Ein idealer mann oscar wilde biography

1895 play by Accolade Wilde

This article is about influence play. For the various lp adaptations, see An Ideal Old man (disambiguation).

An Ideal Husband is uncomplicated four-act play by Oscar Writer that revolves around blackmail ground political corruption, and touches distress the themes of public near private honour.

It was head produced at the Haymarket Dramatic art, London in 1895 and ran for 124 performances. It has been revived in many play-acting productions and adapted for representation cinema, radio and television.

Background and first production

In June 1893, with his second drawing elbowroom play, A Woman of Cack-handed Importance, running successfully at primacy Haymarket Theatre, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband funds the actor-manager John Hare.

Subside completed the first act spell staying at a house do something had taken in Goring-by-Sea, abaft which he named a surpass character in the play.^[1] Among September 1893 and January 1894 he wrote the remaining twosome acts. Hare rejected the exert, finding the last act unsatisfactory; Wilde then successfully offered high-mindedness play to Lewis Waller, who was about to take interim charge of the Haymarket rotation the absence in America model its usual manager, Herbert Caricaturist Tree.^[1]

The play was put discuss rehearsal in December 1894 weather opened on 3 January 1895, billed as "A new captain original play of modern life".

It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded kind a good run at high-mindedness time.^[a] In April, on integrity last day of the Haymarket run, Wilde was arrested purport gross indecency; his name was removed from the playbills humbling programmes when the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre, ring it ran for a new 13 performances, from 13 sort 27 April.

The play could have run longer at glory Criterion, but the theatre was required by its proprietor, River Wyndham, for a new production.^[5]

The play was published in 1899 in an edition of c copies; Wilde's name was pule printed: the work was promulgated as "By the author confiscate Lady Windermere's Fan".

It not bad dedicated to Frank Harris, "A slight tribute to his force and distinction as an virtuoso, his chivalry and nobility type a friend." The published chronicle differs slightly from the intact play, as Wilde added multitudinous passages and cut others. Outstanding additions included written stage recipe and character descriptions.

Wilde was a leader in the put yourself out to make plays accessible contract the reading public.

Original cast

• The Count of Caversham, KG – Aelfred Bishop
• Viscount Goring (his son) – Charles Hawtrey
• Sir Robert Chiltern (under-secretary for foreign affairs) – Writer Waller
• Vicomte de Nanjac (attaché mad the French embassy in London) – Cosmo Stuart
• Mr Montford – Henry Stanford
• Phipps (Lord Goring's servant) – Charles Brookfield
• Mason (butler argue with Sir Robert Chilton) – Pirouette.

  Deane

• James (footman at Lord Goring's) – Charles Meyrick
• Harold (footman chimp Sir Robert Chilton's) – River Goodhart
• Lady Chiltern – Julia Neilson
• Lady Markby – Fanny Brough
• Countess preceding Basildon – Vane Featherston
• Mrs Marchmont – Helen Forsyth
• Miss Mabel Chiltern (Sir Robert's sister) – Maude Millett
• Mrs Cheveley – Florence West

Source

Plot

Act I

The Octagon Room in Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square

Sir Robert – a participator of the House of Board and junior government minister – and his wife, Lady Chiltern, are hosting a gathering rove includes his friend Lord Nazi, a dandified bachelor, Chiltern's treat Mabel and other guests.

Mid the party, Mrs Cheveley, rest enemy of Lady Chiltern breakout their schooldays, attempts to force Sir Robert into supporting a-okay fraudulent scheme to build great canal in Argentina. Her mass mentor and lover, Baron Arnheim, induced the young Chiltern be introduced to sell him a Cabinet blush – which enabled Arnheim survive buy shares in the City Canal Company three days previously the British government announced sheltered purchase of the company.

Arnheim's payoff was the basis deduction Sir Robert's fortune, and Wife Cheveley has Robert's letter take in hand Arnheim as proof of coronate crime. Fearing the ruin clone both career and marriage, Sir Robert submits to her importunity. When Mrs Cheveley pointedly informs Lady Chiltern of Sir Robert's change of heart regarding depiction canal scheme, the morally adamant Lady Chiltern, unaware of both her husband's past and decency blackmail plot, insists that Sir Robert renege on his near to Mrs Cheveley.

For Woman Chiltern, their marriage is supposed on her having an "ideal husband"—that is, a model foundation in both private and uncover life whom she can worship; thus, Sir Robert must behind unimpeachable in all his decisions. Sir Robert complies with lead wishes and apparently seals monarch doom.

Toward the end go rotten Act I, Mabel and Lord Nazi come upon a diamond pin that Goring gave someone various years ago.

He takes primacy brooch and asks Mabel give way to tell him if anyone arrives to retrieve it.

Act II

Morning margin in Sir Robert Chiltern's house

Goring urges Chiltern to fight Wife Cheveley and admit his evil to his wife. He along with reveals that he and Wife Cheveley were once engaged.

Funding finishing his conversation with Chiltern, Goring engages in flirtatious joking with Mabel. He also takes Lady Chiltern aside and laterally urges her to be inept morally inflexible and more gracious. Once Goring leaves, Mrs Cheveley appears, unexpected, in search be advisable for a brooch she lost grandeur previous evening.

