Theatre & Media Arts Department • College of Fine Arts and Communications • Brigham Young University

An Ideal Husband
BY OSCAR WILDE

A STUDY GUIDE (November 16, 2000)

Prepared in Conjunction with

the Pardoe Theatre Production, November 15–December 2, 2000
Compiled and Edited by Nola Smith and Bob Nelson
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Contents:

A Short Synopsis, Critical Reception ................................................................................................................. 2

Analysis ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Style of the Play, Names in An Ideal Husband ...................................................................................................... 4
Definition of Terms from An Ideal Husband .......................................................................................................... 5
Biographical Bits ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Oscar Wilde: A Chronology .............................................................................................................................. 8
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-educated by Oscar Wilde ....................................................................10
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young by Oscar Wilde..........................................................................10

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Thirtieth in a series—study guides were also prepared in conjunction with BYU productions of:

Hedda Gabler The Three Sisters A Man for All Seasons

Mother Hicks Antigone The Secret Garden
Waiting for Godot (1993) March Tale and The Comedy of Errors A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Julius Caesar The Pirates of Penzance Barefoot in the Park
The Importance of Being Earnest Henry V Waiting for Godot (1999)
Absurd Person Singular Romeo and Juliet The School for Scandal
and Woman in Mind The Shoemaker’s Holiday The Cherry Orchard
The Merry Wives of Windsor Joyful Noise Children of Eden
The Wakefield Passion Play Erasmus Montanus The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Macbeth Dancing at Lughnasa Much Ado About Nothing
The Children’s Hour

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These study guides are for teachers, students, and others who attend our productions.
We hope they enhance enjoyment and lead to deeper appreciation of the plays.

