An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband review – Wilde's dandies and fat cats verge on the preposterous

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Kevin Hart auditioned, but " Saturday Night Live " said no. Who else got cut? In s London, two friends use the same pseudonym "Ernest" for their on-the-sly activities. In mids England, Oscar is a young Anglican priest, a misfit and an outcast, but with the soul of an angel. As a boy, even though from a strict Pentecostal family, he felt God told him Rising politician Robert Chiltern once sold secret information and is now being blackmailed by Laura Evely. She has proof and it will damage his career and marriage severely. Chiltern calls in the help of his friend Arthur Goring. A group of women who are imprisoned on the island of Sumatra by the Japanese during World War II use music as relieve their misery.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father.

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously. One of the principal sources of humour in Wilde's plays comes from pricking at the inflated egos, pious humbug and ignorance of the upper classes. There is always a Wildean character to reverse a clicheed expression or invert conventional 'wisdom.

The attempt to work in anachronistic social relevance leaves us with a set of feeble characters who fall in love with each other for no obvious reason. Because Wilde's language has been sterilised the actors have to use mugging to express the personalities Wilde created. Result, a charmless and dated 'political' drama as credible as a Jeffery Archer novel.

Gertrude is insecure and fretful where she should be smug and priggish- Mabel is arch where she should be caustic- Poor Oscar - gets no 'Oscar'! Visit Prime Video to explore more titles. Find showtimes, watch trailers, browse photos, track your Watchlist and rate your favorite movies and TV shows on your phone or tablet!

Enjoy unlimited streaming on Prime Video. There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed Oscar Wilde play , Oliver Parker screenplay. Share this Rating Title: An Ideal Husband 6. Use the HTML below.

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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. 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. 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.

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde - Free Ebook

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. 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. Cheveley exits the house in triumph. 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. 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. 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. Many of the themes of An Ideal Husband were influenced by the situation Oscar Wilde found himself in during the early s. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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