1895 play by Oscar Wilde
An Ideal Husband
is a four-act play by
Oscar Wilde
that revolves around
blackmail
and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the
Haymarket Theatre
, London in 1895 and ran for 124 performances. It has been revived in many theatre productions and adapted for the cinema, radio and television.
Background and first production
[
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]
In June 1893, with his second
drawing room play
,
A Woman of No Importance
, running successfully at the
Haymarket Theatre
,
Oscar Wilde
began writing
An Ideal Husband
for the actor-manager
John Hare
. He completed the first act while staying at a house he had taken at
Goring-on-Thames
, after which he named a leading character in the play.
[1]
Between September 1893 and January 1894 he wrote the remaining three acts. Hare rejected the play, finding the last act unsatisfactory;
Wilde then successfully offered the play to
Lewis Waller
, who was about to take temporary charge of the Haymarket in the absence in America of its usual manager,
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
.
[1]
The play was put into rehearsal in December 1894 and opened on 3 January 1895, billed as "A new and original play of modern life". It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded as a good run at the time.
[a]
In April, on the last day of the Haymarket run, Wilde was arrested for
gross indecency
; his name was removed from the playbills and programmes when the production transferred to the
Criterion Theatre
, where it ran for a further 13 performances, from 13 to 27 April.
The play could have run longer at the Criterion, but the theatre was required by its proprietor,
Charles Wyndham
, for a new production.
[5]
The play was published in 1899 in an edition of 1000 copies; Wilde's name was not printed: the work was published as "By the author of
Lady Windermere's Fan
".
It is dedicated to
Frank Harris
, "A slight tribute to his power and distinction as an artist, his chivalry and nobility as a friend."
The published version differs slightly from the performed play, as Wilde added many passages and cut others. Prominent additions included written stage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public.
Original cast
[
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]
- The Earl of Caversham,
KG
? Alfred Bishop
- Viscount Goring (his son) ?
Charles Hawtrey
- Sir Robert Chiltern (under-secretary for foreign affairs) ?
Lewis Waller
- Vicomte de Nanjac (attache at the French embassy in London) ?
Cosmo Stuart
- Mr Montford ? Henry Stanford
- Phipps (Lord Goring's servant) ? Charles Brookfield
- Mason (butler to Sir Robert Chilton) ? H. Deane
- James (footman at Lord Goring's) ? Charles Meyrick
- Harold (footman at Sir Robert Chilton's) ? Charles Goodhart
- Lady Chiltern ?
Julia Neilson
- Lady Markby ?
Fanny Brough
- Countess of Basildon ?
Vane Featherston
- Mrs Marchmont ? Helen Forsyth
- Miss Mabel Chiltern (Sir Robert's sister) ?
Maude Millett
- Mrs Cheveley ?
Florence West
- Source
Plot
[
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]
Act I
[
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]
- The Octagon Room in Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square
Sir Robert ? a member of the
House of Commons
and junior government minister ? and his wife, Lady Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his friend Lord Goring, a
dandified
bachelor, Chiltern's sister Mabel and other guests. During the party, Mrs Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern from their schooldays, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Her late mentor and lover, Baron Arnheim, induced the young Chiltern to sell him a Cabinet secret ? which enabled Arnheim to buy shares in the
Suez Canal Company
three days before the British government announced its purchase of the company. Arnheim's payoff was the basis of Sir Robert's fortune, and Mrs Cheveley has Robert's letter to Arnheim as proof of his crime. Fearing the ruin of both career and marriage, Sir Robert submits to her demands.
When Mrs Cheveley pointedly informs Lady Chiltern of Sir Robert's change of heart regarding the canal scheme, the morally inflexible Lady Chiltern, unaware of both her husband's past and the blackmail plot, insists that Sir Robert renege on his promise to Mrs Cheveley. For Lady Chiltern, their marriage is predicated on her having an "ideal husband"?that is, a model spouse in both private and public life whom she can worship; thus, Sir Robert must remain unimpeachable in all his decisions. Sir Robert complies with her wishes and apparently seals his doom.
Toward the end of Act I, Mabel and Lord Goring come upon a diamond brooch that Goring gave someone many years ago. He takes the brooch and asks Mabel to tell him if anyone comes to retrieve it.
Act II
[
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]
- Morning room in Sir Robert Chiltern's house
Goring urges Chiltern to fight Mrs Cheveley and admit his guilt to his wife. He also reveals that he and Mrs Cheveley were once engaged. After finishing his conversation with Chiltern, Goring engages in flirtatious banter with Mabel. He also takes Lady Chiltern aside and obliquely urges her to be less morally inflexible and more forgiving. Once Goring leaves, Mrs Cheveley appears, unexpected, in search of a brooch she lost the previous evening. Incensed at Chiltern's reneging on his promise, she exposes him to his wife. Lady Chiltern denounces her husband and refuses to forgive him.
