An ideal husband
An Ideal Husband is an1894English comedy directed by Oscar Wilde . The play is about political intrigue and about marriage and love in19th centuryLondon high society .
Dramatis Personae
- Sir Robert Chiltern
- Lady Gertrude Chiltern, his wife
- Lord Arthur Goring, Robert's best friend
- Lord Caversham, his father
- Miss Mabel Chiltern, Robert's sister
- Lady Markby
- Viscount de Nanjac
- Mrs. Laura Cheveley
- Lady Basildon
- Mrs. Marchmont
- Mr. Montford
- Mason, servant
- Phipps, servant
- Harold, servant
- James, servant
action
The play takes place in London at the turn of the century within 24 hours. The plot was divided into four acts :
Act I.
A big party takes place in the villa of the Chilterns, to which many guests from politics are invited. Surprisingly, Lady Markby brings Mrs. Cheveley, who lives in Vienna, who knows the lady of the house, Lady Chiltern, from her school days and apparently doesn't like her. Mrs. Cheveley wants to meet Sir Robert Chiltern at the party in order to confront him with his dark past and blackmail him in her favor. He had made his fortune by fraud and she is now in possession of a letter that would give Robert away. Meanwhile, Lord Goring, an eternal bachelor and dandy , shows up at the party. He, too, shares a common past with Mrs. Cheveley. He immediately flirts with the young Mabel Chiltern, who is obviously in love with the Lord. Mrs. Cheveley urges Sir Robert Chiltern to endorse a canal project in Parliament in which she has invested a great deal of money, despite the fact that it is a stock fraud. Since she threatens to make Chiltern's past public, Chiltern agrees.
As the party draws to a close, Mrs. Cheveley provokes Lady Chiltern by telling her that her husband is now supporting the canal project, which Lady Chiltern cannot believe at first. Meanwhile, Lord Goring and Miss Mabel find a valuable diamond brooch that one of the guests lost and that can be made into a bracelet; Lord Goring asks Mabel to keep the find a secret for the time being. Lady Chiltern later confronts her husband and again persuades him to support the canal project without realizing that the man she had considered flawless all her life started his career with a dirty business. By making him understand that his absolute moral integrity is the prerequisite for her love for him, she leads him to write to Mrs. Cheveley and decline to support the project. Its public ruin seems inevitable.
Act II
Lord Goring visits his best friend Sir Robert Chiltern in his study, where he learns by what means Mrs. Cheveley is blackmailing the politician. Robert got a lot of money for important information from the government, with which he bought power that was very important to him. Lord Goring advises his friend to confess everything to his wife in order to prevent the worst. He also promises to help him as best he can. Later, Lady Chiltern comes by and also takes advice from Lord Goring before he leaves. He advises her to change her mind and quietly prepares her for Robert's confession.
But then Lady Markby and Mrs. Cheveley appear, looking for the brooch. When the cheerful Lady Markby leaves the women's group, Mrs. Cheveley provokes Lady Chiltern again and finally tells her the whole thing. Lady Chiltern confronts her husband and finds that her worldview is collapsing. She distances herself from Sir Robert, even though she knows that she still loves him.
Act III
Lord Goring receives a letter from Lady Chiltern, written on rose-colored paper, in which she asks him to help him. She writes that she trusts him and that she will come. Lord Goring thereupon instructs his servant to receive a lady and no one else. At that moment, Lord Caversham appears and urges his son to finally marry. Lord Goring tries to get rid of him, but while he is in the smoking room with his father, Mrs. Cheveley comes in, whom the servant mistakenly took for the lady who was expecting Lord Goring. She is shown into the parlor and reads Lady Chiltern's letter, which she takes for a love letter and steals. Without knowing that Mrs. Cheveley is sitting next door, Lord Goring receives his friend Robert Chiltern after his father. Lord Goring - slightly overwhelmed - thinks Lady Chiltern is sitting in the drawing room and wants to teach her a lesson through the door.
