Enjoyable and witty.

I loved the witty comebacks the most.
The characters are so lively.
The writing style made me love it more.

Great story. I'll definitely read more of Oscar Wilde. This was my first!

لماذا لا تحبوننا أنتن معشر النساء كما نحبكم نحن الرجال الناقص لا الكامل هو الذي يحتاج للحب
إننا نحن النساء نعبد حين نحب
ما أجمل الحياة حين تحيا حياة الصدق

بهذه العبارات العميقة تدور أحداث تلك الرواية

A short play, engaging nevertheless.
The plot revolves around Lord Chiltern, a pillar of the society and an MP, who is being blackmailed by an adventuress who knows his past, into moving across the parliament, harmful bills. His wife, Lady Chiltern, is upright, honest and will not tolerate any tomfoolery; she moreover loathes Mrs. Chilvers, the adventuress, who was her school mate. Mabel his sister, and Lord Goring, his friend form other major players who have hilarious dialogues.
Enjoyed the repartee and the never failing wit of Wilde.
Shall soon watch the movie.

Awesome! I have been putting this one off for a bit, as it is a play, not a novel like I originally thought; so I got the audio to accompany my book, and it was splendid! At times full of sorrow, at times hilarious! It reminded me of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in the way that everything gets mixed up among all the couples in the play! In the end, it is a tale of faithfulness, love, friendship and morality. Well done! "Jolly Good" AND/OR "BRILLIANT", as the Brits would say! ---Jen from Quebec :0)

This is a short, fun play full of banter and examples of Wilde’s timeless wit.

One example particularly appropriate for our times: “I delight in talking politics. I talk them all day long. But I can’t bear listening to them.”

I suppose the story is also timeless, in that spouses throughout history must keep rediscovering that there is nothing like an “ideal husband.” After all, “It is not the perfect, but the imperfect who have need of love.”

Not my favorite Wilde so far, but I definitely want to read more.

Surely, this is one of the most hilarious comedies ever written by anyone. Every page of the script offers up lines of pure, gracefully articulate wit. Wilde's insight is prodigious and relevant as it could have been written as easily about Wall Street as London of 1895: "Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune." This is the playwright who, when passing through customs into Canada, was asked if he had anything to declare and replied, "Only my genius." The movie with Rupert Everett is spectacularly funny. Wilde has the ability to criticize high society so cleverly that the paradoxes he frames almost seem a compliment. "Fashion is what wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." And this one: "Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people." And this great truth: "Sooner or later we all have to pay for what we do." Wilde was a real genius. I strongly recommend that you read his play.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a famous politician whose wife adores and idealizes him. But to be moral and rich now Sir Robert turns out to be guilty of insider trading when he was young: he sold a state secret to make his fortune. A classmate of his wife Mrs Cheveley blackmails him to make Sir Robert support her fraudulent scheme. His friend Lord Goring tries to help him.
The author is witty as always. And I believe that the dandy Lord Goring is the representative of the Wilde’s voice: “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifetime romance”. Oscar Wilde is my lifelong love!

n  Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite soon.n

I simply adore Oscar Wilde's wit. He was one of the best English satirists and merciless critic of his time and class.

Of course, I cringed at sentences like a man's life is of more value than a woman, but I understood the message and plot of this play.

I have been grinning all through the reading of this play! If there is a definition of satire, this has to be it (forgive me my ignorance of not having read more of this kind). I have always respected sarcasm because it is one of the wittiest forms of intelligence and if I may take the liberty to say so, a remedy to the plain and dull way of general life. And Oscar Wilde immerses you in it, completely, and you would rather choke on the drollness of his language than struggle to breathe the unembellished procedural air above. His extravagant descriptions are a celebration of words.

n  “Mabel Chiltern is a perfect example of prettiness, the apple-bosom 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 sane 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.”n

Oh and there is a plot too; of deceit, of blackmailing! Sir Robert Chiltern is one of the richest and most respected gentlemen, of considerably high stature in the London society and an unblemished eminent individual in the political circle so much so to be a proposed member of the Parliament. Yet, his reputation, his entire political career, his future and more importantly the undying love and respect of his wife vacillates on the thinnest of threads orchestrated by the guileful Mrs.Cheveley. She harbors in her breast, a devastating secret of which the society is yet to be educated. So, would Sir Robert Chiltern hold his fort of honor and see his life wasted or would he yield in to the foxy scheme of Mrs.Cheveley – only if things were so easy!