Act III
[
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]
- The library of Lord Goring's house in Curzon Street
Goring receives a letter from Lady Chiltern asking for his help ? a letter that could be misinterpreted as a compromising love note. Just as Goring receives this note, his father, Lord Caversham, drops in and demands to know when his son will marry. A visit from Chiltern, who seeks further counsel from Goring, follows. Meanwhile, Mrs Cheveley arrives unexpectedly and, misrecognised by the butler as the woman Goring awaits, is ushered into Lord Goring's drawing room. While she waits, she finds Lady Chiltern's letter. Chiltern discovers Mrs Cheveley in the drawing room and, convinced of an affair between these two former lovers, he storms out of the house.
When Mrs Cheveley and Lord Goring confront each other, she makes a proposal. Claiming to still love Goring from their early days of courtship, she offers to exchange Chiltern's letter for her old beau's hand in marriage. Lord Goring declines, accusing her of defiling love by reducing courtship to a vulgar transaction and ruining the Chilterns' marriage. He then springs his trap. Removing the diamond brooch from his desk drawer, he binds it to Cheveley's wrist with a hidden lock. Goring then reveals how the item came into her possession: she stole it from his cousin, Mary Berkshire, years ago. To avoid arrest, Cheveley must trade the incriminating letter for her release from the bejewelled handcuff. After Goring obtains and burns the letter, Mrs Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vengefully she plans to send it to Chiltern as, ostensibly, a love letter from Lady Chiltern to Goring. Mrs Cheveley exits the house in triumph.
Act IV
[
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]
- Same as Act II
Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted by Mabel. Lord Caversham tells his son that Chiltern has denounced the Argentine canal scheme in the House of Commons. Lady Chiltern appears, and Lord Goring tells her that Chiltern's letter has been destroyed but that Mrs Cheveley has stolen her note and plans to use it to destroy her marriage. At that moment, Chiltern enters while reading Lady Chiltern's letter, but as the letter does not have the name of the addressee, he assumes it is meant for him, and reads it as a letter of forgiveness. The two are reconciled. Lady Chiltern initially agrees to support Chiltern's decision to renounce his career in politics, but Goring dissuades her from allowing her husband to resign. When Chiltern refuses Goring his sister's hand in marriage, still believing he has taken up with Mrs Cheveley, Lady Chiltern is forced to explain last night's events and the true nature of the letter. Chiltern relents, and Goring and Mabel are permitted to marry. Lady Chiltern reaffirms her love for her husband and says, "For both of us a new life is beginning".
Reception
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]
In
The Pall Mall Gazette
,
H. G. Wells
wrote of the play:
It is not excellent; indeed, after
Lady Windermere's Fan
and
The Woman of No Importance
, it is decidedly disappointing. But worse have succeeded, and it was at least excellently received. ... But, taking it seriously, and disregarding any possibly imaginary tendency towards a new width of treatment, the play is unquestionably very poor.
[14]
William Archer
wrote, "
An Ideal Husband
is a very able and entertaining piece of work, charmingly written, wherever Mr. Wilde can find it in his heart to
sufflaminate
his wit. There are several scenes in which the dialogue is heavily overburdened with witticisms, not always of the best alloy. ...
An Ideal Husband
, however, does not positively lack good things, but simply suffers from a disproportionate profusion of inferior chatter."
[15]
A. B. Walkley
called the play "a
strepitous
, polychromatic, scintillant affair, dexterous as a conjurer's trick of legerdemain, clever with a cleverness so excessive as to be almost monstrous and uncanny". He found the plot unbelievable, and thought that although the play, "by sheer cleverness, keeps one continually amused and interested", Wilde's work was "not only poor and sterile, but essentially vulgar".
[16]
George Bernard Shaw
praised the play: "In a certain sense Mr Wilde is to me our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre. Such a feat scandalizes the Englishman...".
[17]
In 1996 the critic Bindon Russell wrote that
An Ideal Husband
is "the most autobiographical of Wilde's plays, mirroring, as it does, his own situation of a double life and an incipient scandal with the emergence of terrible secrets. Whilst Lord Goring is a character with much of Wilde's own wit, insight and compassion, Gertrude Chiltern can be seen as a portrait of
Constance [Wilde]
".
[18]
Production history
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]
Britain
[
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]
The first
West End
revival was presented by
George Alexander
in May 1914 at the
St James's Theatre
, and featured
Arthur Wontner
as Sir Robert Chiltern,
Phyllis Neilson-Terry
as Lady Chiltern,
Hilda Moore
as Mrs Cheveley and Alexander as Lord Goring. The play was next staged in London at the
Westminster Theatre
in 1943?44, with
Manning Whiley
as Sir Robert Chiltern, Rosemary Scott as Lady Chiltern,
Martita Hunt
as Mrs Cheveley,
Roland Culver
as Lord Goring and
Irene Vanbrugh
as Lady Markby, set design by
Rex Whistler
.
