Wow!! I loved this play!! Such a moving treatise on the true nature of love that you can’t help reflecting on how you yourself love.
I really enjoyed the characters — I think Lord Goring is my favorite. He manages to be one of the wisest characters in the cast while also being the “class clown” if you will.
Highly recommend for an entertaining and thought provoking time!!

▪متى تتعلم النساء ان تحبنا كما نحن و لا تجعل منا مثال تعبده.
متى تعلم اننا بشر من طين مثلهن لنا ههفواتنا

رابط الاستماع :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7_AXP...

6_september-19

“LORD CAVERSHAM E se non sarete un marito ideale per questa signorina, vi lascerò senza il becco di un quattrino.
MABEL CHILTERN Un marito ideale! No, non credo mi piacerebbe. Sembra una cosa dell’aldilà.
LORD CAVERSHAM E come volete che sia, allora, mia cara?
MABEL CHILTERN Può essere come gli pare. Tutto quel che voglio io è essere… essere… oh, una vera moglie per lui.”

Commedia in quattro atti del 1895.

Il sipario si apre nel bel mezzo di un ricevimento in casa del sottosegretario al Ministero degli Esteri: Sir Robert Chiltern, un uomo ricco e potente che la moglie Gertrude definisce ”un marito ideale” per aver costruito la propria fortuna con la forza dell’onestà.
Il quadro idilliaco coniugale viene, tuttavia, disturbato dall’arrivo di Lady Cheveley, donna tanto affascinante quanto scaltra e perfida. La sua malvagia avidità la porta a ricattare Sir Robert Chiltern che non è poi tanto immacolato come la moglie pensa.
Tra loro un personaggio che rispecchia in modo palese Wilde stesso e il dandysmo:
Lord Goring , un impeccabile dandy che dimostra doti da filosofo e fa da perno risolutivo di tutto l’intreccio (” È il primo filosofo ben vestito della storia del pensiero”)

La commedia è assolutamente piacevole nel suo riuscire a mantenere un saldo equilibrio tra la leggerezza della battuta comica e la profondità dei temi richiamati.
Wilde dimostra di non essere indifferente alla bellezza estetica femminile ma è altrettanto categorico nel suo assegnarle un ruolo ben determinato.
C'è freschezza nel saper affrontare una tematica sempre attuale (una moda che non passa mai!) come quella della corruzione politica ma ci sono anche macchie di muffa e un'incapacità (mancanza di volontà...) nel disancorarsi da retaggi maschilisti tipici dell’età vittoriana.
Eppure chi se non Wilde puntava l’indice verso i moralismi e la falsità del pensiero puritano?

Accanto alla denuncia di ciò che è poco sano nel mondo politico si afferma che se c’è una colpa nei matrimoni che falliscono è tutta femminile.
Le donne sono colpevoli di costruire l’immagine dell’uomo ideale: innalzano altarini dove depongono il povero consorte e ne fanno un simulacro ipocrita.

Così a Lord Goring sono affidate asserzione come queste:

” La vita di un uomo ha più valore di quella di una donna. Affronta questioni più importanti, imprese di vasta portata; ha ambizioni più alte. La vita di una donna si avvolge e riavvolge nelle curve delle emozioni. Invece, è lungo le linee rette dell’intelletto che procede la vita di un uomo. Non fate un errore terribile, Lady Chiltern. Una donna che riesce a conservare l’amore di un uomo, e che ricambia il suo amore, ha fatto tutto ciò che il mondo vuole dalle donne, o dovrebbe volere da loro.”.

Dunque donne siate belle e affascinanti e chinate la testa…
Concetti odiosi espressi in maniera assolutamente adorabile.

n  "There was your mistake. There was your error.  The error all women commit.  Why can’t you women love us, faults and all?  Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals?  We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason.  It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. A man’s love is like that.  It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s.  Women think that they are making ideals of men.  What they are making of us are false idols merely.  You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses.  I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.  And so, last night you ruined my life for me—yes, ruined it! 
Let women make no more ideals of men! Let them not put them on alters and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you—you whom I have so wildly loved—have ruined mine!"n

My second play of Oscar Wilde and absolutely loved every second of listening to it! I loved this one even better than The Importance of being Earnest. I wanted to share more quotes but then I realised in doing so I would be sharing more than half of the play's text.

All I can say is read the play; you will not be disappointed. Oh and watch the movie too; you will not be disappointed

While this was an excellent play as with all of Wilde's work I found myself again beaten by Wilde at his best. And what I mean there is that I basically found that this was not Wilde's best work and that as a result compared to The Importance of Being Earnest it fell a little flat.

