambis, ACAM2000, is both safe and effective for use in persons at high risk of exposure to smallpox virus. However, due to the high rate of serious adverse effects, the vaccine will only be made available to the CDC for the Strategic National Stockpile.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Since smallpox has been eradicated, the public is not routinely vaccinated against the disease. The World Health Organization maintained a stockpile of 200million doses in 1980, to guard against reemergence of the disease, but 99% of the stockpile was destroyed in the late 1980s when smallpox failed to return. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, many governments began building up vaccine stockpiles again for fear of bioterrorism. Several companies sold off their stockpiles of vaccines manufactured in the 1970s, and production of smallpox vaccines resumed. Aventis Pasteur discovered a stockpile from the 1950s and donated it to the U.S. government.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Stockpiles of newer vaccines must be repurchased periodically since they carry expiration dates. The United States had received 269 million doses of ACAM2000 and 28 million doses of MVA-BN by 2019, but only 100 million doses of ACAM2000 and 65,000 doses of MVA-BN were still available from the stockpile at the start of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak. First-generation vaccines have no specified expiration date and remain viable indefinitely in deep freeze. The U.S. stockpile of WetVax was manufactured in 1956–1957 and maintained since then at , and it was still effective when tested in 2004. Replicating vaccines also remain effective even at 1:10 dilution, so a limited number of doses can be stretched to cover a much larger population.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The mortality of the severe form of smallpox – "variola major" – was very high without vaccination, up to 35% in some outbreaks. A method of inducing immunity known as inoculation, or "variolation" was practiced before the development of a modern vaccine and likely occurred in Africa and China well before the practice arrived in Europe. It may also have occurred in India, but this is disputed; other investigators contend the ancient Sanskrit medical texts of India do not describe these techniques. The first clear reference to smallpox inoculation was made by the Chinese author Wan Quan (1499–1582) in his "Douzhen xinfa" (痘疹心法) published in 1549. Inoculation for smallpox does not appear to have been widespread in China until the reign era of the Longqing Emperor (r. 1567–1572) during the Ming Dynasty. In China, powdered smallpox scabs were blown up the noses of the healthy. The patients would then develop a mild case of the disease and from then on were immune to it. The technique did have a 0.5–2.0% mortality rate, but that was considerably less than the 20–30% mortality rate of the disease itself. Two reports on the Chinese practice of inoculation were received by the Royal Society in London in 1700; one by Dr. Martin Lister who received a report by an employee of the East India Company stationed in China and another by Clopton Havers. According to Voltaire (1742), the Turks derived their use of inoculation from neighbouring Circassia. Voltaire does not speculate on where the Circassians derived their technique from, though he reports that the Chinese have practiced it "these hundred years".


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Variolation was also practiced throughout the latter half of the 17th century by physicians in Turkey, Persia, and Africa. In 1714 and 1716, two reports of the Ottoman Empire Turkish method of inoculation were made to the Royal Society in England, by Emmanuel Timoni, a doctor affiliated with the British Embassy in Constantinople, and Giacomo Pylarini. Source material tells us on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; "When Lady Mary was in the Ottoman Empire, she discovered the local practice of inoculation against smallpox called variolation." In 1718 she had her son, aged five variolated. He recovered quickly. She returned to London and had her daughter variolated in 1721 by Charles Maitland, during an epidemic of smallpox. This encouraged the British Royal Family to take an interest and a trial of variolation was carried out on prisoners in Newgate Prison. This was successful and in 1722 Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, allowed Maitland to vaccinate her children. The success of these variolations assured the British people that the procedure was safe.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Stimulated by a severe epidemic, variolation was first employed in North America in 1721. The procedure had been known in Boston since 1706, when preacher Cotton Mather learned it from Onesimus, a man he held as a slave, who – like many of his peers – had been inoculated in Africa before they were kidnapped. This practice was widely criticized at first. However, a limited trial showed six deaths occurred out of 244 who were variolated (2.5%), while 844 out of 5980 died of natural disease (14%), and the process was widely adopted throughout the colonies.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The inoculation technique was documented as having a mortality rate of only one in a thousand. Two years after Kennedy's description appeared, March 1718, Dr. Charles Maitland successfully inoculated the five-year-old son of the British ambassador to the Turkish court under orders from the ambassador's wife Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who four years later introduced the practice to England.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: An account from letter by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Sarah Chiswell, dated 1 April 1717, from the Turkish Embassy describes this treatment:


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In the early empirical days of vaccination, before Louis Pasteur's work on establishing the germ theory and Joseph Lister's on antisepsis and asepsis, there was considerable cross-infection. William Woodville, one of the early vaccinators and director of the London Smallpox Hospital is thought to have contaminated the cowpox matter – the vaccine – with smallpox matter and this essentially produced variolation. Other vaccine material was not reliably derived from cowpox, but from other skin eruptions of cattle.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: During the earlier days of empirical experimentation in 1758, American Calvinist Jonathan Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation. Some of the earliest statistical and epidemiological studies were performed by James Jurin in 1727 and Daniel Bernoulli in 1766. In 1768, Dr John Fewster reported that variolation induced no reaction in persons who had had cowpox.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, England as an orphan. As a young child, Jenner was variolated with the other schoolboys through parish funds, but nearly died due to the seriousness of his infection. Fed purgative medicine and going through the bloodletting process, Jenner was put in one of the variolation stables until he recovered. At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to apothecary Daniel Ludlow and later surgeon George Hardwick in nearby Sodbury. He observed that people who caught cowpox while working with cattle were known not to catch smallpox. Jenner assumed a causal connection but the idea was not taken up at that time. From 1770 to 1772 Jenner received advanced training in London at St Georges Hospital and as the private pupil of John Hunter, then returned to set up practice in Berkeley.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Perhaps there was already an informal public understanding of some connection between disease resistance and working with cattle. The "beautiful milkmaid" seems to have been a frequent image in the art and literature of this period. But it is known for certain that in the years following 1770, at least six people in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendall, Plett 1791) tested successfully the possibility of using the cowpox vaccine as an immunization for smallpox in humans.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Jenner sent a paper reporting his observations to the Royal Society in April 1797. It was not submitted formally and there is no mention of it in the Society's records. Jenner had sent the paper informally to Sir Joseph Banks, the Society's president, who asked Everard Home for his views. Reviews of his rejected report, published for the first time in 1999, were skeptical and called for further vaccinations. Additional vaccinations were performed and in 1798 Jenner published his work entitled "An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire and Known by the Name of Cow Pox." It was an analysis of 23 cases including several individuals who had resisted natural exposure after previous cowpox. It is not known how many Jenner vaccinated or challenged by inoculation with smallpox virus; e.g. Case 21 included 'several children and adults'. Crucially all of at least four whom Jenner deliberately inoculated with smallpox virus resisted it. These included the first and last patients in a series of arm-to-arm transfers. He concluded that cowpox inoculation was a safe alternative to smallpox inoculation, but rashly claimed that the protective effect was lifelong. This last proved to be incorrect. Jenner also tried to distinguish between 'True' cowpox which produced the desired result and 'Spurious' cowpox which was ineffective and/or produced severe reaction. Modern research suggests Jenner was trying to distinguish between effects caused by what would now be recognised as non-infectious vaccine, a different virus (e.g. paravaccinia/milker's nodes), or contaminating bacterial pathogens. This caused confusion at the time, but would become important criteria in vaccine development. A further source of confusion was Jenner's belief that fully effective vaccine obtained from cows originated in an equine disease, which he mistakenly referred to as "grease". This was criticised at the time but vaccines derived from horsepox were soon introduced and later contributed to the complicated problem of the origin of vaccinia virus, the virus in present-day vaccine.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The introduction of the vaccine to the New World took place in Trinity, Newfoundland, in 1798 by Dr. John Clinch, boyhood friend and medical colleague of Jenner. The first smallpox vaccine in the United States was administered in 1799. The physician Valentine Seaman gave his children a smallpox vaccination using a serum acquired from Jenner. By 1800, Jenner's work had been published in all the major European languages and had reached Benjamin Waterhouse in the United States – an indication of rapid spread and deep interest. Despite some concern about the safety of vaccination the mortality using carefully selected vaccine was close to zero, and it was soon in use all over Europe and the United States.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In 1804 the Balmis Expedition, an official Spanish mission commanded by Francisco Javier de Balmis, sailed to spread the vaccine throughout the Spanish Empire, first to the Canary Islands and on to Spanish Central America. While his deputy, José Salvany, took vaccine to the west and east coasts of Spanish South America, Balmis sailed to Manila in the Philippines and on to Canton and Macao on the Chinese coast. He returned to Spain in 1806. The vaccine was not carried in the form of flasks, but in the form of 22 orphaned boys, who were 'carriers' of the live cowpox virus. After arrival, "other Spanish governors and doctors used enslaved girls to move the virus between islands, using lymph fluid harvested from them to inoculate their local populations".


