How does Oscar Wilde satirize his audience in The Importance of Being Earnest, and what may he be trying to evoke from the audience?

In his satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde ridicules the superficiality of his Victorian society audience and their values and behavior. As his title suggests, Wilde satirizes the facade of earnestness, a virtue purportedly highly esteemed by Victorians, whose hypocritical behavior belies this sublime virtue.

By assigning the quality of being earnest to the name of a man, Wilde creates a subtle allusion to the words of Shakespeare's Juliet, who realizes a name does not determine character: 

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet (Act II, Scene 2, verses 1-2).

For certain characters in Wilde's play, having the specific name of Ernest, a homophone for the virtue earnestness, becomes essential. Jack must be named Ernest to win the love of Gwendolen. This condition points to the superficiality of the upper class, as a young woman prioritizes marrying a man by the name of Ernest over any other qualities he may possess. The name Ernest holds some sort of ideal for her. 

In Act I, Jack displays the duality that exists in Victorian society when he explains to his friend Algernon that he created the character of Ernest as his younger brother because he must behave in a certain way as the guardian of Cecily Cardew. With this false identity, he can give vent to his private interests, which are anything but true and worthy values. The irony of this is that Jack actually turns out to be named Ernest, as he was named after his natural father. Gwendolen is delighted that Ernest is his name. Employing his inimitable satire, Wilde has his character Jack ask, 

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?

Wilde may have written these lines to induce members of his audience to search their own characters and discover that when they have acted in pretense, they may verily have been more true to their real character than when they have conducted themselves in polite society.