All rights reserved

© BYU Theatre & Media Arts, 2000
 A STUDY GUIDE
for
An Ideal Husband
“I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or
other I’ll be famous, and if I’m not famous, I’ll be
notorious.” Oscar Wilde, young Oxford Graduate
(Hyde 1)
“The most dangerous product of modern
civilization.” André Gide on Wilde (Calloway 30)
A n Ideal Husband was finished during the first
fortnight of February 1884, and opened January 3,
1895. The Importance of Being Earnest followed
almost immediately, opening February 14, 1895. (See
Tydeman Comedies 14-15). An Ideal Husband was not
published until 1899. (Murray 619)
On January 3rd, 1895, Oscar Wilde’s third
important play An Ideal Husband was produced by Lewis
Waller. The Prince of Wales was present at the first
night. It was almost unprecedented for Royalty to be
present at a first night, and it seemed that now Wilde’s
future was assured. George Bernard Shaw’s comment on
the play is worth repeating: “Mr. Oscar Wilde’s new play
at the Haymarket is a dangerous subject, because he has
the property of making his critics dull....He plays with
everything; with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with
actors and audience, with the whole theatre.” (Holland 13)
[note: Vyvyan Holland was Oscar Wilde’s son]
P LOT SUMMARY
W ilde sets up an instructive contrast between Lord
Goring, the witty, vain, but good-hearted
raisonneur of this well-made play, a dandy who
revels in the trivial, and earnest, generally admired, rising
statesman, Sir Robert Chiltern. During a reception at his
splendid house, Sir Robert, who is idolized by his
unworldly wife, is put under pressure by the sophisticated
Mrs. Cheveley from Vienna, a femme fatale who holds
the secret of the corrupt deal on which brilliant was based.
She wants him to repeat his previous treachery in variant
form by advocating, in parliament, a dubious scheme to
finance an Argentine canal. Mrs. Cheveley is contrasted
with the innocent Lady Chiltern (they were school-
fellows) and also with the effervescent, irreverent Mabel,
Chiltern’s younger sister, who is eventually happily
matched with Lord Goring. Her [Mrs. Cheveley’s] claim
to have more in common with Sir Robert than has his
wife has evident force. Lord Goring intervenes to trap her
by means of a bracelet-brooch he once gave to a cousin,
from whom Mrs. Chevelery stole it; but she is ultimately
defeated by Sir Robert’s unstrained confidence in his
wife’s love and loyalty. The politician and his marriage
are saved, and his wife accepts that he can only fulfil his
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
nature in public life by taking up the Cabinet post he is
offered. Yet the audience is left uncertain of Chiltern’s
capacity for self-knowledge, and aware that this is a
character who must battle for moral integrity. This is
Wilde’s most considerable reflection on the relation
between private and political morality (Morgan 39)
CRITICAL RECEPTION
M any reviewers, including William Archer and H.
G. Wells, had reservations about the former
noting ‘a disproportionate profusion of inferior
chatter’; some renewed the charge that the celebrated
paradoxes were little more than purely mechanical
inversions of clichés. It was again objected that what the
dramatis personae said possessed greater interest and
originality than what they were and what they did in the
hackneyed situations supplied to them. Nevertheless,
others pointed out that An Ideal Husband was a new
departure for Wilde in that a strong narrative interest was
now present, whose handling testified to the dramatist’s
ability and adroitness in keeping audiences intrigued and
satisfied by more than the exercise of wit. It was also felt
that the epigrams no longer conflicted with his more sober
purpose [as they did in his earlier plays], but had been
happily subordinated to the legitimate interests of plot
and character. However, Bernard Shaw, the recently
appointed critic of the Saturday Review, was more
inclined to praise ‘the subtle and pervading levity’, boldly
claiming that ‘In a certain sense Mr Wilde is to me our
only thorough playwright. He plays with everything...’
(Tydeman Comedies 15-16).
‘What do you think is the chief point the critics have
missed in your new play?’
O.W.: ‘Its entire psychology—the difference in
the way in which a man loves a woman from that in
which a woman loves a man, the passion that women
have for making ideals (which is their weakness) and the
weakness of a man who dare not show their imperfections
to the thing he loves. The end of Act I, the end of Act II,
and the scene in the last act, when Lord Goring points out
the higher importance of a man’s life over a woman’s—to
take three prominent instances—seem to have been quite
missed by most of the critics. They failed to see their
meaning; they really thought that it was a play about a
bracelet....’(extract from Gilbert Burgess, ‘A Talk with
Mr. Oscar Wilde’ The Sketch 9 Jan. 1895 quoted in
Tydeman Comedies, 37)
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Anyone happening to look in at the Haymarket Theatre on
the fall of the curtain last night would have come to the
conclusion that Mr. Oscar Wilde had written a brilliant
play, and no doubt many of those who cheered so lustily
were quite of that opinion. But viewed dispassionately,
An Ideal Husband was a thing of shreds and patches, a
stringing together of a number of inconsequent incidents
whose only dramatic value was that they have been in use
for years past, and are therefore to be borne with as we
bear with the ancient jokes of an elderly, highly
respectable and, above all, wealthy member of one’s
family. (Morning Advertiser January 4, 1895. Quoted in
Tydeman Comedies pg. 59)
An Ideal Husband was not a first-night success by reason
of the absorbing interest of its story or the masterly
fashion in which that story was handled. It was a success
in spite of its framework. It was a success, perhaps, in
the first place, because evidently the audience was
sympathetically disposed towards both Mr. Wilde and the
new sub-lessees of the theatre, Mr. Waller and Mr.
Morell; and in the second place, because much of the
characterization and a good deal of the dialogue is
admirable either in its truth to life or in its literary
cleverness. Mr. Wilde knows the fashionable world, and
supplies of it a graphic and effective picture....(Morning
Post Jan. 4, 1895 quoted in Tydeman Comedies pg. 60)
There is hardly a character in the piece in whom one
detects any signs of life. (Sketch Jan. 9, 1895 quoted in
Tydeman Comedies pg 61)