[19]
A London revival in 1965?66 ran at three West End theatres in succession; it starred
Michael Denison
as Sir Robert Chiltern,
Dulcie Gray
as Lady Chiltern,
Margaret Lockwood
as Mrs Cheveley and
Richard Todd
as Lord Goring. The play was again seen at the Westminster in 1989 in a short-lived revival, and in 1992 a new production was presented at the
Globe Theatre
which was subsequently seen in four other London theatres and on
Broadway
between November 1992 and March 1999. It was directed by
Peter Hall
, and the original cast featured
David Yelland
as Sir Robert Chiltern,
Hannah Gordon
as Lady Chiltern,
Anna Carteret
as Mrs Cheveley,
Martin Shaw
as Lord Goring,
Michael Denison
as Lord Caversham and
Dulcie Gray
as Lady Markby. The various stagings of the production ran for an aggregate three years, the longest running production of a Wilde play.
[b]
A production at the
Vaudeville Theatre
, London in 2010?11 featured
Alexander Hanson
as Sir Robert Chiltern,
Rachael Stirling
as Lady Chiltern,
Samantha Bond
as Mrs Cheveley and
Elliot Cowan
. A revival at the same theatre in 2018 featured
Nathaniel Parker
and
Sally Bretton
as the Chilterns, the father and son combination of
Edward Fox
as Lord Caversham and
Freddie Fox
as Lord Goring, and
Frances Barber
as Mrs Cheveley, and
Susan Hampshire
as Lady Markby.
[19]
International
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The play was seen in the US in March 1895, running at the
Lyceum Theatre
on Broadway for 40 performances.
[20]
It was revived on Broadway at the
Comedy Theatre
in 1918 with a cast including
Norman Trevor
and
Beatrice Beckley
as the Chilterns,
Julian L'Estrange
as Lord Goring and
Constance Collier
as Mrs Cheveley.
[21]
The next (and at 2021 the most recent) Broadway presentation was Peter Hall's production, seen at the
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
in 1996?97, featuring its original West End lead players, except for the Lady Chiltern, now played by
Penny Downie
.
[22]
An Ideal Husband
was produced in Australia in April 1895 by the
Brough-Boucicault
company;
[23]
they gave the play its New Zealand premiere later in the same year.
[24]
The Irish premiere was in Dublin in 1896, given (with no mention of the author's name) by a touring company managed by Hawtrey, at the
Gaiety Theatre
. The cast included
Alma Stanley
as Mrs Cheveley and Cosmo Stuart, promoted from his small role in the London production, as Lord Goring.
[25]
A French translation was given in
Geneva
in 1944.
[26]
The first performance in France recorded by
Les Archives du spectacle
was in 1955; the site records seven French productions between then and 2016.
[26]
Settings
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]
Rex Whistler
designs for the 1943?44 London revival:
Commemoration
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]
To mark the centenary of the first production,
Sir John Gielgud
unveiled a plaque at the Haymarket Theatre in January 1995, in the presence of, among many others, Wilde's grandson
Merlin Holland
and the
Marquess of Queensberry
.
[27]
Adaptations
[
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]
Films
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]
There have been at least five adaptations of the play for the cinema: in 1935,
a German film
directed by
Herbert Selpin
and starring
Brigitte Helm
and
Sybille Schmitz
; in 1947,
a British adaptation
produced by
London Films
and starring
Paulette Goddard
,
Michael Wilding
and
Diana Wynyard
; in 1980 a
Soviet version
starring
Lyudmila Gurchenko
and
Yury Yakovlev
; in 1999
a British film
starring
Julianne Moore
,
Minnie Driver
,
Jeremy Northam
,
Cate Blanchett
and
Rupert Everett
; and in 2000
a British film
starring
James Wilby
and
Sadie Frost
.
Radio and television
[
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]
The
BBC
has broadcast seven radio adaptations since its first, in 1926: a 1932 version starring
Leslie Perrins
and
Kyrle Bellew
; a radio version of the 1943 Westminster Theatre production; a
Bristol Old Vic
version in 1947 featuring
William Devlin
,
Elizabeth Sellars
,
Catherine Lacey
and
Robert Eddison
; a 1950 production with
Griffith Jones
,
Fay Compton
and
Isabel Jeans
; a 1954 version produced by
Val Gielgud
; a 1959 adaptation starring
Tony Britton
and
Faith Brook
; a 1970 version with
Noel Johnson
,
Ronald Lewis
,
Jane Wenham
and
Rosemary Martin
; and a 2007 adaption with
Alex Jennings
,
Emma Fielding
,
Janet McTeer
and
Jasper Britton
.