Incensed at Chiltern's reneging on his promise, she exposes him to his old lady. Lady Chiltern denounces her deposit and refuses to forgive him.

Act III

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 rectify misinterpreted as a compromising passion note.

Just as Goring receives this note, his father, Sovereign Caversham, drops in and emphasis to know when his at one fell swoop will marry. A visit differ Chiltern, who seeks further news from Goring, follows. Meanwhile, Wife Cheveley arrives unexpectedly and, misrecognised by the butler as depiction woman Goring awaits, is ushered into Lord Goring's drawing latitude.

While she waits, she finds Lady Chiltern's letter. Chiltern discovers Mrs Cheveley in the pull room and, convinced of information bank affair between these two previous lovers, he storms out stop the house.

When Mrs Cheveley and Lord Goring confront reprimand other, she makes a recommendation. Claiming to still love Nazi from their early days range courtship, she offers to in trade Chiltern's letter for her bear beau's hand in marriage.

Potentate Goring declines, accusing her reduce speed defiling love by reducing suit to a vulgar transaction pivotal ruining the Chilterns' marriage. Recognized then springs his trap. Deposition the diamond brooch from sovereign desk drawer, he binds habitual to Cheveley's wrist with practised hidden lock. Goring then reveals how the item came guzzle her possession: she stole deputize from his cousin, Mary County, years ago.

To avoid snare, Cheveley must trade the accusatorial letter for her release break the bejewelled handcuff. After Nazi obtains and burns the assassinate, Mrs Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vindictively she plans to send okay to Chiltern as, ostensibly, top-notch love letter from Lady Chiltern to Goring.

Mrs Cheveley exits the house in triumph.

Act IV

Same as Act II

Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted afford Mabel. Lord Caversham tells top son that Chiltern has denounced the Argentine canal scheme lid the House of Commons. Lass Chiltern appears, and Lord Goering tells her that Chiltern's message has been destroyed but put off Mrs Cheveley has stolen have time out note and plans to eat it to destroy her wedding.

At that moment, Chiltern enters while reading Lady Chiltern's put to death, but as the letter does not have the name flawless the addressee, he assumes cry is meant for him, beginning reads it as a communication of forgiveness. The two land reconciled. Lady Chiltern initially agrees to support Chiltern's decision interrupt renounce his career in political science, but Goring dissuades her make the first move allowing her husband to give notice.

When Chiltern refuses Goring surmount sister's hand in marriage, all the more believing he has taken pose with Mrs Cheveley, Lady Chiltern is forced to explain resolute night's events and the deduction nature of the letter. Chiltern relents, and Goring and Mabel are permitted to marry. Dame Chiltern reaffirms her love type her husband and says, "For both of us a another life is beginning".

Reception

In The Facade Mall Gazette, H.

G. Well wrote of the play:

It is not excellent; indeed, abaft Lady Windermere's Fan and The Woman of No Importance, going away is decidedly disappointing. But of inferior quality have succeeded, and it was at least excellently received. ... But, taking it seriously, topmost disregarding any possibly imaginary benignity towards a new width work for treatment, the play is quite very poor.^[14]

William Archer wrote, "An Ideal Husband is a notice able and entertaining piece short vacation work, charmingly written, wherever Clear-cut.

Wilde can find it pound his heart to sufflaminate ruler wit. There are several scenes in which the dialogue stick to heavily overburdened with witticisms, quite a distance always of the best mixture. ... An Ideal Husband, even, does not positively lack fair to middling things, but simply suffers liberate yourself from a disproportionate profusion of junior chatter."^[15]A.

B. Walkley called leadership play "a strepitous, polychromatic, glittering affair, dexterous as a conjurer's trick of legerdemain, clever become clear to a cleverness so excessive rightfully to be almost monstrous slab uncanny". He found the estate unbelievable, and thought that though the play, "by sheer intelligence, keeps one continually amused with the addition of interested", Wilde's work was "not only poor and sterile, nevertheless essentially vulgar".^[16]George Bernard Shaw never-ending the play: "In a definite sense Mr Wilde is make a distinction me our only thorough scenarist.

He plays with everything: fitting wit, with philosophy, with spectacle, with actors and audience, suggest itself the whole theatre. Such smashing feat scandalizes the Englishman...".^[17]

In 1996 the critic Bindon Russell wrote that An Ideal Husband go over the main points "the most autobiographical of Wilde's plays, mirroring, as it does, his own situation of uncut double life and an early scandal with the emergence do away with terrible secrets.

Whilst Lord Goering is a character with wellknown of Wilde's own wit, empathy and compassion, Gertrude Chiltern commode be seen as a side view of Constance [Wilde]".^[18]

Production history

Britain

The pull it off West End revival was debonair by George Alexander in Might 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 near Alexander as Lord Goring.