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The first state to introduce compulsory vaccinations was the Principality of Lucca and Piombino on September 25, 1806. On August 26, 1807, Bavaria introduced a similar measure. Baden followed in 1809, Prussia in 1815, Württemberg in 1818, Sweden in 1816, England in 1867 and the German Empire in 1874 through the Reichs Vaccination Act. In Lutheran Sweden, the Protestant clergy played a pioneering role in voluntary smallpox vaccination as early as 1800. The first vaccination was carried out in Liechtenstein in 1801, and from 1812 it was mandatory to vaccinate.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The question of who first tried cowpox inoculation/vaccination cannot be answered with certainty. Most, but still limited, information is available for Benjamin Jesty, Peter Plett and John Fewster. In 1774 Jesty, a farmer of Yetminster in Dorset, observing that the two milkmaids living with his family were immune to smallpox, inoculated his family with cowpox to protect them from smallpox. He attracted a certain amount of local criticism and ridicule at the time then interest waned. Attention was later drawn to Jesty, and he was brought to London in 1802 by critics jealous of Jenner's prominence at a time when he was applying to Parliament for financial reward. During 1790–92 Peter Plett, a teacher from Holstein, reported limited results of cowpox inoculation to the Medical Faculty of the University of Kiel. However, the Faculty favoured variolation and took no action. John Fewster, a surgeon friend of Jenner's from nearby Thornbury, discussed the possibility of cowpox inoculation at meetings as early as 1765. He may have done some cowpox inoculations in 1796 at about the same time that Jenner vaccinated Phipps. However, Fewster, who had a flourishing variolation practice, may have considered this option but used smallpox instead. He thought vaccination offered no advantage over variolation, but maintained friendly contact with Jenner and certainly made no claim of priority for vaccination when critics attacked Jenner's reputation. It seems clear that the idea of using cowpox instead of smallpox for inoculation was considered, and actually tried in the late 18th century, and not just by the medical profession. Therefore, Jenner was not the first to try cowpox inoculation. However, he was the first to publish his evidence and distribute vaccine freely, provide information on selection of suitable material, and maintain it by arm-to-arm transfer. The authors of the official World Health Organization (WHO) account "Smallpox and its Eradication" assessing Jenner's role wrote:


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: As vaccination spread, some European countries made it compulsory. Concern about its safety led to opposition and then repeal of legislation in some instances. Compulsory infant vaccination was introduced in England by the 1853 Vaccination Act. By 1871, parents could be fined for non-compliance, and then imprisoned for non-payment. This intensified opposition, and the 1898 Vaccination Act introduced a conscience clause. This allowed exemption on production of a certificate of conscientious objection signed by two magistrates. Such certificates were not always easily obtained and a further Act in 1907 allowed exemption by a statutory declaration which could not be refused. Although theoretically still compulsory, the 1907 Act effectively marked the end of compulsory infant vaccination in England.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In the United States vaccination was regulated by individual states, the first to impose compulsory vaccination being Massachusetts in 1809. There then followed sequences of compulsion, opposition and repeal in various states. By 1930 Arizona, Utah, North Dakota and Minnesota prohibited compulsory vaccination, 35 states allowed regulation by local authorities, or had no legislation affecting vaccination, whilst in ten states, including Washington, D.C. and Massachusetts, infant vaccination was compulsory. Compulsory infant vaccination was regulated by only allowing access to school for those who had been vaccinated. Those seeking to enforce compulsory vaccination argued that the public good overrode personal freedom, a view supported by the U.S. Supreme Court in "Jacobson v. Massachusetts" in 1905, a landmark ruling which set a precedent for cases dealing with personal freedom and the public good.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Louis T. Wright, an African-American Harvard Medical School graduate (1915), introduced, while serving in the Army during World War I, intradermal, smallpox vaccination for the soldiers.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Until the end of the 19th century, vaccination was performed either directly with vaccine produced on the skin of calves or, particularly in England, with vaccine obtained from the calf but then maintained by arm-to-arm transfer; initially in both cases vaccine could be dried on ivory points for short-term storage or transport but increasing use was made of glass capillary tubes for this purpose towards the end of the century. During this period there were no adequate methods for assessing the safety of the vaccine and there were instances of contaminated vaccine transmitting infections such as erysipelas, tetanus, septicaemia and tuberculosis. In the case of arm-to-arm transfer there was also the risk of transmitting syphilis. Although this did occur occasionally, estimated as 750 cases in 100 million vaccinations, some critics of vaccination e.g. Charles Creighton believed that uncontaminated vaccine itself was a cause of syphilis. Smallpox vaccine was the only vaccine available during this period, and so the determined opposition to it initiated a number of vaccine controversies that spread to other vaccines and into the 21st century.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Sydney Arthur Monckton Copeman, an English Government bacteriologist interested in smallpox vaccine investigated the effects on the bacteria in it of various treatments, including glycerine. Glycerine was sometimes used simply as a diluent by some continental vaccine producers. However, Copeman found that vaccine suspended in 50% chemically pure glycerine and stored under controlled conditions contained very few "extraneous" bacteria and produced satisfactory vaccinations. He later reported that glycerine killed the causative organisms of erysipelas and tuberculosis when they were added to the vaccine in "considerable quantity", and that his method was widely used on the continent. In 1896, Copeman was asked to supply "extra good calf vaccine" to vaccinate the future Edward VIII.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Vaccine produced by Copeman's method was the only type issued free to public vaccinators by the English Government Vaccine Establishment from 1899. At the same time the 1898 Vaccination Act banned arm-to-arm vaccination, thus preventing transmission of syphilis by this vaccine. However, private practitioners had to purchase vaccine from commercial producers. Although proper use of glycerine reduced bacterial contamination considerably the crude starting material, scraped from the skin of infected calves, was always heavily contaminated and no vaccine was totally free from bacteria. A survey of vaccines in 1900 found wide variations in bacterial contamination. Vaccine issued by the Government Vaccine Establishment contained 5,000 bacteria per gram, while commercial vaccines contained up to 100,000 per gram. The level of bacterial contamination remained unregulated until the Therapeutic Substances Act, 1925 set an upper limit of 5,000 per gram, and rejected any batch of vaccine found to contain the causative organisms of erysipelas or wound infections. Unfortunately glycerolated vaccine soon lost its potency at ambient temperatures which restricted its use in tropical climates. However, it remained in use into the 1970s where a satisfactory cold chain was available. Animals continued to be widely used by vaccine producers during the smallpox eradication campaign. A WHO survey of 59 producers, some of whom used more than one source of vaccine, found that 39 used calves, 12 used sheep and 6 used water buffalo, whilst only 3 made vaccine in cell culture and 3 in embryonated hens' eggs. English vaccine was occasionally made in sheep during World War I but from 1946 only sheep were used.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Leslie Collier, an English microbiologist working at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, developed a method for producing a heat-stable freeze-dried vaccine in powdered form. Collier added 0.5% phenol to the vaccine to reduce the number of bacterial contaminants but the key stage was to add 5% peptone to the liquid vaccine before it was dispensed into ampoules. This protected the virus during the freeze drying process. After drying the ampoules were sealed under nitrogen. Like other vaccines, once reconstituted it became ineffective after 1–2 days at ambient temperatures. However, the dried vaccine was 100% effective when reconstituted after 6 months storage at allowing it to be transported to, and stored in, remote tropical areas. Collier's method was increasingly used and, with minor modifications, became the standard for vaccine production adopted by the WHO Smallpox Eradication Unit when it initiated its global smallpox eradication campaign in 1967, at which time 23 of 59 manufacturers were using the Lister strain.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In a letter about landmarks in the history of smallpox vaccine, written to and quoted from by Derrick Baxby, Donald Henderson, chief of the Smallpox Eradication Unit from 1967 to 1977 wrote; "Copeman and Collier made an enormous contribution for which neither, in my opinion ever received due credit".


