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A review by spaceisavacuum
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Two marvelous plays from the undying Oscar Wilde. I have a soft spot for plays, and though I have not read many, the outlook for the year is leaning toward a few more of them. An Ideal Husband, and a Woman of No Importance. A couple of comedic skits that entwine various persons in gossip and rumor. People had been waywardly cast into one another’s beneficence (and maleficence) to no devising of their own.
The first play, concerns Lord Arthur Chiltern and his politics. His marriage to his wife, and loyalty to her put him at odds against blackmail which Mrs. Cheveley has abetted. She would ask of him to arrange and endorse a scheme to establish a trade route with the Argentine Canal, in lieu of the Suez Canal which pioneered trading with India. This blackmail would humiliate the Lord publicly, and with his wife- who implores him, demands him not to be persuaded. Asks of their secretary, Lord Goring, to intercept a few untoward missives that are in Mrs. Cheveley’s possession. Mrs. Cheveley and Mrs. Chiltern have a lasting feud from their school days that, seems to have made one and another despise one another. Gertrude believes of her husband an ideal husband, someone who has “brought into the political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude towards life,” Sir Robert Chiltern, meanwhile, decides love, more than anything concerned- is far more important than blackmail.
A woman of no importance is about a wager, about whether kissing a woman full on the lips, having not her permission, would repulse her or otherwise. What would happen to a good American girl, who is, hysterically vowed to Lord Illingworth’s ill-begotten son.
“Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.”
The first play, concerns Lord Arthur Chiltern and his politics. His marriage to his wife, and loyalty to her put him at odds against blackmail which Mrs. Cheveley has abetted. She would ask of him to arrange and endorse a scheme to establish a trade route with the Argentine Canal, in lieu of the Suez Canal which pioneered trading with India. This blackmail would humiliate the Lord publicly, and with his wife- who implores him, demands him not to be persuaded. Asks of their secretary, Lord Goring, to intercept a few untoward missives that are in Mrs. Cheveley’s possession. Mrs. Cheveley and Mrs. Chiltern have a lasting feud from their school days that, seems to have made one and another despise one another. Gertrude believes of her husband an ideal husband, someone who has “brought into the political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude towards life,” Sir Robert Chiltern, meanwhile, decides love, more than anything concerned- is far more important than blackmail.
A woman of no importance is about a wager, about whether kissing a woman full on the lips, having not her permission, would repulse her or otherwise. What would happen to a good American girl, who is, hysterically vowed to Lord Illingworth’s ill-begotten son.
“Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.”