n  “Sir Robert Chiltern: To attempt to classify you, Mrs. Cheveley, would be an impertinence. But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.”n

Enter Lord Goring, a charming dandy of great fortune who is equally reputable but for his unmistakable competence in his indolence and unconcern; for him a matter of pride. Ladies are beguiled by his presence in spite of his glorified love for himself; his father’s tongue for him is not so eloquent though. His love for Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert’s sister is undisclosed to her though her’s for him is loud and prominent.

n  “Lord Goring: You see, Phipps, Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. To love oneself is the beginning of a life time romance, Phipps.”n

Sir Robert Chiltern considers him a dear and trustworthy friend and pours his heart out on his mystifying dilemma. What follows is a comical Shakespearean circus of confusion which would be welcomingly applauded on a real stage – comical for the readers, tragic for the characters.

Oscar Wilde is a master of wit. Reading ‘An Ideal Husband’ brings to life a forgotten era of Lords and Viscounts, of long flowing skirts, uncomfortable layers of clothing, of ornate bonnets, of unreal wigs, the affectation of verbal soliloquies, the silverware and the annoying docility to indignation among others. For our generation and the one’s arriving, this polished multitude is or would be more incredible than the speaking lion from the Chronicles of Narnia.

I could only try to imagine being teary from the sporadic bursts of laughter if I ever had the following kind of conversation with my father, and my father? He would only be assured that after all, I am a lunatic.

n  “Lord Caversham: Want to have a serious conversation with you, sir.

Lord Goring: My dear father! At this hour?

Lord Caversham: Well, sir, it is only ten o’clock. What is your objection to the hour? I think the hour is an admirable hour!

Lord Goring: Well, the fact is, father, this is not my day for talking seriously. I am very sorry, but it is not my day.

Lord Caversham: What do you mean, sir?

Lord Goring: During the Season, father, I only talk seriously on the first Tuesday in every month, from four to seven.

Lord Caversham: Well, make it Tuesday, sir, make it Tuesday.

Lord Goring: But it is after seven, father, and my doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven. It makes me talk in my sleep.


Lord Caversham: Talk in your sleep, sir? What does that matter? You are not married.”
n

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, his third most popular work after The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In it Wilde explores hypocrisy, corruption, forgiveness and other themes with his trademark epigrammatic humor.



Sir Robert Chiltern, a moral, upstanding politician (pause while I take a moment to ponder whether there is such a thing), has a lovely young wife who idealizes him. But Sir Robert turns out to have a major skeleton in his closet: Many years ago, at the start of his political career, he sold a state secret about the Suez Canal in an insider trading sort of deal, and used that money to make his fortune and jumpstart his career. Now Mrs. Cheveley, an old classmate of his wife (who his wife detests), turns up at a party the Chilterns are hosting, blackmailing Sir Robert into publicly supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. It's one canal for another, she tells him.

Meanwhile the Chilterns' bachelor friend, Lord Goring, is flirting with Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert's sister.


Luckily for the frantic Sir Robert and his morally inflexible wife, Lord Goring also has some wise advice to dispense to all and sundry, along with a few other tricks up his sleeve.

An Ideal Husband isn't as hilariously witty as The Importance of Being Earnest, but it has a little more meat to it. There's a lesson here about how imperfect people still deserve love.



You can almost hear Wilde pleading for people to have more tolerance and forgiveness for his own still-hidden-but-beginning-to-fray gay lifestyle. But he makes his moral lesson go down easily, with lots of very funny and very quotable lines. A few sample quotes:

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Talks more and says less than anybody I ever met. She is made to be a public speaker.

You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

Lord Goring: I am going to give you some good advice.
Mrs. Cheveley: Oh! pray don't. One should never give a woman anything that she can't wear in the evening.

I don't like principles, father. I prefer prejudices.

There are a few eyebrow-raisingly dated lines here as well (the worst is: "A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A women's life revolves around curves of emotions."). It's pretty infrequent, and is probably just a reflection of Victorian times, though I have to wonder whether Oscar Wilde was just playing with his audience's expectations. But other than those couple of needle-scratch moments, this is a very amusing play that gives us some great food for thought about relationships and forgiveness.