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Smallpox vaccine was inoculated by scratches into the superficial layers of the skin, with a wide variety of instruments used to achieve this. They ranged from simple needles to multi-pointed and multi-bladed spring-operated instruments specifically designed for the purpose.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: A major contribution to smallpox vaccination was made in the 1960s by Benjamin Rubin, an American microbiologist working for Wyeth Laboratories. Based on initial tests with textile needles with the eyes cut off transversely half-way he developed the bifurcated needle. This was a sharpened two-prong fork designed to hold one dose of reconstituted freeze-dried vaccine by capillarity. Easy to use with minimum training, cheap to produce ($5 per 1000), using one quarter as much vaccine as other methods, and repeatedly re-usable after flame sterilization, it was used globally in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Campaign from 1968. Rubin estimated that it was used to do 200 million vaccinations per year during the last years of the campaign. Those closely involved in the campaign were awarded the "Order of the Bifurcated Needle". This, a personal initiative by Donald Henderson, was a lapel badge, designed and made by his daughter, formed from the needle shaped to form an "O". This represented "Target Zero", the objective of the campaign.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Smallpox was eradicated by a massive international search for outbreaks, backed up with a vaccination program, starting in 1967. It was organised and co-ordinated by a World Health Organization (WHO) unit, set up and headed by Donald Henderson. The last case in the Americas occurred in 1971 (Brazil), south-east Asia (Indonesia) in 1972, and on the Indian subcontinent in 1975 (Bangladesh). After two years of intensive searches, what proved to be the last endemic case anywhere in the world occurred in Somalia, in October 1977. A Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication chaired by Frank Fenner examined the evidence from, and visited where necessary, all countries where smallpox had been endemic. In December 1979 they concluded that smallpox had been eradicated; a conclusion endorsed by the WHO General Assembly in May 1980. However, even as the disease was being eradicated there still remained stocks of smallpox virus in many laboratories. Accelerated by two cases of smallpox in 1978, one fatal (Janet Parker), caused by an accidental and unexplained containment breach at a laboratory at the University of Birmingham Medical School, the WHO ensured that known stocks of smallpox virus were either destroyed or moved to safer laboratories. By 1979, only four laboratories were known to have smallpox virus. All English stocks held at St Mary's Hospital, London were transferred to more secure facilities at Porton Down and then to the U.S. at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia in 1982, and all South African stocks were destroyed in 1983. By 1984, the only known stocks were kept at the CDC in the U.S. and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR) in Koltsovo, Russia. These states report that their repositories are for possible anti-bioweaponry research and insurance if some obscure reservoir of natural smallpox is discovered in the future.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Among more than 270,000 US military service members vaccinated with smallpox vaccine between December 2002, and March 2003, eighteen cases of probable myopericarditis were reported (all in first-time vaccinees who received the NYCBOH strain of vaccinia virus), an incidence of 7.8 per 100,000 during the 30 days they were observed. All cases were in young, otherwise healthy adult white men and all survived.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In 2002, the United States government started a program to vaccinate 500,000 volunteer health care professionals throughout the country. Recipients were healthcare workers who would be first-line responders in the event of a bioterrorist attack. Many healthcare workers refused or did not pursue vaccination, worried about vaccine side effects, compensation and liability. Most did not see an immediate need for the vaccine. Some healthcare systems refused to participate, worried about becoming a destination for smallpox patients in the event of an epidemic. Fewer than 40,000 actually received the vaccine.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: On April 21, 2022, Public Services and Procurement Canada published a notice of tender seeking to stockpile 500,000 doses of smallpox vaccine in order to protect against a potential accidental or intentional release of the eradicated virus. On May 6, the contract was awarded to Bavarian Nordic for their Imvamune vaccine. These were deployed by the Public Health Agency of Canada for targeted vaccination in response to the 2022 monkeypox outbreak.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The origin of the modern smallpox vaccine has long been unclear, but horsepox was identified in the 2010s as the most likely ancestor. Edward Jenner had obtained his vaccine from a cow, so he named the virus "vaccinia", after the Latin word for cow. Jenner believed that both cowpox and smallpox were viruses that originated in the horse and passed to the cow, and some doctors followed his reasoning by inoculating their patients directly with horsepox. The situation was further muddied when Louis Pasteur developed techniques for creating vaccines in the laboratory in the late 19th century. As medical researchers subjected viruses to serial passage, inadequate recordkeeping resulted in the creation of laboratory strains with unclear origins. By the late 19th century, it was unknown whether the vaccine originated from cowpox, horsepox, or an attenuated strain of smallpox.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: In 1939, Allan Watt Downie showed that the vaccinia virus was serologically distinct from the "spontaneous" cowpox virus. This work established vaccinia and cowpox as two separate viral species. The term "vaccinia" now refers only to the smallpox vaccine, while cowpox no longer has a Latin name. The development of whole genome sequencing in the 1990s made it possible to compare orthopoxvirus genomes and identify their relationships with each other. The horsepox virus was sequenced in 2006 and found to be most closely related to "vaccinia". In a phylogenetic tree of the orthopoxviruses, horsepox forms a clade with "vaccinia" strains, and cowpox strains form a different clade.


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: Horsepox is extinct in the wild, and the only known sample was collected in 1976. Because the sample was collected at the end of the smallpox eradication campaign, scientists considered the possibility that horsepox is a strain of "vaccinia" that had escaped into the wild. However, as more smallpox vaccines were sequenced, older vaccines were found to be more similar to horsepox than modern "vaccinia" strains. A smallpox vaccine manufactured by Mulford in 1902 is 99.7% similar to horsepox, closer than any previously known strain of "vaccinia". Modern Brazilian vaccines with a documented introduction date of 1887, made from material collected in an 1866 outbreak of "cowpox" in France, are more similar to horsepox than other strains of "vaccinia". Five smallpox vaccines manufactured in the United States in 1859–1873 are most similar to each other and horsepox, as well as the 1902 Mulford vaccine. One of the 1859–1873 vaccines was identified as a novel strain of horsepox, containing a complete gene from the 1976 horsepox sample that has deletions in "vaccinia".


title: Smallpox vaccine

text: The word "vaccine" is derived from "Variolae vaccinae" (i.e. smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox and used in the long title of his "An enquiry into the causes and effects of Variolae vaccinae, known by the name of cow pox". Vaccination, the term which soon replaced "cowpox inoculation" and "vaccine inoculation", was first used in print by Jenner's friend, Richard Dunning in 1800. Initially, the terms "vaccine"/"vaccination" referred only to smallpox, but in 1881 Louis Pasteur proposed at the "7th International Congress of Medicine" that to honour Jenner the terms be widened to cover the new protective inoculations being introduced. According to some sources the term was first introduced by Jenner's friend "Richard Dunning" in 1800.


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: Hannah Marie Einbinder (born May 21, 1995) is an American comedian, actress, and writer known for starring in the HBO Max series "Hacks", for which she received nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award.


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: Einbinder is the daughter of original "Saturday Night Live" cast member Laraine Newman and comedy writer Chad Einbinder. Her family is Jewish and she grew up in Los Angeles. Einbinder graduated from Beverly Hills High School and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in television writing and production from Chapman University.


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: In 2019, Einbinder appeared in the Just for Laughs festival's New Faces showcase and was named by National Public Radio as one of the 10 standout comedians to watch. She was also named one of Vulture's best new up and coming comedians to watch in 2019; she was recognized for "her refreshingly absurdist charm."


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: She made her national television debut in March 2020 on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", and at the time was the youngest person to do a stand-up set on the show. It was the show's last on-stage stand-up performance for fifteen months as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning.


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: In 2021, Einbinder co-starred as Ava in "Hacks" on HBO Max, together with Jean Smart and Carl Clemons-Hopkins. The show received a total of 15 Emmy nominations including acting nominations for Einbinder, Smart and Clemons-Hopkins. It was renewed for a second season in June 2021, which premiered on May 12, 2022.


title: Hannah Einbinder

text: Einbinder has cited Dana Gould, Janeane Garofalo, Bo Burnham, Maria Bamford, Sklar Brothers and Steve Martin as being among her inspirations and influences.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The 2022 NBA playoffs was the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 2021–22 season. The playoffs began on April 16 and ended on June 16 with the conclusion of the 2022 NBA Finals. The playoffs also returned to its normal April–June schedule for the first time since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in two postponements in 2020 and 2021.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Eight teams from each conference participated in the playoffs. The top six teams in each conference, based on winning percentage, directly qualified for the playoffs; the seeding order of those teams was also based on winning percentage. If two or more teams had the same record, standard NBA tiebreaker rules were used.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The NBA Board of Governors approved a format for the 2021–22 season to have a play-in tournament involving the teams ranked 7th through 10th in each conference. The 7th place team and 8th place team participated in a "double-chance" game, with the winner advancing to the playoffs as the 7-seed. The loser then played the winner of the elimination game between the 9th place and 10th place teams to determine the playoff's 8-seed. The NBA's regular playoff format then proceeded as normal.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Each conference's bracket was fixed with no reseeding. All rounds were best-of-seven series; a series ended when one team won four games, and that team advanced to the next round. All rounds, including the NBA Finals, were in a 2–2–1–1–1 format with regards to hosting. In the conference playoffs, home court advantage went to the higher-seeded team (number one being the highest). Conference seedings were ignored for the NBA Finals: home court advantage went to the team with the better regular season record, and, if needed, ties were broken based on head-to-head record, followed by intra-conference record.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: On March 9, 2022, the Phoenix Suns became the first team to clinch a playoff spot. On April 5, the San Antonio Spurs and New Orleans Pelicans became the last two teams to qualify for postseason play, as both teams secured spots in the first-stage play-in tournament. On April 7, the Denver Nuggets became the final team to secure a direct berth in the playoff bracket, qualifying as the sixth seed in the Western Conference and relegating the Minnesota Timberwolves to the play-in tournament. While noted in the below tables, division titles have no bearing on seeding.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: "Seeds 7 and 8 in each conference were determined via the first-stage play-in tournament, held April 12–15."


