Oscar Wilde pp 126-151 | Cite as
‘An Ideal Husband’
Chapter
Abstract
There could not be such a thing as an ‘ideal husband’, Mrs Allonby had decided. In his new play, again performed at the Haymarket, with a new actor-manager, Lewis Waller, as Lord Chiltern, Wilde takes a closer look at this proposition and at the situation of the man called on to fill that uncomfortable role. It is a ‘man with a past’ this time; the Puritan woman (for she is here again) is his wife, which adds to the agony and at times brings the comedy close to tragedy.
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References
- 1.W. Archer, Pall Mall Budget, 10 January 1895, repeated in The Theatrical World of 1895. Beckson, p. 174.Google Scholar
- 2.Clement Scott noted the similarities between the plots of An Ideal Husband and Victorien Sardou’s Dora, Illustrated London News, 12 January 1895. Beckson, pp. 178-9.Google Scholar
- 3.G. Burgess, The Sketch, 9 January 1895. Mikhail, p. 241.Google Scholar
- 4.All quotations from Shaw in Dramatic Opinions and Essays, pp.11-15.Google Scholar
- 5.See Letters, p. 339 footnote 2 for the gloss on this numbering supplied by Hesketh Pearson.Google Scholar
- 6.A. B. Walkley, The Speaker, 12 January 1895. Beckson, p. 179.Google Scholar
Copyright information
© Katharine Worth 1983