ANALYSIS
...p eople quite English do not talk like these
people of Wilde’s....the play of minds in
Wilde’s Londoners of quality is usually that
of English men and women whom a quick-witted
Frenchman or Irishman is coaching, prompting, briefing,
and at the same time watching, delicately mocking.
Behind the immediate gaiety and irony of their talk you
feel a reserve of irony not given to them for their use, but
used against them, playing upon them, and playing,
through them, on the audience, too... (C.E. Montigue,
quoted in Tydeman Comedies, pg 83)
Everything starts from language. The characteristic
language of the dandy is the paradox, and the essence of
paradox is contradiction. This draws attention to two
things—the attitude or sentiment which the paradox is
concerned to reverse, and the language itself in which the
reversal is done. We should say of paradox that it is a
form of expression which is at once critical and self-
delighting. (Ian Gregor, 120)
....The use of striking linguistic display, such as paradox,
instantly draws our attention to the author as manipulator;
it is a reminder that words are man-made things. In
realistic drama the author works in the opposite way:
everything is done to give the impression that the
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
characters are autonomous; the writer puts his skill into
re-creating exact speech rhythms idiosyncratic turns of
phrase. The same is true in the realm of plot. The
realistic dramatist will try to follow out as faithfully as
possible the subtle configurations of daily life; Wilde
finds his ideal plot in farce, because he sees art as
exaggeration....Nothing is more over-emphatic than farce,
permitting as it does the maximum of coincidence and
unlikelihood. (121-122)
An Ideal Husband...has as a central theme the hazards of
precipitate and inflexible moral judgement...and the way
in which that judgement has to be modified. (Ian Gregor,
112)
Here, [in An Ideal Husband] for the first and only time, a
man’s profession is central to the play. If Lady Chiltern
demands an ideal husband this is intimately connected
with the requirement that he must be and ideal politician.
Corruption in the one sphere is, for her, corruption in the
other. (Ian Gregor, 117)
Wilde first employed a pattern of ironic inversion in An
Ideal Husband, the play immediately preceding Earnest.
Its hero, Lord Goring, is not the irresponsible dandy he
seems to be, the surface frivolity is not the real man, and
his flippant paradoxes emphasizes the irony of his moral
position relative to that of Sir Robert Chiltern, the
pretended pillar of society. For the first time in his plays
Wilde puts the fine art of epigram to serious purposes: it
participates in the total meaning of the play....Lord
Goring’s wit expresses that ironic attitude to life that
guarantees moral salvation in Wilde’s world....The
characters in Earnest never stop being flippant; their
flippancy is their whole nature and not, like Lord
Goring’s, the mocking mask of enlightened irony in a
pompous society. The only ironist in Earnest is Wilde
himself.... (Reinert, 153-154)
...in writing his third play, An Ideal Husband (1895),
Wilde seems to have taken special care to keep his dandy
free from commitment. If Lord Goring is to be in love it
will be with a minor figure of the play, and his ‘love’ will
simply be there to testify to his status as hero. His
connection with the central figures of the play will not be
a profoundly emotional one, and will not involve him
with a woman, faithfully or otherwise. And so we find
Wilde giving Goring a friendship with Sir Robert
Chiltern and hoping that the dandy, limited to the more
fitting role of guide and philosopher, will at last find
insurance against loss of wit....in Goring we feel that
Wilde can use his own voice and remain confident that the
character is appropriate to the play....From his post of
vantage the dandy may observe keenly and comment
shrewdly, but he can never affect this world except
through the arbitrary good fortune the author has conferred
on him [for example, finding the bracelet]. (Ian Gregor,
117-118)
...Wilde is as much of a moralist as Bernard Shaw but
that, instead of presenting the problems of modern society
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directly, he flits around them, teasing them, declining to
grapple with them. His wit is no searchlight into the
darkness of modern life. It is a flickering, a coruscation,
intermittently revealing the upper class of England in a
harsh bizarre light. This upper class could feel about
Shaw that at least he took them seriously, no one more
so. But the outrageous Oscar...refused to see the
importance of being earnest. (Bentley 102)
STYLE OF THE P LAY
T he comedies of the Restoration period, of Oscar
Wilde, are less imaginative, less free, both in
conception and execution, than the comedies of
Shakespeare, and written, of course, for a picture stage.
Their performance demands, both from actors and
directors, a considerable understanding of the period in
which they were written, and some degree of urban
sophistication from the audience....After the Restoration,
with the introduction of picture stage, front curtain and
proscenium, plays came to be written which could be
sustained throughout in a single mood. Long acts took
the place of short scenes. Audiences became increasingly
delighted in seeing people on the stage behaving exactly
as they themselves behaved at home (only saying more
amusing things) against backgrounds of painted scenery
and realistic accessories of every kind. (Gielgud vii-viii)
If Wilde was attracted to the life of high society in art, it
was partly because social forms and conventions were
there most flagrantly gratuitous and unreal; indeed in its
meticulous formality of manners, English aristocratic
society was for him a work of art all in itself. Comedy
deals in a conflict between the natural and the artificial, as
well as with a maladjustment between individual and
society; and these matters are grist to the mill of the
social outsider. (Eagleton xii)
...His success in the theatre was won entirely with plays
which mirrored the ordinary theatrical tastes of his days...
Not only are these, apparently, ordinary society dramas,
but they are society dramas of a decidedly old-fashioned
kind, littered with asides and soliloquies. What saves
them....? Primarily, I think, their entire shamelessness.
Wilde does not give the impression, even for a moment,
that he takes all this nonsense seriously. The plots are
