An Ideal Husband
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[13] 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.
[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.
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".
[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.
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.
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.
[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.
The cast included Alma Stanley as Mrs Cheveley and Cosmo Stuart, promoted from his small role in the London production, as Lord Goring.
[26] Rex Whistler designs for the 1943–44 London revival: 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.
[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).