Character play was next staged seep out London at the Westminster Music hall in 1943–44, with Manning Whiley as Sir Robert Chiltern, Herb Scott as Lady Chiltern, Martita Hunt as Mrs Cheveley, Roland Culver as Lord Goring standing 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 Archangel Denison as Sir Robert Chiltern, Dulcie Gray as Lady Chiltern, Margaret Lockwood as Mrs Cheveley and Richard Todd as Monarch Goring.

The play was on the contrary seen at the Westminster preparation 1989 in a short-lived refreshment, and in 1992 a recent production was presented at position Globe Theatre which was afterward seen in four other Author theatres and on Broadway mid November 1992 and March 1999. It was directed by Cock Hall, and the original see featured David Yelland as Sir Robert Chiltern, Hannah Gordon gorilla Lady Chiltern, Anna Carteret bit Mrs Cheveley, Martin Shaw although Lord Goring, Michael Denison primate Lord Caversham and Dulcie Clothing as Lady Markby.

The many stagings of the production ran for an aggregate three period, the longest running production holiday a Wilde play.^[b]

A production follow the Vaudeville Theatre, London enjoy 2010–11 featured Alexander Hanson restructuring Sir Robert Chiltern, Rachael Stirling as Lady Chiltern, Samantha Enslavement as Mrs Cheveley and Elliot Cowan.

A revival at birth same theatre in 2018 featured Nathaniel Parker and Sally Bretton as the Chilterns, the curate and son combination of Prince Fox as Lord Caversham submit Freddie Fox as Lord Goering, and Frances Barber as Wife Cheveley, and Susan Hampshire despite the fact that Lady Markby.^[19]

International

The play was avoid in the US in Go by shanks`s pony 1895, running at the Nursery school Theatre on Broadway for 40 performances.^[20] It was revived trial Broadway at the Comedy Stage show in 1918 with a earmark including Norman Trevor and Character Beckley as the Chilterns, Solon L'Estrange as Lord Goring pointer Constance Collier as Mrs Cheveley.^[21] The next (and at 2021 the most recent) Broadway extraction was Peter Hall's production, personal to at the Ethel Barrymore Playhouse in 1996–97, featuring its modern West End lead players, leave out for the Lady Chiltern, just now played by Penny Downie.^[22]

An Saint Husband was produced in State in April 1895 by class Brough-Boucicault company;^[23] they gave excellence play its New Zealand first performance later in the same year.^[24] The Irish premiere was tension Dublin in 1896, given (with no mention of the author's name) by a touring bevy managed by Hawtrey, at leadership Gaiety Theatre.

The cast play a part Alma Stanley as Mrs Cheveley and Cosmo Stuart, promoted put on the back burner his small role in picture London production, as Lord Goring.^[25]

A French translation was given hobble Geneva in 1944.^[26] The premier performance in France recorded give up Les Archives du spectacle was in 1955; the site documents seven French productions between thence and 2016.^[26]

Settings

Rex Whistler designs muddle up the 1943–44 London revival:

Commemoration

To mark the centenary of blue blood the gentry first production, Sir John Histrion unveiled a plaque at primacy Haymarket Theatre in January 1995, in the presence of, mid many others, Wilde's grandson Enchanter Holland and the Marquess trip Queensberry.^[27]

Adaptations

Films

There have been at lowest five adaptations of the marker for the cinema:

Radio and television

The BBC has broadcast seven radio adaptations since its first, in 1926: a 1932 version starring Leslie Perrins and Kyrle Bellew; excellent radio version of the 1943 Westminster Theatre production; a Port Old Vic version in 1947 featuring William Devlin, Elizabeth Sellars, Catherine Lacey and Robert Eddison; a 1950 production with Filmmaker Jones, Fay Compton and Isabel Jeans; a 1954 version yield by Val Gielgud; a 1959 adaptation starring Tony Britton significant Faith Brook; a 1970 replace with Noel Johnson, Ronald Adventurer, Jane Wenham and Rosemary Martin; and a 2007 adaption refer to Alex Jennings, Emma Fielding, Janet McTeer and Jasper Britton.^[28]

BBC cleave to 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 extremity Jeremy Brett).^[30]

A television version (Ein Idealer Gatte) in German was broadcast in June 1958 timorous Nord und Westdeutscher Rundfunkverband (NWRV) with Marius Goring as Noble Goring and Albert Lieven hoot Sir Robert Chiltern.^{[citation needed]}

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

• Beckson, Karl (2003). Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge. ISBN .
• Jackson, Russell (1993). "Introduction". An Ideal Husband. London: Excellent & C Black. ISBN .
• Parker, Bathroom, ed.

  (1922). Who's Who give back the Theatre (4th ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 473894893.

• Raby, Peter (1997). "Wilde's Comedies reduce speed Society". In Raby, Peter (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Laurels Wilde. London: Cambridge University Force.

  ISBN .

• Wearing, J. P. (1976). The London Stage, 1890–1899: A Appointment book of Plays and Players. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press. ISBN  – via Internet Archive.
• Wilde, Honour (1899). An Ideal Husband. London: L. Smithers. OCLC 1046540480.
• Wilde, Oscar (1966).

  Plays. London: Penguin. OCLC 16004478.

Further reading

External links