Oscar Wilde's best work for me has always been highlighted by his dazzling wit and brilliant comedy lines. You cannot go past the scene in The Importance of Being Earnest where Algernon is eating muffins for instance. Yet this play seemed to focus on more serious elements. The plot consisting of characters working their way through a web of lies. It's a nice clever little tangle of a plot but it lacks the real sparkle and life of his greater plays.

Perhaps this works as a social critique, again like Wilde's best work, yet, as I've repeated often in this sleep addled state: it falls flat. Still would I recommend it? Of course I would. Any play of Oscar Wilde's is worth reading and every play of his has many scenes to laugh at. However some of his works are more jokes that you smile at and turn the page rather than laugh out loud at. And in my opinion his best work makes you laugh out loud. Of course I shall have to read what I consider his finest piece next. I shall have to revisit the various incarnations of Earnest. But while I do why don't you pick this up and have a read. Or observe the live play: even better!

Having seen versions of The Importance of Being Earnest, this book was a big disappointment. Oscar Wilde tries to tackle some heavier material, with very mixed results. There were still a few moments of humor in the play, but they were very infrequent and not nearly as funny as Earnest.

Wilde did a reasonably good job presenting his main thesis, that people need to support and love each other even though they are imperfect, but the dialogue was rather heavy-handed -- preachy -- and he completely avoided discussion of another serious topic: What do you do when you discover that your spouse or loved-one has broken or is breaking some very serious laws?

There was almost no discussion on this question, and ultimately, the character who is so aggressively perfectionistic decides that it's okay to live on what amounts to stolen goods -- an action so out of character that it almost ruins the play.

لورد غورينغ دة من ألطف الشخصيات اللى قابلتها فى الأعمال المسرحية اللى قرأتها لحد دلوقت

This play is pure fun (if you're into biting sarcasm)!

i was destined to be an oscar wilde character but i have been plagued with the most random bits of social anxiety and my whole life is ruined now

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

Nietzsche with a buttonhole. This is a mercenary world of ennui and style. There must be a phenomenological link? Wilde notes Wealth is the new object of worship.

The interior logic of the play is a bit neat for my taste as is the means by which the husband is reprieved. Clasps on bracelets can be annoying, yet they aren't Gordian knots.

I'm going to say this for the millionth time: Oscar Wilde is a freaking genius. Everything he writes is pure gold. I love his sense of humour, and his writing. He was a great man (treated badly by the society in which he lived) and a great writer too. I wish I could let him know that.

This play was as foolish as the previous one I read, and even when I enjoyed that one more, this one was good all the same. The plot follows some particular characters that are all married or being proposed marriage. It involves some blackmailing and more witty comments about the Victorian society.

I laughed out loud with this play a lot. You would not believe how red my face was after so much laughing. Seriously, it was ridiculous. I can't even. But that's great. It says a lot about an author who wrote a comedy for people a century back that can make a teenage girl in the 21st century have so much fun with one of his works. It screams brilliant all over the way.

Anyway, I wanted to keep this review short because 1) I want you to experience this for yourself without me spoiling any details, and 2) because I have an enormous list of quotes.

If you have not read this, I don't know what you have been doing with your life. Read this ASAP because Wilde is, not joking, one of my favourite authors (and not only mine but of many more people too).

Now, here's the obligatory list of quotes:

LADY BASILDON: Ah! I hate being educated!

MRS. MARCHMONT: So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes, doesn't it?

My laughter could not be contained after reading that.

Oh, I love London Society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.

See why I love his sense of humour?

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

I agree.

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.

I think I read something similar to that in another book.

Oh, I like tedious, practical subjects. What I don't like are tedious, practical people.

Me neither.

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

After more than one hundred years, this still applies to nowadays society.

I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

If Wilde knew how many times I have thought that...

It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.

Truth.

...

Told you it was an enormous list of quotes, didn't I?

P.S.: I've now made it my new goal to read all of his works this year. First Shakespeare, now Oscar Wilde. Here we go! And fyi, I have not finished my Shakespeare challenge yet, but who cares? I got this new obsession and I will not stay calm until I read all of Wilde's books.

I love Wilde’s writing. He’s one of my favorite authors and this story was another great read. This is a fun and lovely play set in England in the 19th century. The characters belong to the high British society and the topics are love, morale, honesty, and a little of politics. As in his other stories, it was a little immersion in that time with those characters.