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Cleveland (44–38) and Charlotte (43–39) also secured play-in berths but did not advance to the playoffs.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The L.A. Clippers (42–40) and San Antonio (34–48) also secured play-in berths but did not advance to the playoffs.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Teams in bold advanced to the next round. The numbers to the left of each team indicate the team's seeding in its conference, and the numbers to the right indicate the number of games the team won in that round. The division champions are marked by an asterisk. Teams with home court advantage, the higher seeded team, are shown in italics.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Duncan Robinson led the Heat in scoring with 27 points on 9-of-10 shooting, including going 8-of-9 from 3-point range. On the other hand, Atlanta's Trae Young struggled, shooting just 1-of-12, finishing the game with 8 points and 6 turnovers.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Hawks winning the first two meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The Celtics lost a 15-point third quarter lead but went on to win Game 1 on Jayson Tatum's layup at the buzzer.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fourth playoff meeting between these two teams, and the second since the New Jersey Nets relocated to Brooklyn in 2012, with the Nets winning the first three meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Despite finishing the game with 21 turnovers and blowing a 16-point lead, the Bucks outlasted the Bulls 93–86. Giannis Antetokounmpo finished the game with 27 points and 16 rebounds. The Bulls struggled on offense, shooting a season-low 32.3% from the floor, with DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine shooting a combined 12-of-44 (27.3%).


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fifth playoff meeting between these two teams, with each team winning two out of the first four meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: In his first playoff game as a starter, Tyrese Maxey scored 38 points, with 21 of his 38 points coming in the third quarter. Raptors rookie Scottie Barnes had 15 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists prior to exiting the game with an ankle injury.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The Pelicans started off slow but chipped away at a 23-point deficit to eventually trail 79–71 by the end of the third. However, Chris Paul took over late in the game by scoring 19 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: In his playoff debut, Anthony Edwards led the Timberwolves in scoring with 36, joining Derrick Rose, Tyler Herro, and Magic Johnson in scoring at least 35 points in a playoff game before turning 21. The win was also the Timberwolves' first playoff opener they have won since 2004.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: In his playoff debut, Jordan Poole led the Warriors in points with 30, shooting 9-of-13. Stephen Curry also came off the bench to contribute 16 points in 21 minutes after missing exactly a month with a sprained ligament in his left foot. This was also the Warriors' first playoff win since Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals. Also, the city of San Francisco hosted a playoff game for the first time since 1964.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the second playoff meeting between the two teams, with the Warriors winning the first meeting.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Scoring just 2 points in the first half, Donovan Mitchell erupted in the second half with 30 points, leading the Jazz to a Game 1 win on the road. This was also the first time the Mavericks started the playoffs at home since their championship run in 2011.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Mavericks winning the first two meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Without Joel Embiid, who suffered an orbital fracture and concussion in the final minutes of Game 6 against Toronto, the 76ers were unable to overcome missing their star player, with Philadelphia shooting 17.6% from beyond the arc, their second-worst percentage of the season. Tyler Herro scored 25 points — the second-most he's ever had in a playoff game — while Bam Adebayo finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds as the top-seeded Heat outscored the 76ers 56–41 in the second half.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with each team winning one previous series.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The Bucks won their fourth consecutive playoff game thanks to Giannis Antetokounmpo's second career playoff triple-double, along with Jrue Holiday leading the team with 25 points and 10 rebounds. Jayson Tatum scored 21 and Jaylen Brown had 12 points, but combined to shoot 10-for-31 in the game.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Despite the Bucks' loss, Giannis Antetokounmpo secured a double-double with 25 points, 20 rebounds, and 9 assists, barely missing out on a triple-double. The Bucks missed 24 of their last 25 attempts from three and finished the game 4–33 from beyond the arc in Game 7, which is the 2nd worst 3-point percentage in a playoff game ever with 30+ attempts. Antetokounmpo would become the 1st player with 200 points, 100 rebounds, and 50 assists in a playoff series.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the eighth playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Celtics winning five of the first seven meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: After jumping to a 9–0 lead in the opening minutes, the Suns never trailed in the game as they beat the Mavericks for the 10th straight time, dating back to 2019. All five Suns starters scored in double figures, with Deandre Ayton leading the way with 25 points. Luka Dončić led the Mavericks with 45 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists, but no other Mavericks starter scored more than 15 points.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: During the final seconds of the game, Suns center Bismack Biyombo was fouled on a dunk attempt by Mavericks forward Marquese Chriss. The two had a verbal altercation after the foul, and both players were subsequently ejected. After he was ejected, Chriss ran into the same tunnel that Biyombo had gone into, and the two exchanged further words. Security guards and Mavericks center Boban Marjanović helped separate the two players from each other.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Luka Dončić shined in the victory with a double-double (35 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 assists), while Jalen Brunson and Spencer Dinwiddie scored 24 and 30 points, respectively. Devin Booker had 11 points, and Chris Paul had 10 points and 4 assists as the duo were held to a combined 7-for-22 from the field. Chris Paul also became the first player ever to blow five 2–0 leads in a best-of-7 series, along with losing his 4th consecutive Game 7.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Klay Thompson hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 36 seconds left, and the Warriors overcame Draymond Green's first-half ejection to edge the Grizzlies 117–116. Jordan Poole led the Warriors with a career-high 31 points off the bench, hitting a playoff-best 5-of-10 3-pointers. Jaren Jackson Jr. matched his season high with six 3-pointers and had a playoff career-high 33 points. Ja Morant also led the team with 34 points and 10 assists, but missed the potential go-ahead layup as time expired.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Jimmy Butler scored 27 of his 41 points in the second half, and a huge third quarter by the Heat—in which Butler outscored the Celtics by himself—carried them to an 118–107 win. Jayson Tatum had 29 points and Jaylen Brown had 24, but were without starters Marcus Smart (foot) and Al Horford (health and safety protocols). Along with being outscored 39–14 in the third quarter, Boston failed to score a field goal in the first six minutes of the second half — the slowest start to a half in any of the Celtics' 94 games this season.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: For Miami, they scored just 52 points in the first three quarters, with the Heat not successfully making a shot from the field until 3:21 left in the first quarter, the longest drought without a field goal to start a playoff game in the last 25 years. Victor Oladipo also came off the bench and outscored the entire Miami starting lineup, with the 18 points from the Heat starting five being the fewest points scored by a team's starters in a playoff game since starters were first tracked in 1971, and the first time an entire starting lineup was outscored by a player from its own bench.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Meanwhile, the Heat shot 7–45 (15.6%) from three in Game 5, which was the 2nd lowest 3P% in NBA playoff history with 40+ attempts. The Miami backcourt also struggled as Kyle Lowry and Max Strus went a combined 0–15 in the game, which was the worst 0-fer for a starting backcourt in a playoff game since starters were officially tracked in 1971.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: With Miami facing elimination, Jimmy Butler scored a playoff career-high 47 points (shooting 16-for-29) to go with 9 rebounds, 8 assists, and four steals as the Heat forced a Game 7. Kyle Lowry also had his best game of the series, scoring 18 points and 10 assists before fouling out late in the fourth quarter. For Boston, Jayson Tatum had 30 points and nine rebounds, while Derrick White came off the bench to score 11 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter. Jaylen Brown also scored 20 points for Boston, but missed a crucial pair of free throws with the game tied at 99 as the Heat finished the game on a 17–6 run.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Many fans and media members compared Butler's performance to that of LeBron James when he was with the Heat during Game 6 of the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals (also against the Celtics), in which he scored 45 points, 15 rebounds & five assists on the road while facing elimination.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: With the win, the Celtics advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010 and for the 22nd time in their franchise history. Horford, in his 15th season, shed a record for the most playoff games without an NBA Finals appearance, at 141.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Jayson Tatum was awarded the inaugural NBA Eastern Conference Finals Most Valuable Player, averaging 25.0 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 5.6 assists in seven games.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Game 7 was the most watched conference finals game on ESPN in four years, averaging 9.9 million viewers and peaking at 12.1 million viewers.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Mark Jones filled in for Mike Breen (who was out due to a positive COVID test) for game 7 on ESPN; he was originally scheduled to call this game on the ESPN Radio with his perennial TV partner Doris Burke.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fifth playoff meeting between the two teams, with the Heat winning three of the first four meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Stephen Curry had 21 points and a game-high 12 rebounds, while Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins both scored 19 as the Warriors took Game 1 at home, with Golden State holding Dallas to their lowest field goal percentage of the playoffs (36.0%). Luka Dončić led the Mavericks with 20 points, but shot just 6-of-18 from the field, along with scoring just two points and committing six turnovers in the second half as the Mavericks lost their third straight Game 1 of the playoffs.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: The game is notable for a highlight play that occurred with 6:40 left in the 4th quarter with the score 91–83 in favor of the Warriors. Stephen Curry passed the ball to Andrew Wiggins who drove down the baseline to dunk, posterizing Luka Dončić. The play was controversially called an offensive foul on Wiggins (which would have nullified the dunk), but the call was reversed to no foul and a good basket after a successful challenge by Warriors' coach Steve Kerr.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: Stephen Curry was awarded the inaugural NBA Western Conference Finals Most Valuable Player, averaging 23.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in five games.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the second playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Warriors winning the first meeting.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fifth playoff meeting between the two teams, and the second since the Philadelphia Warriors relocated to the Bay Area in 1962, with the Celtics winning the first four meetings.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: ESPN, ABC, TNT, and NBA TV broadcast the playoffs nationally in the United States. Regional sports networks affiliated with teams also broadcast first-round games, except for those weekend games televised on ABC.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: During the first two rounds, Sunday through Wednesday night games were primarily on TNT, Friday night games on ESPN, and Sunday afternoon games on ABC. Exceptions on those days included a Sunday afternoon game on TNT during the first weekend of the playoffs, ESPN televising one Sunday afternoon game in place of ABC due to F1 coverage, and ABC broadcasting one Friday night first round game. NBA TV also televised selected Monday through Thursday night games in the first round and served as the overflow of any games televised on TNT (except when games on NBA TV and TNT at the same time in which TBS served as the overflow broadcaster). For Thursday night games, TNT aired them in the first round and ESPN in the second round. Saturday first round games were spilt, with TNT only airing two games due to no game 7's in that round, ESPN five games, and ABC one game. ABC then aired all Saturday second round games. ESPN/ABC had exclusive coverage of the Eastern Conference Finals while TNT had exclusive coverage of the Western Conference Finals. ABC had exclusive coverage of the NBA Finals for the 20th straight year.