creaking old contrivances, and far from trying to hold up a
glittering display of epigrams, delivered for the most part
of characters— ...even Lord Goring—who are irrelevant to
most of the main action except as a sort of mocking
chorus, and that is all that the plot is there for. (Taylor
107)
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
NAMES
from An Ideal Husband
A
high percentage of titles and names are often
place-names, like Goring, Chiltern. Chiltern has
an extra nuance in a play which turns on whether a
politician should resign, because acceptance of the
‘Chiltern Hundreds’ is the best known way for an MP to
vacate his seat between elections. (Murry 619)
Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon. They make a quite
interchangeable pair, clearly types rather than individuals:
no commentator seems yet to have noticed that in their
first exchanges [in the script] Margaret Basildon and
Olivia Marchmont become Olivia Basildon and Margaret
Marchmont (Murry 619) [note that it is up to individual
directors to either keep or change this discrepancy] In his
stage directions Wilde describes the pair as “two very
pretty women...types of exquisite fragility. Their
affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau
would have loved to paint them.” [Watteau (1684-1721)
was ‘a French painter of pastoral, mythological, and
delicately erotic subjects.’ His work and the work of
other artists in the same vein were in vogue during this
time.]
Mabel Chiltern. Wilde’s stage directions describe her as
“...a perfect example of the English type of prettiness, the
apple-blossom type. She has all the fragrance and
freedom of a flower. There is ripple after ripple of
sunlight in her hair, and the little mouth, with its parted
lips, is expectant, like the mouth of a child. She has the
fascinating tyranny of youth, and the astonishing courage
of innocence. To some people she is not reminiscent of
any work of art. But she is really like a Tanagra statuette,
and would be rather annoyed if she were told so. [Tanagra
is a type of terracotta statuette found in tombs in the
ancient city of Boeotia.] (Murry 575)
Lady Markby. Wilde’s stage directions describe her:
“Lady Markby is a pleasant, kindly, popular woman, with
gray hair...and good lace.”
Mrs. Cheveley. Wilde’s stage directions describe her:
“...Lips very thin and highly coloured, a line of scarlet on
a pallid face. Venetian red hair, aquiline nose, and a long
throat...she looks rather like an orchid, and makes great
demands on one’s curiosity. In all her movements she is
extremely graceful. A work of art, on the whole, but
showing the influence of too many schools.”
Sir Robert Chiltern. (Stage directions) “A man of forty,
but looking somewhat younger...A personality of mark.
Not popular—few personalities are. But intensely
admired by the few, and deeply respected by the many.
The note of his manner is that of perfect distinction, with
a slight touch of pride. One feels that he is conscious of
the success he has made in life. A nervous temperament,
with a tired look. The firmly chiseled mouth and chin
contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in deep-
set eyes. The variance is suggestive of an almost
4
complete separation of passion and intellect, as though
thought and emotion were each isolated in its own sphere
through some violence of will-power. There is
nervousness in the nostrils, and in the pale, thin, pointed
hands. It would be inaccurate to call him picturesque.
Picturesqueness cannot survive the House of Commons.
But Vandyck would have liked to have painted his head.”
Lord Goring. (Stage directions) “Thirty-four, but always
says he is younger. A well-bred, expressionless face. He
is clever, but would not like to be thought so. A flawless
dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered
romantic. He plays with life, and is on perfectly good
terms with the world. He is fond of being
misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.”
Lord Caversham. (Stage directions) “an old gentleman of
seventy, wearing the riband and star of the Garter [the
highest award of the kingdom]. A fine Whig type. Rather
like a portrait by Lawrence.”
Vicomte de Nanjac. (Stage directions) “a young attaché
known for his neckties and his Anglomania.”
DEFINITION OF TERMS
from An Ideal Husband
From Murry, Isobel, ed. The Oxford Authors: Oscar
Wilde. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989, pgs 619-623.
T wenty-four hours. Wilde draws attention to the
fact that this play...is in accordance with the
Aristotelian Unity of Time (within 24 hours) as of
Place (central London).
Grosvenor Square. It is safe to assume from the context
that given addresses in the social comedies are always
prestigious. In 1892 Grosvenor Square had twenty-two
titles tenants out of fifty-one addresses, and residents in
1895 included Lord Randolph Churchill.
Boodle’s Club. One of the oldest clubs in London,
founded in 1762....Its members were mostly country
gentlemen, but also included Edward Gibbon, William
Wilberforce, and Beau Brummell. It acquired an early
reputation for high gambling and good food.
Suez Canal shares. The purchase of Suez shares took
place in 1875, on Disraeli’s initiative.
Second Panama. After the Panama Canal project
foundered in 1889, with massive debts and unaccounted-
for expenditures, a national scandal in France resulted in
legal action against the speculators, who were revealed to
have involved senators and deputies in the corruption. A
series of trials took place in paris in 1892-3 but one of the
principal backers of the scheme, Baron Jaques Reinach,
took his life on the day he was to face the court.
Ladies’ Gallery. A separate Ladies’ Gallery, with a grille
in front of it, was provided above the Press Gallery in the
House of Commons.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
The Park. Hyde Park, a fashionable riding park in the
heart of London.
Claridge’s. A fashionable hotel in Brook Street, Mayfair.
en règal. Correct etiquette.
Woman’s Liberal Association. Founded in 1886, it
opposed Gladstone in 1892 by supporting the campaign
for women’s suffrage. Constance Wilde [Oscar’s Wife]
was a member, and an active campaigner and speaker.
Bachelors’ Ball. The London season included ‘private’
dances, given by the parents of marriageable girls, and
‘public’ festivities, organized by associations of like-
minded acquaintances: the Bachelors’ Ball was among the
latter.
County Council. The London Country Council was
formed in 1889 to gather together the functions of local
government in the capital previously discharged by parish
