An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 stage play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. The action is set in London, in "the present", and takes place over the course of twenty-four hours.

This article is about the play. For the various film adaptations, see An Ideal Husband (disambiguation).
Lord Goring confronts Mrs. Cheveley about a stolen bracelet. From a 1901 collected edition of Wilde's work

After The Importance of Being Earnest, it is Wilde's most popularly produced play.[1]

Background

In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband; he completed it later that winter. His work began at Goring-on-Thames, after which he named the character Lord Goring, and concluded writing at St James's Place. He initially sent the completed play to the Garrick Theatre, where the manager rejected it, but it was soon accepted by the Haymarket Theatre, where Lewis Waller had temporarily taken control. Waller was an excellent actor and cast himself as Sir Robert Chiltern. The play gave the Haymarket the success it desperately needed.

After opening on 3 January 1895, the play continued for 124 performances. In April of that year, Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" and his name was publicly removed from the play. On 6 April, the same day as Wilde's arrest, the play moved to the Criterion Theatre where it ran from 13–27 April. The play was published in 1899, although Wilde was not listed as its author. This 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.

Characters
  • The Earl of Caversham, K.G.
  • Lord Goring, his son (his forename is Arthur)
  • Sir Robert Chiltern, Bart., Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs
  • Vicomte de Nanjac, attaché at the French embassy in London
  • Mr. Montford, secretary to Sir Robert Chiltern
  • Mason, butler to Sir Robert Chiltern
  • Phipps, butler to Lord Goring
  • James, footman to Sir Robert Chiltern
  • Harold, footman to Lord Goring
  • Lady Chiltern, wife of Sir Robert Chiltern (her forename is Gertrude)
  • Lady Markby, a friend of the Chilterns and of Mrs. Cheveley
  • The Countess of Basildon, a friend of the Chilterns
  • Mrs. Marchmont, a friend of the Chilterns
  • Miss Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern's sister
  • Mrs. Cheveley, a blackmailer and Lady Chiltern's former schoolmate (her forename is Laura)

Plot

Act I

The play opens during a dinner party at the home of Sir Robert Chiltern in London's fashionable Grosvenor Square. Sir Robert, an esteemed member of the House of Commons, and his wife, Lady Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his friend Lord Goring, a dandified bachelor and close friend to the Chilterns, Mabel Chiltern, and other genteel guests. During the party, Mrs. Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern from their school days, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Apparently, Mrs. Cheveley's late mentor and lover, Baron Arnheim, induced the young Sir Robert 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. Chevely. 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 the lady's wishes and apparently seals his doom. Also toward the end of Act I, Mabel and Lord Goring come upon a diamond brooch that Lord Goring gave someone many years ago. Goring takes the brooch and asks that Mabel inform him if anyone comes to retrieve it.

Act II

In the second act, which also takes place at Sir Robert's house, Lord Goring urges Sir Robert to fight Mrs. Cheveley and admit his guilt to his wife. He also reveals that he and Mrs. Cheveley were formerly engaged. After finishing his conversation with Sir Robert, 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 Sir Robert's reneging on his promise, she ultimately exposes Sir Robert to his wife once they are both in the room. Unable to accept a Sir Robert now unmasked, Lady Chiltern then denounces her husband and refuses to forgive him.

Act III

In the third act, set in Lord Goring's home, Goring receives a pink letter from Lady Chiltern asking for his help, a letter that might be read as a compromising love note. Just as Goring receives this note, however, his father, Lord Caversham, drops in and demands to know when his son will marry. A visit from Sir Robert, 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. Ultimately, Sir Robert discovers Mrs. Cheveley in the drawing room and, convinced of an affair between these two former lovers, angrily storms out of the house.

When she and Lord Goring confront each other, Mrs. Cheveley makes a proposal. Claiming to still love Goring from their early days of courtship, she offers to exchange Sir Robert'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. Apparently Mrs. Cheveley 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, however, Mrs. Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vengefully she plans to send it to Sir Robert misconstrued as a love letter addressed to Goring. Mrs. Cheveley exits the house in triumph.

Act IV

The final act, which returns to Grosvenor Square, resolves the many plot complications sketched above with a decidedly happy ending. Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted by Mabel. Lord Caversham informs his son that Sir Robert has denounced the Argentine canal scheme before the House. Lady Chiltern then appears, and Lord Goring informs her that Sir Robert'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, Sir Robert 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 reconcile. Lady Chiltern initially agrees to support Sir Robert's decision to renounce his career in politics, but Lord Goring dissuades her from allowing her husband to resign. When Sir Robert refuses Lord 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. Sir Robert relents, and Lord Goring and Mabel are permitted to wed.