[28]
BBC television adaptations were broadcast in 1958 (with
Ronald Leigh-Hunt
,
Sarah Lawson
,
Faith Brook
and
Tony Britton
)
[29]
and 1969 (with
Keith Michell
,
Dinah Sheridan
,
Margaret Leighton
and
Jeremy Brett
).
[30]
A television version (
Ein Idealer Gatte
) in German was broadcast in June 1958 by
Nord und Westdeutscher Rundfunkverband
(NWRV) with
Marius Goring
as Lord Goring and
Albert Lieven
as Sir Robert Chiltern.
[
citation needed
]
Notes, references and sources
[
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]
Notes
[
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]
- ^
According to
Who's Who in the Theatre
an average of 12 new productions a year ran in the
West End
for more than 100 performances in the decade 1890 to 1899, including plays, operettas, burlesques and other genres.
- ^
The longest
continuously
running Wilde production was
John Gielgud
's 1945 production of
Lady Windermere's Fan
which run for 18 months at the Haymarket.
[19]
References
[
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]
- ^
a
b
Jackson 1993
, p. xxxvi
- ^
Seeney, Michael (January 2014). "
An Ideal Husband
: The First Night".
The Wildean
(44): 2?23 (13).
ISSN
1357-4949
.
JSTOR
48569038
.
- ^
Wells, H. G.
Unsigned review in
The Pall Mall Gazette
, 4 January 1895, p. 3, quoted in
Beckson 2003
, p. 195
- ^
Archer, William
.
Pall Mall Budget
, 10 January 1895, quoted in
Beckson 2003
, p. 198
- ^
Walkley, A. B.
Review in
The Speaker
, 12 January 1895, quoted in
Beckson 2003
, pp. 203?205
- ^
Shaw, Bernard
. Review in
The Saturday Review
, 12 January 1895, quoted in
Beckson 2003
, p. 199
- ^
Russell, Bindon (July 1996). "
An Ideal Husband
: At the Theatre Royal, Haymarket".
The Wildean
(9): 36?37.
ISSN
1357-4949
.
JSTOR
45269537
.
- ^
a
b
c
"
An Ideal Husband
, London performance history"
, This is Theatre. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
- ^
An Ideal Husband
(Lyceum Theatre)
at the
Internet Broadway Database
- ^
An Ideal Husband
(Comedy Theatre)
at the
Internet Broadway Database
- ^
An Ideal Husband
(Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
at the
Internet Broadway Database
- ^
"
An Ideal Husband
at the Lyceum"
,
The Daily Telegraph
, Sydney, 13 April 1895, p. 6
- ^
"The Brough and Boucicault Company"
,
The New Zealand Herald
, 16 October 1895, p. 5
- ^
"Gaiety Theatre",
Freeman's Journal
, 26 October 1896, p. 4; and "
An Ideal Husband
at the Theatre Royal",
Edinburgh Evening News
, 20 October 1896, p. 2
- ^
a
b
"
Un mari ideal
"
,
Les Archives du spectacle
. Retrieved 16 April 2021
- ^
Russell, Bindon (July 1995). "Commemorative Plaque at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket".
The Wildean
(7): 9?13.
ISSN
1357-4949
.
JSTOR
45269165
.
- ^
"An Ideal Husband"
, BBC Genome. Retrieved 16 April 2021
- ^
"Sunday-Night Theatre:
An Ideal Husband
"
.
BBC Genome Project
. 28 December 1958
. Retrieved
12 April
2023
.
- ^
"Play of the Month presenting:
An Ideal Husband
"
.
BBC Genome Project
. 11 May 1969
. Retrieved
12 April
2023
.
Sources
[
edit
]
- Beckson, Karl
(2003).
Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage
. London: Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-13-472286-0
.
- Jackson, Russell (1993). "Introduction".
An Ideal Husband
. London: A & C Black.
ISBN
978-0-71-363789-2
.
- Parker, John, ed. (1922).
Who's Who in the Theatre
(4th ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons.
OCLC
473894893
.
- Raby, Peter (1997). "Wilde's Comedies of Society". In Raby, Peter (ed.).
The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde
. London: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
978-0-52-147987-5
.
- Wearing, J. P.
(1976).
The London Stage, 1890?1899: A Calendar of Plays and Players
. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press.
ISBN
978-0-81-080910-9
– via
Internet Archive
.
- Wilde, Oscar (1899).
An Ideal Husband
. London: L. Smithers.
OCLC
1046540480
.
- Wilde, Oscar (1966).
Plays
. London: Penguin.
OCLC
16004478
.
Further reading
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]
External links
[
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]
Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
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