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Customer Review: Gotta love Oscar Wilde
I love Oscar Wilde's penchant for reversals. This play is terribly good fun but makes you think at the same time. I want to see the play acted out on stage now that I've read it!
Customer Review: Moral Clarity and Hedonic Flippancy
As a dish for Oscar Wilde's inimitable and devilishly sweet locution, "An Ideal Husband" accentuates adequately. Like Roger Moore's 70's Bond flicks (before they became cartoons in the 80's), the play is saturated with the style, but very little of the substance from previous genius.
The excuse for, more than the theme of, the play is the unforgiving and insincere moral code among the social elite of fin de siècle London. Sir Robert Chiltern's otherwise ivory political career grew from selling a Cabinet secret to Stock Exchange speculator, Baron Arnheim, and Mrs. Cheveley, the since-deceased Baron's intimate, possesses the letter of documentation. All she asks for the letter's destruction is Sir Robert's official support of the Argentine Canal Company, in which she has invested and he knows to be a swindle. More than an end to his political career, he fears publication of the letter will end his marriage to his admirable, but morally unrelenting wife, Lady Chiltern. As if to release his audience from any pretension of seriousness, Wilde presents Society's dandy, in the form of Lord Goring, as both his foundation of moral clarity and hedonic flippancy. A string of one-liners and contrived plot twists later and we delight in what Wilde considers the proper end to any play or romantic relationship, a pleasing settlement.
"An Ideal Husband" is the Daily Star, not the Financial Times. Wilde is truly genius when seriousness is woven through his works, and particularly when his seriousness is personal; but, here he is entertaining nonetheless. If you're just introducing yourself to Oscar Wilde, I recommend including this work after a more flattering introduction, lest you mistake Wilde as merely entertaining.
Customer Review: Great easy Wilde's book
This book is a great nineteenth century literature of one of mi favourites writers ever . It makes a great picture of the english bourgeoisie of the century combined with humour, sarcasm and moral content. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Customer Review: Life repeats itself meaninglessly- T.S. Eliot
The play is a description of the morals and values of Victorian England, where a good hearted man, Chiltern is torn apart between remorse over a mistake he committed in the past and his love and devotion to his wife.
It was quite fascinating to read Chiltern's thoughts of being a victim of feminine adoration as opposed to his masculine love that accepts loved one's imperfections.
Apparently, Wilde believes that the acceptance of loved ones' flaws is a key part of love. Oscar Wilde examines love, honesty, friendship, and forgiveness with a humorous, forcibly happy ending.
Nice plot that cleverly mixes seriousness with humor and cynicism with hope. Each character is attractively built, even Mrs. Cheveley, who is the quintessential evil lady, is frankly an attractive evil character
A century later, the same moral irony and the same human nature still exist.
Product Description
Wilde's scintillating drawing-room comedy revolves around a blackmail scheme that forces a married couple to reexamine their moral standards. A supporting cast of young lovers, society matrons, and a formidable femme fatale exchange sparkling repartee, keeping the action of the play at a lively pace.
Customer Review: Chiltern: "You prefer to be natural?"
Chevely: "Sometimes. But it is such a difficult pose to keep up."
Perhaps not so well known as "The Importance of Being Earnest," this has all the same banter, manners, and sharp-eyed look at the crumbling edge of the upper crust in Vistorian England. It pleases the attentive listener at many levels. Considered only as a stream of one-liners and clever quips, it delivers all you could ask for.
But because it's Wilde, it's also a wild tirade against the mannered (sometimes ill-mannered) gentry. Behind that, it has a good deal to say about tolerance for the flaws of any fallible human - and Wilde could speak on human flaws with rare authority. And, like any truly great work, its examination of honesty (and dis-) reveals a good bit about today's world, a century later.
I'm not normally a reader of plays. I don't have that inner ear that brings words on the page to life. Wilde gives me some idea what that experience must be like, and I'm grateful for it.
//wiredweird
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