An Ideal Husband (Annotated)

This ebook includes a biographical introduction, a short critical analysis of Oscar Wilde and a brief introduction to this work. Moorside Press has placed an emphasis on creating a usable formatting system for all of Wilde's plays, denoting characters, stage directions and settings, separate from spoken lines.

Written in 1893, but not performed until January 1895, An Ideal Husband was the third of Wilde's popular satirical comedies, following A Woman of No Importance and preceding The Importance of Being Earnest. The play revolves around an attempt by Mrs Cheveley to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern into changing government policy so that she can profit from the decision. Only the dapper Lord Goring – a character that could only have been written by Wilde as himself – is able to thwart the plot by reference to Mrs Cheveley's nefarious past, while also saving the reputations of other characters and achieving something for himself in the process.

As with all of Wilde's satirical plays, there is more than just the plot on offer. Here, as well as delivering the familiar message about the past catching up with those in high office, he also has a dig at government business as carried out by the establishment of the day. But all that is less obvious than the skill with which Wilde delivers a plot that is at times complicated and which may also appear to be a closed door for some apparently doomed characters. How despondency is turned into rhapsody in the space of a few lines is a mark of Wilde.