title: 2022 NBA playoffs

text: In Canada, the home market of the Toronto Raptors, national broadcast rights were split approximately equally between the Sportsnet and TSN groups of channels. Under those rights, the two broadcasters were allowed to produce separate Canadian feeds for all games involving the Raptors regardless of round or U.S. broadcaster. Sportsnet and TSN general simulcast the ABC, ESPN, TNT or NBA TV feed for all other series.


title: Blue Lock

text: As of August 2022, the manga had over 10 million copies in circulation. In 2021, "Blue Lock" won the 45th Kodansha Manga Award in the "shōnen" category.


title: Blue Lock

text: In 2018, the Japanese national team finished 16th in the FIFA World Cup. As a result, the Japanese Football Union hires the football enigma Ego Jinpachi. His master plan to lead Japan to stardom is Blue Lock, a training regimen designed to create the world's greatest egotist striker. Those who fail Blue Lock will never again be permitted to represent any Japanese team. Yoichi Isagi, an unknown high school football player who is conflicted about his playing style, decides to join the program in order to become the best egotistical striker in the world.


title: Blue Lock

text: "Blue Lock" is written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura. The series began in Kodansha's "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" on August 1, 2018. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on November 16, 2018. As of December 16, 2022, twenty-two volumes have been released.


title: Blue Lock

text: In January 2021, Kodansha USA announced that they have licensed the manga for English digital release in North America, starting on March 16, 2021. In January 2022, Kodansha USA announced that they will release the manga in print.


title: Blue Lock

text: The manga has also been licensed in France by Pika Édition; in Germany by Kazé; in Taiwan by Tong Li Publishing; in South Korea by Haksan Publishing; in Italy by Panini Comics; in Spain by Planeta DeAgostini; in Thailand by Vibulkij Publishing; in Indonesia by Elex Media Komputindo; and in Argentina by Editorial Ivrea.


title: Blue Lock

text: A spin-off manga focusing on Seishiro Nagi, titled "Blue Lock: Episode Nagi", began serialization in Kodansha's "Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine" on June 9, 2022. The spin-off is written and illustrated by Kōta Sannomiya. The spin-off has been collected in a single "tankōbon" volume as of October 17, 2022.


title: Blue Lock

text: An anime television series adaptation was announced on August 12, 2021. The series is produced by Eight Bit and directed by Tetsuaki Watanabe, with Shunsuke Ishikawa serving as assistant director, Taku Kishimoto overseeing the series' scripts, Masaru Shindō providing the main character designs and serving as chief animation director, Hisashi Tojima serving as chief action director, and Jun Murayama composing the music. It will run for 24 episodes. The series premiered on October 9, 2022, on TV Asahi's block. The opening theme song is by Unison Square Garden, while the ending theme song is "Winner" by Shugo Nakamura. Crunchyroll has licensed the series, and have streamed an English dub starting on October 22, 2022. Medialink licensed the series in Asia-Pacific; it is streamed on their Ani-One YouTube channel, and on iQIYI, bilibili, Netflix, and Animax Asia.


title: Blue Lock

text: As of August 2020, the manga had over 1.9 million copies in circulation. As of January 2021, the manga had over 3 million copies in circulation. As of April 2021, the manga had over 4 million copies in circulation. As of August 2021, the manga had over 5 million in circulation. As of February 2022, the manga had over 6 million copies in circulation. As of March 2022, the manga had over 8.3 million copies in circulation. As of June 2022, the manga had over 9.3 million copies in circulation. As of August 2022, the manga had over 10 million copies in circulation.


title: Blue Lock

text: The series was recommended by manga author Hajime Isayama of "Attack on Titan" fame, for whom Yusuke Nomura previously worked as an assistant. "Blue Lock" was one of the Top 3 Sports Manga Series of the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2020" by Honya Club. "Blue Lock" won the 45th Kodansha Manga Award in the "shōnen" category in 2021. The series was nominated for a Harvey Award in the Best Manga category in 2022.


title: Blue Lock

text: Rebecca Silverman of "Anime News Network", in her review of the series' first two volumes, called the "dystopian sports" concept something that makes it stand out among other sports series, but she said that it is so "blatantly absurd that it doesn't entirely work". Silverman praised its art, noting Tite Kubo's overtones, and concluded that while the first two volumes are not perfect, there is enough going to make her want to read more.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: The United States one-hundred-dollar bill ($100) is a denomination of United States currency. The first United States Note with this value was issued in 1862 and the Federal Reserve Note version was launched in 1914, alongside other denominations. Statesman, inventor, diplomat, and American founding father Benjamin Franklin has been featured on the obverse of the bill since 1914. On the reverse of the banknote is an image of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which has been used since 1928. The bill is the largest denomination that has been printed and circulated since July 13, 1969, when the larger denominations of , , , and were retired. As of December 2018, the average life of a bill in circulation is 22.9 years before it is replaced due to wear.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: The bills are also commonly referred to as "Bens", "Benjamins", or "Franklins", in reference to the use of Benjamin Franklin's portrait by the French painter Joseph Duplessis on the denomination, as "C-Notes" or "Century Notes", based on the Roman numeral for 100, or as "blue faces", based on the blue tint of Benjamin Franklin's face in the bill's current design. The bill is one of two denominations printed today that does not feature a president of the United States, the other being the $10 bill, featuring Alexander Hamilton. It is also the only denomination today to feature a building not located in Washington, D.C., that being Independence Hall located in Philadelphia on the reverse. The time on the clock of Independence Hall on the reverse, according to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, showed approximately 4:10. It has been suggested this may refer to 4/10, or April 10, the 100th day of the year. The newer colorized notes show 10:30.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: The "Series 2009" bill redesign was unveiled on April 21, 2010, and was issued to the public on October 8, 2013. The new bill costs 12.6 cents to produce and has a blue ribbon woven into the center of the currency with "100" and Liberty Bells, alternating, that appear when the bill is tilted.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: As of June 30, 2012, the bill comprised 77% of all US currency in circulation. Federal Reserve data from 2017 showed that the number of bills exceeded the number of bills. However, a 2018 research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated that 80 percent of bills were in other countries. Possible reasons included $100 bills being used as a reserve currency against economic instability that affected other currencies, and use of the bills for criminal activities.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: The Federal Reserve announced the removal of large denominations of United States currency from circulation on July 14, 1969. While larger denominations remained legal tender, with their removal the one-hundred-dollar bill was the largest denomination left in circulation. All the Federal Reserve Notes produced from "Series 1928" up to before "Series 1969" (i.e. 1928, 1928A, 1934, 1934A, 1934B, 1934C, 1934D, 1950, 1950A, 1950B, 1950C, 1950D, 1950E, 1963, 1966, 1966A) of the denomination added up to billion. Since some banknotes had been destroyed, and the population was 200 million at the time, there was less than one banknote per capita circulating.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: As of June 30, 1969, the U.S. coins and banknotes in circulation of all denominations were worth of which was circulating overseas. So the currency and coin circulating within the United States was per capita. Since 1969, the demand for U.S. currency has greatly increased. The total amount of circulating currency and coin passed one trillion dollars in March 2011.