Themes

Many of the themes of An Ideal Husband were influenced by the situation Oscar Wilde found himself in during the early 1890s. Stressing the need to be forgiven for past sins, and the irrationality of ruining lives of great value to society because of people's hypocritical reactions to those sins, Wilde may have been speaking to his own situation, and his own fears regarding his affair (still secret).[2] Other themes include the position of women in society. In a climactic moment Gertrude Chiltern "learns her lesson" and repeats Lord Goring's advice "A man's life is of more value than a woman's." Often criticised by contemporary theatre analysers as overt sexism, the idea being expressed in the monologue is that women, despite serving as the source of morality in Victorian era marriages, should be less judgmental of their husbands' mistakes because of complexities surrounding the balance that husbands of that era had to keep between their domestic and their worldly obligations.[3] [4] Further, the script plays against both sides of feminism and sexism as, for example, Lord Caversham, exclaims near the end that Mabel displays "a good deal of common sense" after concluding earlier that "Common sense is the privilege of our sex."

A third theme expresses anti-upper class sentiments. Lady Basildon, and Lady Markby are consistently portrayed as absurdly two-faced, saying one thing one moment, then turning around to say the exact opposite (to great comic effect) to someone else. The overall portrayal of the upper class in England displays an attitude of hypocrisy and strict observance of arbitrary rules.

Reception

The play proved extremely popular in its original run, lasting over a hundred performances. Critics also lauded Wilde's balance of a multitude of theatrical elements within the play. George Bernard Shaw praised the play, saying "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."[2]

Yet a week after the opening of the play at the Haymarket Theatre, Oscar Wilde in an interview in Sketch, had dismissed the role of the public and its perceptions in judging the success of his play.[5]

Selected production history

An Ideal Husband was originally produced by Lewis Waller, premiering on 3 January 1895 at the Haymarket Theatre. The run lasted 124 performances. The original cast of the play was:[6]

  • The Earl of Caversham – Mr. Alfred Bishop
  • Viscount Goring – Mr. Charles H. Hawtrey
  • Sir Robert Chiltern – Mr. Lewis Waller
  • Vicomte de Nanjac – Mr. Cosmo Stuart
  • Mr. Montford – Mr. Harry Stanford
  • Phipps – Mr. C. H. E. Brookfield
  • Mason – Mr. H. Deane
  • James – Mr. Charles Meyrick
  • Harold – Mr. Goodhart
  • Lady Chiltern – Miss Julia Neilson
  • Lady Markby – Miss Fanny Brough
  • Countess of Basildon – Miss Vane Featherston
  • Mrs. Marchmont – Miss Helen Forsyth
  • Miss Mabel Chiltern – Miss Maud Millet
  • Mrs. Cheveley – Miss Florence West

Oscar Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" (homosexuality) during the run of the production. At the trial, the actors involved in the production testified as witnesses against him. The production continued but credit for authorship was taken away from Wilde.[2]

In 1992, the Royal Exchange, Manchester staged a production directed by James Maxwell with Brenda Blethyn as Mrs Laura Cheveley, Robert Glenister as Lord Goring, Una Stubbs as Lady Markby and Tom Chadbon as Sir Robert Chiltern.

In 1996 a popular West End revival of An Ideal Husband with Martin Shaw as Lord Goring was transferred to New York and featured the Broadway debut of film stars Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray.[7]

Adaptations

Films

Television and radio

The BBC produced a version which was broadcast in 1969 as part of their Play of the Month series. It stars Jeremy Brett and Margaret Leighton and was directed by Rudolph Cartier. It is available on DVD as part of The Oscar Wilde Collection box-set.

BBC Radio 3 broadcast a full production in 2007 directed by David Timson and starring Alex Jennings, Emma Fielding, Jasper Britton, Janet McTeer and Geoffrey Palmer. This production was re-broadcast on Valentine's Day 2010.

L.A. Theatre Works produced an audio adaptation of the play starring Jacqueline Bisset, Rosalind Ayres, Martin Jarvis, Miriam Margolyes, Alfred Molina, Yeardley Smith and Robert Machray. It is available as a CD set, ISBN 1-58081-215-5.

See also

References
  1. An Ideal Husband
  2. Shaw Festival Study Guide: An Ideal Husband
  3. Ken Bullock. "Wilde's Humorous An Ideal Husband Staged by Cal Shakes". Berkeley Daily Planet, 17 July 2008.
  4. "An Ideal Husband Pitlochry review", The Guardian, 13 September 2010.
  5. "Revising Wilde". Oxford Scholarship Online. Archived from the original on 11 July 2015. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  6. Manis, James D. "An Ideal Husband" Archived 22 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  7. "An Ideal Husband... and Wife". Playbill
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