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Loading... An Ideal Husband (1895)by Oscar Wilde
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. While An Ideal Husband is typical Wilde in many ways, it is not Wilde at his best. Both Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of Being Ernest eclipse it. Still, great fun and charged with the kind of wit one expects from Wilde. There is a play upon role reversal that is hilarious, as it is the woman who puts the man upon a pedestal and then knocks him off. There are the usual high-jinks with letters that come into the wrong hands and a ludicrous, but quite nifty, foiling of the primary villain. In fact, it has every single element that you come to expect and adore in a Wilde production. At the same time, it does manage to deal with at least one very serious issue...that of the ideal. To expect that any person can be ideal and flawless is to set one's self up for disaster. One thing that struck me was the way Wilde wrote his stage directions. For each person as they enter the scene, he describes the type of art piece they would resemble. He had every physical trait and mannerism in his mind as he crafted these characters. I would love to see this play acted. I'm guessing it could be appreciated at one-step higher level seen on stage. I wasn't nearly as impressed with this play as I was with the previous two. The drama was still entertaining, but the plot was more about political morality and unrealistic expectations, plus the characters all wound up far too happily ever after for my liking. If we're going to talk about dirty politicians they need to have their comeuppance - even though I fully admit that it's more realistic if they get away with all their scheming... Yuck! no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesCentopaginemillelire (280) Is contained inThe Importance of Being Earnest / Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / Salomé by Oscar Wilde Has the adaptationHas as a student's study guideAwards
Drama.
Fiction.
HTML: Oscar Wilde's play An Ideal Husband is a comedy about politics, blackmail and corruption. The action takes place over three days in London, and it questions ideas of public and private honor. It is a play about the past catching up with one in the present. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)822.8Literature English & Old English literatures English drama Victorian period 1837-1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Characters: 8.5
Setting: 5.5
Prose: 8 ( )