title: United States one-hundred-dollar bill

text: Despite the degradation in the value of the U.S. banknote (which was worth about $ in 1969), and despite competition from some more valuable foreign notes (most notably, the 500 euro banknote), there are no plans to re-issue banknotes above . The widespread use of electronic means to conduct high-value transactions today has made large-scale physical cash transactions obsolete and therefore, from the government's point of view, unnecessary for the conduct of legitimate business. Quoting T. Allison, Assistant to the Board of the Federal Reserve System in his October 8, 1998 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Committee on Banking and Financial Services:


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make "The Importance of Being Earnest" Wilde's most enduringly popular play.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Their feud came to a climax in court when Wilde sued for libel. The proceedings provided enough evidence for his arrest, trial and conviction on charges of gross indecency. Wilde's homosexuality was revealed to the Victorian public and he was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour. Despite the play's early success, Wilde's notoriety caused the play to be closed after 86 performances. After his release from prison, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no more comic or dramatic works.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: "The Importance of Being Earnest" has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In a 1952 film Edith Evans reprised her stage interpretation of Lady Bracknell; a 1992 version directed by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast; and Oliver Parker's 2002 film incorporated some of Wilde's original material cut during the preparation of the first stage production.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play was written following the success of Wilde's earlier plays "Lady Windermere's Fan", "An Ideal Husband" and "A Woman of No Importance". He spent the summer of 1894 with his family at Worthing, where he began work on the new play. His fame now at its peak, he used the working title "Lady Lancing" to avoid preemptive speculation about its content. Many names and ideas in the play were borrowed from people or places the author had known; Lady Queensberry, Lord Alfred Douglas's mother, for example, lived at Bracknell. Wilde scholars agree the most important influence on the play was W. S. Gilbert's 1877 farce "Engaged," from which Wilde borrowed not only several incidents but also "the gravity of tone demanded by Gilbert of his actors".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Wilde continually revised the text over the next months. No line was left untouched and the revision had significant consequences. Sos Eltis describes Wilde's revisions as refined art at work. The earliest and longest handwritten drafts of the play labour over farcical incidents, broad puns, nonsense dialogue and conventional comic turns. In revising, "Wilde transformed standard nonsense into the more systemic and disconcerting illogicality which characterises "Earnest's" dialogue". Richard Ellmann argues Wilde had reached his artistic maturity and wrote more surely and rapidly.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Wilde wrote the part of Jack Worthing with the actor-manager Charles Wyndham in mind. Wilde shared Bernard Shaw's view that Wyndham was the ideal comedy actor, and based the character on his stage persona. Wyndham accepted the play for production at his theatre, but before rehearsals began he changed his plans, to help a colleague in a sudden crisis. In early 1895, at the St James's Theatre, the actor-manager George Alexander's production of Henry James's "Guy Domville" failed, and closed after 31 performances, leaving Alexander in urgent need of a new play to follow it. Wyndham waived his contractual rights and allowed Alexander to stage Wilde's play.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: After working with Wilde on stage movements with a toy theatre, Alexander asked the author to shorten the play from four acts to three. Wilde agreed and combined elements of the second and third acts. The largest cut was the removal of the character of Mr. Gribsby, a solicitor who comes from London to arrest the profligate "Ernest" (i.e., Jack) for unpaid dining bills. The four-act version was first played on a BBC radio production and is still sometimes performed. Some consider the three-act structure more effective and theatrically resonant than the expanded published edition.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play was first produced at the St James's Theatre on Valentine's Day 1895. It was freezing cold but Wilde arrived dressed in "florid sobriety", wearing a green carnation. The audience, according to one report, "included many members of the great and good, former cabinet ministers and privy councillors, as well as actors, writers, academics, and enthusiasts". Allan Aynesworth, who played Algernon Moncrieff, recalled to Hesketh Pearson that "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night". Aynesworth was himself "debonair and stylish", and Alexander, who played Jack Worthing, "demure".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas (who was on holiday in Algiers at the time), had planned to disrupt the play by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright when he took his bow at the end of the show. Wilde and Alexander learned of the plan, and the latter cancelled Queensberry's ticket and arranged for policemen to bar his entrance. Nevertheless, he continued harassing Wilde, who eventually launched a private prosecution against the peer for criminal libel, triggering a series of trials ending in Wilde's imprisonment for gross indecency. Alexander tried, unsuccessfully, to save the production by removing Wilde's name from the billing, but the play had to close after only 86 performances.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play's original Broadway production opened at the Empire Theatre on 22 April 1895, but closed after sixteen performances. Its cast included William Faversham as Algy, Henry Miller as Jack, Viola Allen as Gwendolen, and Ida Vernon as Lady Bracknell. The Australian premiere was in Melbourne on 10 August 1895, presented by Dion Boucicault Jr. and Robert Brough, and the play was an immediate success. Wilde's downfall in England did not affect the popularity of his plays in Australia.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In contrast to much theatre of the time, the light plot of "The Importance of Being Earnest "does not seem to tackle serious social and political issues, something of which contemporary reviewers were wary. Though unsure of Wilde's seriousness as a dramatist, they recognised the play's cleverness, humour and popularity with audiences. Shaw, for example, reviewed the play in the "Saturday Review", arguing that comedy should touch as well as amuse, "I go to the theatre to be "moved" to laughter." Later in a letter he said, the play, though "extremely funny", was Wilde's "first really heartless [one]". In "The World", William Archer wrote that he had enjoyed watching the play but found it to be empty of meaning: "What can a poor critic do with a play which raises no principle, whether of art or morals, creates its own canons and conventions, and is nothing but an absolutely wilful expression of an irrepressibly witty personality?"