‘vestries’.
Lambeth Conference. The Lambeth Conference of
Anglican bishops is held about every ten years at Lambeth
Palace, London residence of the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
dreadful statue of Achilles. The naked, heroic statue of
Achilles in Hyde Park was erected in 1822, inscribed by
‘the women of England’ to the Duke of Wellington and
his army.
what bimetallim means. The system of allowing the
unrestricted currency of two metals (e.g. gold and silver)
at a fixed ratio to each other, as coined money.
Tableaux. Tableaux vivants, in which performers (usually
amateur) gave a costumed representation of some familiar
painting or historical scene, were a popular pastime and
were often staged for charitable fund-raising events.
Undeserving. The distinction between ‘deserving’ and
‘undeserving’ poor was important in Victorian
philanthropy.
The Drawing Room. The formal presentation of ladies to
the Queen and her court took place at a ‘Drawing Room’.
Lady Markby would have been presenting debutantes to
the court.
Assisted emigration. Frequently advocated as a radical
means of reforming the criminal classes, practiced by a
number of charitable organizations as an aid to the
respectable as well as to the ‘fallen’.
Pump Room. Associated with the spa’s social life as
much as its medicinal purposes.
Higher Education of Women. The appropriateness of
university studies for women was still a matter of dispute.
Blue books. Reports or other papers printed by
parliament.
Yellow covers. French novels, usually sold in yellow
paper wrappers, and by popular belief immoral or
improper.
5
Adam Room. Room designed and decorated by one or
both of the brothers Adam, Scottish architects who
transformed London architecture and interior decoration in
the second half of the eighteenth century.
Inverness Cape. A cloak or overcoat with cape: stylish.
Buttonhole. Oscar Wilde said “a really well-made
buttonhole [gentleman’s floral adornment] is the only link
between Art and Nature” ....Like Lord Goring, Wilde was
a fashion leader...Lord Goring certainly seems to be
Wilde’s Ideal Wilde, as the added stage-directions and
descriptions make clear.
Lamia-like. In Keat’s poem ‘Lamia’, a serpent assumes a
woman’s shape.
Hock and seltzer. White wine and soda-water was a well-
known restorative.
The Book of Numbers. A pun: the fourth book of the Old
Testament, and what amounts to a charge of promiscuity.
Lord Goring is as near here as he ever gets to losing his
poise and his dandyism.
Voilà tout. That is all.
since Canning. George Canning (1770-1827), talented
and versatile English statesman and orator.
seeing the unemployed. A riot in Trafalgar Square in
1886 brought out concern about the unemployed as a
group and as a political force.
BIOGRAPHICAL BITS
R eality for Wilde was just the play of mask on
mask, mirror upon mirror, word on word; and if
the London audiences delighted in this breezy
iconoclasm, the English Establishment was rattled enough
by it in the end to cast him out .... Throughout Wilde’s
rake’s progress in English Society one can
sense...[a]...sickening sense of precariousness, this
gathering hubris of a man who is riding too high, too
brilliantly, and seems at times to be almost deliberately
courting disasters....Wilde’s spendthrift life-style and
outrageous flouting of conventional morality seems a race
towards self-destruction, as though he were taunting
English society to do its world. (Eagleton x-xi)
When Oscar Wilde died in 1900, his funeral was not the
elaborate interment that he might a few short years before
have expected, but an altogether sober affair. His very
name had been anathema for almost six years, and it was
not into the extraordinary Jacob Epstein mausoleum at
Père Lachaise that his body was placed, but a mere
mortal’s grave, in a suburban Parisian cemetery, its site
marked by a simple slab. Lovely and impoverished, he
had died in a hired room in a Paris hotel after a career of
almost unparalled success, followed by disgrace,
imprisonment and a continental exile of three years,
during which his mental decline had been almost as
marked as his physical. After his trials and
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
imprisonment, his friends in society had for the most part
deserted him; at the burial ceremony those who remained
were almost outnumbered by journalists. (Calloway 6)
The erection of the Epstein tomb, however, marked the
turning point in the fortune of his reputation....By the
1940s, visitors to Wilde’s tomb ten times outnumbered
those to the graves of Chopin, Balzac, and all the other
revered figures interred at Père Lachaise. The place of
Oscar Wilde in the pantheon of English letters was finally
assured. (Calloway 7)
William Wilde, [Oscar Wilde’s] father, was a pioneering
and well-known doctor who, in addition to writing
seminal textbooks in the new field of ocular medicine,
and holding the position of Surgeon-Oculist to the Queen,
was a distinguished archaeologist, and the author of
volumes on travel, history, and biography. William
Wilde’s reputation as a scholar of Irish folklore attracted
the attention of a young Irish poet and incendiary called
Jane Elgee....In a literary attempt to rouse the Irish nation
to overthrow its English oppressors in 1849 she had very
nearly gone to prison for seditious libel, and she remained
a romantic revolutionary in the grandest theatrical manner.
She and William had married in 1851, and produced three
children: William Robert Kingsbury Wills in 1852; Oscar
Fingal O’Flahertie Wills, and Isola, the only girl, with
only one name, in 1857. (Calloway 11-12)
Oscar Wilde, despite his mother’s later extravagant claims
for her son’s infant abilities, was no child prodigy, nor
was his youth obviously pregnant with future greatness.
(Calloway 12)
Lady Wilde had but little care for the good opinion of her
peers....Her house was run with the erratic nonchalance of
a true bohemian, ‘dirty and daring, disorderly and
picturesque.’ Speranza [Jane’s romantic pen name],
scourge of the English, considered herself a member of an
aristocracy of letters, believing that as an artist, both she
and her family were above the conventional, pious
morality of their milieu. Sir William, too was famous for
his slovenliness. Oscar learned arrogance at his parents’
knees. (Calloway 16)
Clever young men of the nineteenth century were almost
honour-bound to write poetry, and the mainspring of
Wilde’s poetical inspiration at Oxford was the Church of
Rome. Like many of his friends, he was attracted to the