When Sir Robert has told his entire story of suffering, he notices that someone next door was listening. When it turns out that it is his enemy Mrs. Cheveley, he feels betrayed by his friend Goring and disappears furiously. Mrs. Cheveley now also wants to blackmail Lord Goring by offering to give him the letter if he marries her - they were engaged years ago and she claims to still love him, although the engagement was broken off because of her infidelity. Goring accuses her of dishonoring the word "love". The fact that she tried to destroy the Chilterns marriage is unforgivable to him and outweighs her stock fraud. Eventually Goring learns that the brooch found belongs to Mrs. Cheveley, and he exposes her as a thief because he had once given the brooch to his cousin. So he has leverage and successfully requests the letter, which he immediately destroys. But Mrs. Cheveley does not give up and threatens with the letter from Lady Chiltern to ruin her marriage for good by sending it to Robert Chiltern.
Act IV
At the Chiltern house, Lord Goring had a brief conversation with his father, in which it became clear that Robert Chiltern rejected the fraudulent channel project in a celebrated speech and therefore did not respond to Mrs. Cheveley's blackmail. Miss Mabel Chiltern comes in and Lord Goring proposes to her. They are both very happy, but actually Lord Goring came here for Lady Chiltern. He wants to warn her about the misunderstanding about the letter. Lady Chiltern is ready to forgive her husband, but refuses to tell him about her request for help from Lord Goring, as she considers it immoral. But Robert has already received the letter and thinks it is addressed to him; he thinks it is proof of his wife's forgiveness. So the happy ending seems near. But then Sir Robert refuses his friend to marry his sister Mabel because he suspects an affair between Mrs. Cheveley and Lord Goring. Now his wife is forced to tell him the truth about the letter and that Lord Goring was actually expecting her the night before and not Mrs. Cheveley. Now that Lady Chiltern realizes that as a woman she has a duty to forgive, everyone is happy and love has won - in the case of Lady Chiltern and Sir Robert, who is even promoted, as well as Lord Goring and Mabel Chiltern.
Quotes
- “I love not talking about anything. That's the only thing I know about. ”- Lord Goring
- "Love for yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance" - Lord Goring
- "You should never give a woman something that you can't wear in the evening" - Mrs. Cheveley
- “If we men got the woman we deserve, nothing worse could happen to us.” - Lord Goring
Film adaptations
There are several film adaptations of the play, including a remake by Oliver Parker (see A Perfect Husband ) as well as a German television production from 1966 by Franz Josef Wild and an Austrian-German television adaptation by Hans Jaray from 1984.
- 1935: An Ideal Husband - Director: Herbert Selpin
- 1947: An ideal husband (An ideal Husband) - Director: Alexander Korda
- 1958: An ideal husband - Director: Hanns Farenburg
- 1965: An Ideal Husband - Director: Detlof Krüger (TV movie)
- 1966: An Ideal Husband - Director: Franz Josef Wild (TV movie)
- 1969: An Ideal Husband - Director: Rudolph Cartier (TV movie)
- 1972: Un mari idéal - Director: Pierre Sabbagh
- 1981: Идеальный муж - Director: Viktor Georgiev
- 1982: Un marido ideal II - Director: Francisco Abad (TV movie)
- 1984: An Ideal Husband - Director: Hans Jaray (TV film) ORF
- 1986: An Ideal Husband - Director: Michael Knof (studio recording of a television film)
- 1999: A Perfect Husband (An ideal Husband) - Director: Oliver Parker
- 2000: An Ideal Husband - Directed by William P. Cartlidge
- 2002: Ideální manzel - Director: Zdeněk Zelenka (TV movie)
expenditure
- To Ideal Husband . London: Penguin 2018.
- The ideal husband . German by Hans Wollschläger . Zurich: Haffmanns 1986,
- An ideal husband . Comedy in four acts. Epilogue u. Translation by Rainer Kohlmayer. Stuttgart: Reclam 1986. (Reclam's Universal Library.)