An Ideal Husband

Name: An Ideal Husband
Author: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

free · 30,912 words · 3 h 17 m audiobook, read by volunteers for LibriVox · first published 1899

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Dramatis Personae

The Earl of Caversham, K.G.
Viscount Goring, his Son
Sir Robert Chiltern, Bart., Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs
Vicomte De Nanjac, Attaché at the French Embassy in London
Mr. Montford
Mason, Butler to Sir Robert Chiltern
Phipps, Lord Goring’s Servant
James
Footmen

Harold
Lady Chiltern
Lady Markby the Countess of Basildon
Mrs. Marchmont
Miss Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern’s Sister
Mrs. Cheveley

Time: The Present

Place: London

The Action of the Play is completed within twenty-four hours.

Act I

The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor Square.

restoring your place…

fetching the rest…

More by Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance
Wilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.
Children’s Stories
Fair warning: these fairy tales will wreck you a little. The swallow staying with the Happy Prince through the frost, the giant's garden thawing when the children sneak back in, it's all gorgeous and melancholy at once, sadder and stranger than anything you'd actually read to a kid.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
You can read it in an evening, and half the fun is watching Wilde hand every character a line too clever to waste. But Mrs. Erlynne sneaks up on you; under all the epigrams about cynics and gutters there's a real ache about who gets forgiven.

Dramatis Personae

The Earl of Caversham, K.G.

Viscount Goring, his Son

Sir Robert Chiltern, Bart., Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs

Vicomte De Nanjac, Attaché at the French Embassy in London

Mr. Montford

Mason, Butler to Sir Robert Chiltern

Phipps, Lord Goring’s Servant

James	Footmen
Harold

Lady Chiltern

Lady Markby the Countess of Basildon

Mrs. Marchmont

Miss Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern’s Sister

Mrs. Cheveley

Time: The Present

Place: London

The Action of the Play is completed within twenty-four hours.

More by Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance

Wilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.

Children’s Stories

Fair warning: these fairy tales will wreck you a little. The swallow staying with the Happy Prince through the frost, the giant's garden thawing when the children sneak back in, it's all gorgeous and melancholy at once, sadder and stranger than anything you'd actually read to a kid.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

You can read it in an evening, and half the fun is watching Wilde hand every character a line too clever to waste. But Mrs. Erlynne sneaks up on you; under all the epigrams about cynics and gutters there's a real ache about who gets forgiven.