magnificence, the solemnity and the ritual of the Catholic
Church, but he did not convert, owing to the consequent
threat of disinheritance that hung over him. (Calloway 20)
Oscar left Oxford with the expected double first, and the
most prestigious prize available to an undergraduate. His
poems were beginning to receive attention in newspapers
and journals. He knew, and was known by, London
society: Wilde’s future was looking rosy.
The outstanding student of his year, for some
time after leaving Oxford he entertained the idea that his
abilities might...languidly adorn the groves of academe.
6
He attempted to obtain Oxford fellowships in classics and
archaeology, but a shortage of posts, combined with a
reluctance on the part of the university authorities to trust
a man who had been so controversial and flamboyant as
an undergraduate, conspired to dash his hopes. This was,
in truth, fortunate: his utter unsuitability for the tasks
required of sustained effort would have made him
miserable... (Calloway 21)
[After selling off inherited houses in 1878, Oscar quickly
ran through most of the large sum] through open-handed
generosity, which was, in the end, to exacerbate the
difficulties that led to his fall. For the moment, though,
his pockets were filled with gold, and Oscar set out to
carve himself a place in society. He secured invitations to
every fashionable gathering, and conquered both his
hostesses and their friends with his dazzling displays of
wit, charm, and brazen insolence. (Calloway 22)
‘He had a well-shaped mouth, with somewhat coarse lips
and greenish-hued teeth. The plainness of his face,
however, was redeemed by the splendour of his great,
eager eyes’ (Lily Langtree on Wilde’s appearance, quoted
in Calloway 23) [Wilde passionately admired and was
known by many of the famous beauties and actresses of
London. He also was knew and was highly influenced by
a number of painters.]
In between dinner engagements and his vain pursuit of
Lillie Langtry, Wilde spend increasing amounts of time
writing his delicate verses. In 1880 he started to search
for a publicher. Having hawked his manuscripts around
several, Wilde was forced into private publication by their
refusal to take him seriously....the book, entitled simply
Poems, was, from the point of view of sales, a great
success, going through four editions in as many weeks.
The critics were not as enthusiastic as the public.
(Calloway 26)
[in 1881 Wilde embarked on a lecture tour sponsored by
D’Oyly Carte, producer of Gilbert and Sullivan’s play
Patience, which was in part a spoof of Wilde himself, and
a great hit in England and America] The crowd of
journalists that awaited Wilde’s arrival in the New York
dockside was somewhat confused by the curiously attired
giant who stepped off the SS Arizona: Patience had
characterized the aesthetes as wan and decadent creatures
who practically ate flowers, and the gentleman in the fur-
trimmed, bottle-green greatcoat did not quite conform to
expectations...he answered their stupid questions in a
bored and offhand manner. He moved on to the Custom
House, where every expectation of his precocity was
finally fulfilled. ‘I have nothing to declare,’ he told the
customs officers, and after a dramatic pause worthy of
Irving himself, and which he had undoubtedly been
practicing since he left London, he added ‘except my
genius’. (Calloway 33)
Throughout his American tour Oscar’s every move was
dogged by the press, who, invariably hostile, either could
not or would not leave him alone. This was to be a
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
recurrent feature of his life: the American journalists
thought him a poor joke, and when he treated them like a
poorer one, they were driven into frenzies of jealousy and
hate by the self-appointed prophet of the aesthetic
movement. Their hostility was self-defeating, however,
for it aroused the curiosity of the public, who flocked to
the lecture hall in ever greater numbers to see for
themselves this strange new flower of English decadence.
(Calloway 33)
Wilde relied largely on a single lecture on interior
decoration entitled ‘The House Beautiful’, which he
declaimed in town after town to the delight of the
townswomen, and the scorn of its men. (Calloway 33-34)
[Wilde proposed to and was rejected by several women
before he met Miss Constance Lloyd. Although she was
from Dublin] Oscar only met his future wife for the first
time at a ‘young person’s party’ at Constance’s
grandfather’s house at Lancaster Gate in 1881. He was
instantly attracted by her. Legend relates that, leaving the
party, he informed Lady Wilde, ‘By the by, Mama, I
think of marrying that girl.’ Constance was no great
heiress, and the notion that he married her solely for a
fortune may be discounted. (Calloway 40)
A truth in art, Oscar Wilde remarked, is one whose
contradiction is also true; an much the same could be said
of Wilde’s own brilliant blighted career. Like Samuel
Johnson, we remember Wilde as much for what he was as
for what he wrote; the English love a ‘character’ rather as
they love a lord, and if Wilde was certainly the one, he
also made a fair stab at passing himself off as the other.
If he was the flamboyantly decadent dandy who took
fashionable London by storm, he was also the bankrupt,
reviled, ulcerated inmate of Reading gaol, one of a
distinguished lineage of victims of British moral
hypocrisy. Wilde hailed from the city which his literary
compatriot James Joyce spelt as ‘Doublin’, and everything
about him was doubled, hybrid, ambivalent. He was
socialite and sodomite, upper-class and underdog, a
Victorian paterfamilias who consorted with rent boys, a
shameless bon viveur who laid claim to the title of
socialist....Wilde lived out a conflict between his public
identity and his private self; and this fissure between the
two is interestingly typical of his age....It is perhaps not
accidental that this is also the period in which Sigmund
Freud begins to uncover that concealed place of guilt,
crime and fantasy to which he gives the name of the
unconscious. (Eagleton vii)
One is tempted to speculate that one reason for Wilde’s
homosexuality was just the fact that he found
heterosexuality intolerably clichéd; and he was even more
terrified of a cliché than he was of appearing on Piccadilly
in the wrong cut of waistcoat. He had only to be
presented with a norm to feel the irresistible urge to
violate it, show it up as arbitrary and relative; his whole
instinct was to improvise, experiment, defeat
expectations... (Eagleton xix)
7
 OSCAR WILDE: A CHRONOLOGY
by Nola Smith

