Description

A Idea Husband By Oscar Wilde - 1972

Melbourne Theatre Company - Comedy Theatre

Cast: Sandra Lee Paterson, Jennifer Clair, Frank Thring, Dinah Shear, Wendy Hughes, Irene Inescort, Googie Withers, Ronald Falk, Simin Chilvers, Dennis Olsen, Rod Anderson, Janet Burnett, Esme Melville, Barrie Barkla, Tony Llewelly-Jones, Malcolm Phillips

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which 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. “Sooner or later,” Wilde notes, “we shall all have to pay for what we do.” But he adds that, “No one should be entirely judged by their past.” Together with The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often considered Wilde’s dramatic masterpiece. After Earnest it is his most popularly produced play.

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 of 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). 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 criticized 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 judgemental of their husband’s mistakes because of complexities surrounding the balance that husbands of that era had to keep between their domestic and their worldly obligations. Further, the script plays against both sides of feminism/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.”

Information about the Cast and Crew

Size 185 mm x 240 mm
Condition: Used Good 8/10 (Ticket Stapled to Second Page-small knock bottom of cover only)

(Please Note scans are low res for fast loading)

Each Order will incur a $5.00 handling fee (including free shipping)
All Prices Shown are in USD (United States of America Dollars)
All Payments by Paypal Just Checkout as GUEST no need to register