Ideal Husband and A Woman of No Importance -- Two Comedies by Oscar Wilde New Century Universal Library · Foreign Culture Series

Author: (English) Oscar Wilde
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-03-01
Features: Over a hundred years ago, Wilde had two comedies successively premiered in London, both causing a sensation in the literary world. The witticisms, the creation out of nothing, the absurd yet paradoxically sensible, the unreasonable yet amusing, left audiences spellbound and became widely discussed. The Ideal Husband and A Woman of No Importance. The characters in Wilde's plays can be broadly divided into two contrasting types: not the Taoist distinction between good and evil, but the aesthetic division between refined and vulgar. The virtuous gentlemen and ladies of quality, though morally upright, may not necessarily be refined in style. Conversely, the roguish aesthetes and wayward girls, though not morally upright, may not necessarily be vulgar. In The Ideal Husband, the Chisholm couple belongs to the former category, while A Woman of No Importance completely transcends moral dilemmas, with all characters being fundamentally unprincipled, with only Miss Prism as a minor exception. As for Jack and Algernon being a pair of roguish aesthetes, and Cordelia and Cecily a pair of wayward girls, they naturally belong to the latter category. When the main characters are present, the dialogue tends to be dull, but once the guests speak, witticisms and brilliant lines rain down like celestial flowers, effortless and never falling flat. Most of Wilde's famous quotes come from their mouths.