16 October 1854 Born, Dublin; to Dr. William Ralph Wills Wilde, Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde. Christened Oscar
Fingall O’Flahertie Wilde; later added Wills as third middle name. Name Oscar after ancient
Irish warrior, and after godfather, King Oscar I of Sweden, a patient of his father’s.
1864-71 Attended Portora Royal School, Enniskillen.
1871-74 Attended Trinity College, Dublin.
October 1874 Entered Magdalen College, Oxford University. Excelled in Greek Classics.
June 1875 Traveled in Italy.
March-April 1877 Traveled in Italy and Greece.
June 26 1878 Won Newdigate Prize with poem "Ravenna"; completed BA with a first in Greats (Classics).
1880 Vera; or The Nihilists; A Drama privately printed in London. Set in Russia, play is named for
lead character, a passionately political revolutionary idealist.
1881 Published book of Poems, possibly at own expense.
1882 Lecture tour of USA, Canada. Dressed in black velvet and carrying a lily, he gave 125 lectures on
the new aestheticism, house decoration, and Irish poets of the 19th c. Public loved him, critics
hated him. He found America noisy and vulgar.
1883 The Duchess of Padua; A Tragedy of the XVI Century, Written in Paris in the XIX Century
privately printed in New York. A 5-act blank verse romantic melodrama set in 16th c. Italy,
featuring a self-sacrificing duchess who drinks the poison intended for her condemned lover
Guido. Rather bloody, à la Hamlet.
January-May In Paris, met with many famous authors and artists.
August-September In New York for production of Vera, which closed after seven performances.
September Began lecture tour in UK.
26 November Engaged to Constance Lloyd: “beautiful, grave, slight, violet-eyed little Artemis.”
29 May 1884 Married in London, honeymooned in France.
1 January 1885 Moved to 16 Tite Street, Chelsea.
5 June Son Cyril born (killed in WWI).
3 November 1886 Son Vyvyan born (became author and father’s biographer).
1887-89 Editor of The Lady’s World magazine. Changed the name of the publication to Woman’s World;
planned to print “the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art, and
modern life.” Contributed to magazine regularly for 5 issues, but was silent for next 8.
Eventually circulation diminished; attempted to revive it by returning to writing, but was soon
dismissed.
May 1888 The Happy Prince and Other Tales published, a book of Fairy tales.
July 1889 Published “The Portrait of Mr W.H.” (unlikely study of Shakespeare’s sonnets), as well a story,
poems, lyrics, and 2 stronger essays, “Pen, Pencil and Poison” and “The Decade of Lying.”
June 1890 The Picture of Dorian Grey published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Story tells of an
extremely beautiful young man who remains outwardly and unnaturally unchanging while his
portrait depicts progressive moral and spiritual decay, turning into the likeness of a hideous old
man.
1891 Meets young Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”), who becomes lover and constant companion despite
the 17 years difference in their ages.
January The Duchess of Padua, retitled Guido Ferranti, produced in New York.
February The Soul of Man Under Socialism published.
April The Picture of Dorian Grey published as a novel; revised, extended by 6 chapters.
May Intentions published.
July Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories published, 4 stories that had been individually
published in 1887. Includes the charming “The Canterville Ghost.”

AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE 8

 November A House of Pomegranates published, a book of Fairy tales.
November-December Writes Salomé in Paris, experimenting with working in French.
1892 February 1892 Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play about a Good Woman produced successfully; would move to
both London and America. Play wittily and indirectly accuses 1890s society of being mercenary,
heartless; uses expensive and vain trinket of a fan as a symbol of the times.
June Salomé: Drame en un Acte banned by Lord Chamberlain, with the excuse that it contained
references to the Bible (religious plays were banned during the Reformation to suppress Catholic
mystery plays). Lord Chamberlain’s intent was to obstruct a lavishly planned production of
sensuous, sensational Salom that was to star Sarah Bernhardt.
February 1893 Salomé published in French.
April A Woman of No Importance produced, a play about a woman who commits many evil deeds but
remains innocent; denounces society for hypocrisy towards women, and learns that “God’s law is
only Love.”
November Lady Windermere’s Fan published.
1894 February 1894 Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act published in English.
June The Sphinx published.
October A Woman of No Importance published.
Winter Harassed by the Marquess of Queensberry (author of “Queensberry rules” for amateur boxing), “a
notoriously truculent boor” and Lord Alfred Douglas’s father.
January 1895 An Ideal Husband produced, tongue-in-cheek attack on societal hypocrisy, seen in willingness to
achieve good ends through bad means. Better than his previous plays, with more complex
characters; still used the “well made play” plot formula.
14 February The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People opened, became high
point of his career.
28 February Discovered Lord Queensberry’s card at Albemarle Club. Brought ill-advised libel suit against
Queensberry.
5 April Queensberry acquitted, brought counter suit against Wilde. Wilde refused his friends’ advice to
flee country, was arrested. At first acquitted, but dramatically retried on May 20, and found
guilty under Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.
25 May Sentenced to 2 years hard labor at Pentonville. Subsequently transferred to Wandsworth (where he
suffered an ear injury during a fall from a fainting fit) and then to Reading. Prison life very
difficult, Wilde found only solace in books and writing. At Reading, allowed only 1 sheet of
paper per day, yet managed to write De Profundis, “a confession and credo and one of the great
personal statements in English letters” (Douglas Standford, Dictionary of Literary Biography).
Wife Constance took the children out of the country, changed their last name to Holland.
1896 Salomé produced in Paris, but made little profit.
January-March 1897 Wrote De Profundis.
19 May Released from prison, discovered that all his possessions had been auctioned off, leaving him
nothing. Changed name to Sebastian Melmoth, referring to his mother’s great-uncle’s book,
Melmoth the Wanderer, “the story of a man who had sold his soul to the devil and is condemned
to wander the earth…seeking someone who would agree to exchange his soul to release
Melmoth.” Moved to France; lived there, with visits to Italy, Sicily and Switzerland, until his
death.
February 1898 The Ballad of Reading Gaol published under the pseudonym “C.3.3.,” his cell number at Reading
prison (prisoners at Reading were not referred to by name).
April Constance Wilde died after surgery.
February 1899 The Importance of Being Earnest published.
July An Ideal Husband published.
10 October 1900 Operated on for an ear infection.
29 November Deathbed conversion to Catholicism (he had considered converting while at Oxford), given rites
while in a semi-coma.
30 November Died in bed at the dreary Hotel d’Alsace, Paris.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE 9

 A FEW MAXIMS FOR THE INSTRUCTION
OF THE OVER- EDUCATED
by Oscar Wilde (see Murry 570-71 for more)
“Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to
remember from time to time that nothing that is worth
knowing can be taught.”
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little
useless information.”
“The only link between Literature and the Drama left to
us in England at the present moment is the bill of the
play.”
“One should never listen. To listen is a sign of
indifference to one’s hearers.”
“In old days books were written by men of letters and
read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the
public and read by nobody.”
“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist
is the only person who is never serious.”
“To be really medieval one should have no body. To be
really modern one should have no soul. To be really
Greek one should have no clothes.”
“Those whom the gods love grow young.”
P HRASES AND P HILOSOPHIES FOR THE
USE OF THE Y OUNG
by Oscar Wilde (see Murry 572-72 for more)
“The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible.
What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.”
“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to
account for the curious attractiveness of others.”
“If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty
in solving the problems of poverty.”
“The well-bred contradict other people. The wise
contradict themselves.”
“Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest
importance.”
“Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.”
“Only shallow people know themselves.”
“One should always be a little improbable.”
AN IDEAL HUSBAND S TUDY GUIDE
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of
art.”
“Industry is the root of all ugliness.”
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect
everything; the young know everything.”
“In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the
essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is
the essential.”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”
WORKS CITED
Bentley, Eric. Extract from “The Playwright as Thinker.”
in Tydeman, William., ed. Wilde: Comedies
A Casebook. London: Macmillian, 1982.
Calloway, Stephen and David Colvin. The Exquisite Life
of Oscar Wilde. New York: Welcome Rain,
1997.
Eagleton, Terry. “Introduction,” Plays, Prose Writings
and Poems/ Oscar Wilde. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1991, vii-xxiv.
Gielgud, Sir John. “Introduction,” The Importance of
Being Earnest. Commentary by E. R. Wood.
London: Heinmann Educational Books, 1970
Gregor, Ian. Extract from Modern Drama. In Tydeman,
William., ed. Wilde: Comedies A Casebook.
London: Macmillian, 1982.
Hyde, H. Montgomery, ed. The Annoted Oscar Wilde:
Poems, Fiction, Plays, Lectures, Essays, and
Letters. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1982.
Holland, Vyvyan. “Introduction,” Complete Works of
Oscar Wilde. J. B. Foreman General Editor.
New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
Morgan, Margery. Fire on Wilde. London: Methuen
Drama, 1990.
Murry, Isobel, ed. The Oxford Authors: Oscar Wilde.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989
Reinert, Otto. Extract from essay in College English,
XVIII. Quoted in Tydeman, William., ed.
Wilde: Comedies A Casebook. London:
Macmillian, 1982.
Taylor, John Russell. Extract from “The Rise and Fall of
the Well-Made Play.” In Tydeman, William.,
ed. Wilde: Comedies A Casebook. London:
Macmillian, 1982.
Tydeman, William., ed. Wilde: Comedies A
Casebook. London: Macmillian, 1982.
10