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In "The Speaker", A. B. Walkley admired the play and was one of few to see it as the culmination of Wilde's dramatic career. He denied the term "farce" was derogatory, or even lacking in seriousness, and said "It is of nonsense all compact, and better nonsense, I think, our stage has not seen." H. G. Wells, in an unsigned review for "The Pall Mall Gazette", called "Earnest" one of the freshest comedies of the year, saying "More humorous dealing with theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine." He also questioned whether people would fully see its message, "... how Serious People will take this Trivial Comedy intended for their learning remains to be seen. No doubt seriously." The play was so light-hearted that many reviewers compared it to comic opera rather than drama. W. H. Auden later (1963) called it "a pure verbal opera", and "The Times" commented, "The story is almost too preposterous to go without music." Mary McCarthy, in "Sights and Spectacles" (1959), however, and despite thinking the play extremely funny, called it "a ferocious idyll"; "depravity is the hero and the only character."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: "The Importance of Being Earnest" is Wilde's most popular work and is continually revived. Max Beerbohm called the play Wilde's "finest, most undeniably his own", saying that in his other comedies – "Lady Windermere's Fan", "A Woman of No Importance" and "An Ideal Husband" – the plot, following the manner of Victorien Sardou, is unrelated to the theme of the work, while in "Earnest" the story is "dissolved" into the form of the play.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: "The Importance of Being Earnest" and Wilde's three other society plays were performed in Britain during the author's imprisonment and exile, albeit by small touring companies. A. B. Tapping's company toured "Earnest" between October 1895 and March 1899 (their performance at the Theatre Royal, Limerick, in the last week of October 1895 was almost certainly the first production of the play in Ireland). Elsie Lanham's company also toured 'Earnest' between November 1899 and April 1900. Alexander revived "Earnest" in a small theatre in Notting Hill, outside the West End, in 1901; in the same year he presented the piece on tour, playing Jack Worthing with a cast including the young Lilian Braithwaite as Cecily. The play returned to the West End when Alexander presented a revival at the St James's in 1902. Broadway revivals were mounted in 1902 and again in 1910, each production running for six weeks.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: A collected edition of Wilde's works, published in 1908 and edited by Robert Ross, helped to restore his reputation as an author. Alexander presented another revival of "Earnest" at the St James's in 1909, when he and Aynesworth reprised their original roles; the revival ran for 316 performances. Max Beerbohm said that the play was sure to become a classic of the English repertory, and that its humour was as fresh then as when it had been written, adding that the actors had "worn as well as the play".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: For a 1913 revival at the same theatre the young actors Gerald Ames and A. E. Matthews succeeded the creators as Jack and Algy. Leslie Faber as Jack, John Deverell as Algy and Margaret Scudamore as Lady Bracknell headed the cast in a 1923 production at the Haymarket Theatre. Many revivals in the first decades of the 20th century treated "the present" as the current year. It was not until the 1920s that the case for 1890s costumes was established; as a critic in "The Manchester Guardian" put it, "Thirty years on, one begins to feel that Wilde should be done in the costume of his period – that his wit today needs the backing of the atmosphere that gave it life and truth. … Wilde's glittering and complex verbal felicities go ill with the shingle and the short skirt."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In Sir Nigel Playfair's 1930 production at the Lyric, Hammersmith, John Gielgud played Jack to the Lady Bracknell of his aunt, Mabel Terry-Lewis. Gielgud produced and starred in a production at the Globe (now the Gielgud) Theatre in 1939, in a cast that included Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, Joyce Carey as Gwendolen, Angela Baddeley as Cecily and Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism. "The Times" considered the production the best since the original, and praised it for its fidelity to Wilde's conception, its "airy, responsive ball-playing quality." Later in the same year Gielgud presented the work again, with Jack Hawkins as Algy, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Gwendolen and Peggy Ashcroft as Cecily, with Evans and Rutherford in their previous roles. The production was presented in several seasons during and after the Second World War, with mostly the same main players. During a 1946 season at the Haymarket the King and Queen attended a performance, which, as the journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft put it, gave the play "a final accolade of respectability." The production toured North America, and was successfully staged on Broadway in 1947.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: As Wilde's work came to be read and performed again, it was "The Importance of Being Earnest" that received the most productions. By the time of its centenary the journalist Mark Lawson described it as "the second most known and quoted play in English after "Hamlet"."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: For Sir Peter Hall's 1982 production at the National Theatre the cast included Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Martin Jarvis as Jack, Nigel Havers as Algy, Zoë Wanamaker as Gwendolen and Anna Massey as Miss Prism. Nicholas Hytner's 1993 production at the Aldwych Theatre, starring Maggie Smith, had occasional references to the supposed gay subtext.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In 2005 the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, produced the play with an all-male cast; it also featured Wilde as a character – the play opens with him drinking in a Parisian café, dreaming of his play. The Melbourne Theatre Company staged a production in December 2011 with Geoffrey Rush as Lady Bracknell.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In 2007 Theatre Royal, Bath produced the play with Peter Gill directing. Penelope Keith played Lady Bracknell, Harry Hadden-Paton played Jack, William Ellis played Algernon, Gwendolyn was played by Daisy Haggard and Cecily was played by Rebecca Night. The production went on a short UK Tour before playing in the West End of London at Vaudeville Theatre in 2008 and received positive reviews.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In 2011 the Roundabout Theatre Company produced a Broadway revival based on the 2009 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production featuring Brian Bedford as director and as Lady Bracknell. It opened at the American Airlines Theatre on 13 January and ran until 3 July 2011. The cast also included Dana Ivey as Miss Prism, Paxton Whitehead as Canon Chasuble, Santino Fontana as Algernon, Paul O'Brien as Lane, Charlotte Parry as Cecily, David Furr as Jack and Sara Topham as Gwendolen. It was nominated for three Tony Awards.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play was also presented internationally, in Singapore, in October 2004, by the British Theatre Playhouse, and the same company brought it to London's Greenwich Theatre in April 2005.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: A 2018 revival was directed by Michael Fentiman for the Vaudeville Theatre, London, as part of a season of four Wilde plays produced by Dominic Dromgoole. The production received largely negative press reviews.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of students from Newcastle University filmed a production, including scenes with Wilde himself as a character, at the Sunderland Empire to raise awareness of struggling theatres and artists who had suffered from negative implications of lockdowns in the UK. The production received largely positive press for its message.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play opens with Algernon Moncrieff, an idle young gentleman, receiving his best friend, Jack Worthing ("Ernest"). Ernest has come from the country to propose to Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon refuses to consent until Ernest explains why his cigarette case bears the inscription, "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack." 'Ernest' is forced to admit to living a double life. In the country, he assumes a serious attitude for the benefit of his young ward, the heiress Cecily Cardew, and goes by the name of Jack, while pretending that he must worry about a wastrel younger brother named Ernest in London. In the city, meanwhile, he assumes the identity of the libertine Ernest. Algernon confesses a similar deception: he pretends to have an invalid friend named Bunbury in the country, whom he can "visit" whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome social obligation. Jack refuses to tell Algernon the location of his country estate.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Gwendolen and her formidable mother Lady Bracknell now call on Algernon who distracts Lady Bracknell in another room while Jack proposes to Gwendolen. She accepts, but seems to love him in large part because of his name, Ernest. Jack accordingly resolves to himself to be rechristened "Ernest". Discovering them in this intimate exchange, Lady Bracknell interviews Jack as a prospective suitor. Horrified to learn that he was adopted after being discovered as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station, she refuses him and forbids further contact with her daughter. Gwendolen manages to covertly promise to him her undying love. As Jack gives her his address in the country, Algernon surreptitiously notes it on the cuff of his sleeve: Jack's revelation of his pretty and wealthy young ward has motivated his friend to meet her.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Cecily is studying with her governess, Miss Prism. Algernon arrives, pretending to be Ernest Worthing, and soon charms Cecily. Long fascinated by Uncle Jack's hitherto absent black sheep brother, she is predisposed to fall for Algernon in his role of Ernest (a name she is apparently particularly fond of). Therefore, Algernon, too, plans for the rector, Dr. Chasuble, to rechristen him "Ernest". Jack has decided to abandon his double life. He arrives in full mourning and announces his brother's death in Paris of a severe chill, a story undermined by Algernon's presence in the guise of Ernest. Gwendolen now enters, having run away from home. During the temporary absence of the two men, she meets Cecily, each woman indignantly declaring that she is the one engaged to "Ernest". When Jack and Algernon reappear, their deceptions are exposed.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Arriving in pursuit of her daughter, Lady Bracknell is astonished to be told that Algernon and Cecily are engaged. The revelation of Cecily's wealth soon dispels Lady Bracknell's initial doubts over the young lady's suitability, but any engagement is forbidden by her guardian Jack: he will consent only if Lady Bracknell agrees to his own union with Gwendolen – something she declines to do.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The impasse is broken by the return of Miss Prism, whom Lady Bracknell recognises as the person who, 28 years earlier as a family nursemaid, had taken a baby boy for a walk in a perambulator and never returned. Challenged, Miss Prism explains that she had absent-mindedly put the manuscript of a novel she was writing in the perambulator, and the baby in a handbag, which she had left at Victoria Station. Jack produces the very same handbag, showing that he is the lost baby, the elder son of Lady Bracknell's late sister, and thus Algernon's elder brother. Having acquired such respectable relations, he is acceptable as a suitor for Gwendolen after all.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Gwendolen, however, insists she can love only a man named Ernest. Lady Bracknell informs Jack that, as the first-born, he would have been named after his father, General Moncrieff. Jack examines the army lists and discovers that his father's name – and hence his own real name – was in fact Ernest. Pretence was reality all along. As the happy couples embrace – Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, and even Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism – Lady Bracknell complains to her newfound relative: "My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality." "On the contrary, Aunt Augusta", he replies, "I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Earnest."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Arthur Ransome described "The Importance..." as the most trivial of Wilde's society plays, and the only one that produces "that peculiar exhilaration of the spirit by which we recognise the beautiful." "It is", he wrote, "precisely because it is consistently trivial that it is not ugly." Ellmann says that "The Importance of Being Earnest" touched on many themes Wilde had been building since the 1880s – the languor of aesthetic poses was well established and Wilde takes it as a starting point for the two protagonists. While "Salome", "An Ideal Husband" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" had dwelt on more serious wrongdoing, vice in "Earnest" is represented by Algy's craving for cucumber sandwiches. Wilde told Robert Ross that the play's theme was "That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality." The theme is hinted at in the play's ironic title, and "earnestness" is repeatedly alluded to in the dialogue, Algernon says in Act II, "one has to be serious about something if one is to have any amusement in life", but goes on to reproach Jack for 'being serious about everything'". Blackmail and corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert Chiltern (in "An Ideal Husband"), but in "Earnest" the protagonists' duplicity (Algernon's "bunburying" and Worthing's double life as Jack and Ernest) is undertaken for more innocent purposes – largely to avoid unwelcome social obligations. While much theatre of the time tackled serious social and political issues, "Earnest" is superficially about nothing at all. It "refuses to play the game" of other dramatists of the period, for instance Bernard Shaw, who used their characters to draw audiences to grander ideals.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs, marriage and the pursuit of love in particular. In Victorian times "earnestness" was considered to be the overriding societal value, originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes, it spread to the upper ones too throughout the century. The play's very title, with its mocking paradox (serious people are so because they do "not" see trivial comedies), introduces the theme, it continues in the drawing room discussion, "Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them," says Algernon in Act 1; allusions are quick and from multiple angles.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The men follow traditional matrimonial rites, whereby suitors admit their weaknesses to their prospective brides, but the foibles they excuse are ridiculous, and the farce is built on an absurd confusion of a book and a baby. When Jack apologises to Gwendolen during his marriage proposal it is for "not" being wicked:


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: JACK: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: In turn, both Gwendolen and Cecily have the ideal of marrying a man named Ernest, a popular and respected name at the time. Gwendolen, quite unlike her mother's methodical analysis of Jack Worthing's suitability as a husband, places her entire faith in a Christian name, declaring in Act I, "The only really safe name is Ernest". This is an opinion shared by Cecily in Act II, "I pity any poor married woman whose husband is not called Ernest" and they indignantly declare that they have been deceived when they find out the men's real names.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Wilde embodied society's rules and rituals artfully into Lady Bracknell: minute attention to the details of her style created a comic effect of assertion by restraint. In contrast to her encyclopaedic knowledge of the social distinctions of London's street names, Jack's obscure parentage is subtly evoked. He defends himself against her "A handbag?" with the clarification, "The Brighton Line". At the time, Victoria Station consisted of two separate but adjacent terminal stations sharing the same name. To the east was the ramshackle LC&D Railway, on the west the up-market LB&SCR – the Brighton Line, which went to Worthing, the fashionable, expensive town the gentleman who found baby Jack was travelling to at the time (and after which Jack was named).


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Queer scholars have argued that the play's themes of duplicity and ambivalence are inextricably bound up with Wilde's homosexuality, and that the play exhibits a "flickering presence-absence of... homosexual desire". On re-reading the play after his release from prison, Wilde said: "It was extraordinary reading the play over. How I used to toy with that Tiger Life."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: It has been said that the use of the name Earnest may have been a homosexual in-joke. In 1892, three years before Wilde wrote the play, John Gambril Nicholson had published the book of pederastic poetry "Love in Earnest". The sonnet "Of Boys' Names" included the verse: "Though Frank may ring like silver bell / And Cecil softer music claim / They cannot work the miracle / –'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame." The word "earnest" may also have been a code-word for homosexual, as in: "Is he earnest?", in the same way that "Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were employed. Sir Donald Sinden, an actor who had met two of the play's original cast (Irene Vanbrugh and Allan Aynesworth), and Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote to "The Times" to dispute suggestions that "Earnest" held any sexual connotations:


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Although they had ample opportunity, at no time did any of them even hint that "Earnest" was a synonym for homosexual, or that "bunburying" may have implied homosexual sex. The first time I heard it mentioned was in the 1980s and I immediately consulted Sir John Gielgud whose own performance of Jack Worthing in the same play was legendary and whose knowledge of theatrical lore was encyclopaedic. He replied in his ringing tones: "No-No! Nonsense, absolute nonsense: I would have known".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: A number of theories have also been put forward to explain the derivation of Bunbury, and Bunburying, which are used in the play to imply a secretive double life. It may have derived from Henry Shirley Bunbury, a hypochondriacal acquaintance of Wilde's youth. Another suggestion, put forward in 1913 by Aleister Crowley, who knew Wilde, was that Bunbury was a combination word: that Wilde had once taken a train to Banbury, met a schoolboy there, and arranged a second secret meeting with him at Sunbury.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Bunburying is a stratagem used by people who need an excuse for avoiding social obligations in their daily life. The word "bunburying" first appears in Act I when Algernon explains that he invented a fictional friend, a chronic invalid named "Bunbury", to have an excuse for getting out of events he does not wish to attend, particularly with his Aunt Augusta (Lady Bracknell). Algernon and Jack both use this method to secretly visit their lovers, Cecily and Gwendolen.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: While Wilde had long been famous for dialogue and his use of language, Raby (1988) argues that he achieved a unity and mastery in "Earnest" that was unmatched in his other plays, except perhaps "Salomé". While his earlier comedies suffer from an unevenness resulting from the thematic clash between the trivial and the serious, "Earnest" achieves a pitch-perfect style that allows these to dissolve. There are three different registers detectable in the play. The dandyish insouciance of Jack and Algernon – established early with Algernon's exchange with his manservant – betrays an underlying unity despite their differing attitudes. The formidable pronouncements of Lady Bracknell are as startling for her use of hyperbole and rhetorical extravagance as for her disconcerting opinions. In contrast, the speech of Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism is distinguished by "pedantic precept" and "idiosyncratic diversion". Furthermore, the play is full of epigrams and paradoxes. Max Beerbohm described it as littered with "chiselled apophthegms – witticisms unrelated to action or character", of which he found half a dozen to be of the highest order.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Lady Bracknell's line, "A handbag?", has been called one of the most malleable in English drama, lending itself to interpretations ranging from incredulous or scandalised to baffled. Edith Evans, both on stage and in the 1952 film, delivered the line loudly in a mixture of horror, incredulity and condescension. Stockard Channing, in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2010, hushed the line, in a critic's words, "with a barely audible 'A handbag?', rapidly swallowed up with a sharp intake of breath. An understated take, to be sure, but with such a well-known play, packed full of witticisms and aphorisms with a life of their own, it's the little things that make a difference."


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: 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.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Ransome argues that Wilde freed himself by abandoning the melodrama, the basic structure which underlies his earlier social comedies, and basing the story entirely on the Earnest/Ernest verbal conceit. Freed from "living up to any drama more serious than conversation" Wilde could now amuse himself to a fuller extent with quips, , epigrams and repartee that really had little to do with the business at hand.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: The genre of the "Importance of Being Earnest" has been deeply debated by scholars and critics alike who have placed the play within a wide variety of genres ranging from parody to satire. In his critique of Wilde, Foster argues that the play creates a world where "real values are inverted [and], reason and unreason are interchanged". Similarly, Wilde's use of dialogue mocks the upper classes of Victorian England lending the play a satirical tone. Reinhart further stipulates that the use of farcical humour to mock the upper classes "merits the play both as satire and as drama".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Wilde's two final comedies, "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest", were still on stage in London at the time of his prosecution, and they were soon closed as the details of his case became public. After two years in prison with hard labour, Wilde went into exile in Paris, sick and depressed, his reputation destroyed in England. In 1898, when no one else would, Leonard Smithers agreed with Wilde to publish the two final plays. Wilde proved to be a diligent reviser, sending detailed instructions on stage directions, character listings and the presentation of the book, and insisting that a playbill from the first performance be reproduced inside. Ellmann argues that the proofs show a man "very much in command of himself and of the play". Wilde's name did not appear on the cover, it was "By the Author of "Lady Windermere's Fan"". His return to work was brief though, as he refused to write anything else, "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing".


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: On 19 October 2007, a first edition (number 349 of 1,000) was discovered inside a handbag in an Oxfam shop in Nantwich, Cheshire. Staff were unable to trace the donor. It was sold for £650.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: "The Importance of Being Earnest"s popularity has meant it has been translated into many languages, though the homophonous pun in the title ("Ernest", a masculine proper name, and "earnest", the virtue of steadfastness and seriousness) poses a special problem for translators. The easiest case of a suitable translation of the pun, perpetuating its sense and meaning, may have been its translation into German. Since English and German are closely related languages, German provides an equivalent adjective ("ernst") and also a matching masculine proper name ("Ernst"). The meaning and tenor of the wordplay are exactly the same. Yet there are many different possible titles in German, mostly concerning sentence structure. The two most common ones are "Bunbury oder ernst / Ernst sein ist alles" and "Bunbury oder wie wichtig es ist, ernst / Ernst zu sein". In a study of Italian translations, Adrian Pablé found thirteen different versions using eight titles. Since wordplay is often unique to the language in question, translators are faced with a choice of either staying faithful to the original – in this case the English adjective and virtue "earnest" – or creating a similar pun in their own language.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Four main strategies have been used by translators. The first leaves all characters' names unchanged and in their original spelling: thus the name is respected and readers reminded of the original cultural setting, but the liveliness of the pun is lost. Eva Malagoli varied this source-oriented approach by using both the English Christian names and the adjective "earnest", thus preserving the pun and the English character of the play, but possibly straining an Italian reader. A third group of translators replaced "Ernest" with a name that also represents a virtue in the target language, favouring transparency for readers in translation over fidelity to the original. For instance, in Italian, these versions variously call the play "L'importanza di essere Franco/Severo/Fedele", the given names being respectively the values of honesty, propriety, and loyalty. French offers a closer pun: "" is both a first name and the quality of steadfastness, so the play is commonly known as "De l'importance d'être Constant", though Jean Anouilh translated the play under the title: "Il est important d'être Aimé" ("" is a name which also means "beloved"). These translators differ in their attitude to the original English honorific titles, some change them all, or none, but most leave a mix partially as a compensation for the added loss of Englishness. Lastly, one translation gave the name an Italianate touch by rendering it as "Ernesto"; this work liberally mixed proper nouns from both languages.


title: The Importance of Being Earnest

text: Apart from several "made-for-television" versions, "The Importance of Being Earnest" has been adapted for the English-language cinema at least three times, first in 1952 by Anthony Asquith who adapted the screenplay and directed it. Michael Denison (Algernon), Michael Redgrave (Jack), Edith Evans (Lady Bracknell), Dorothy Tutin (Cecily), Joan Greenwood (Gwendolen), and Margaret Rutherford (Miss Prism) and Miles Malleson (Canon Chasuble) were among the cast. In 1992 Kurt Baker directed a version using an all-black cast with Daryl Keith Roach as Jack, Wren T. Brown as Algernon, Ann Weldon as Lady Bracknell, Lanei Chapman as Cecily, Chris Calloway as Gwendolen, CCH Pounder as Miss Prism, and Brock Peters as Doctor Chasuble, set in the United States.