Wilde Complete Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest; A Woman of No Importance; Salome; The Duchess of ... La Sainte Courtisane (World Classics)

by Oscar Wilde

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

822.8

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Accelerated Reader

Publication

Methuen Drama (2009), 624 pages

Description

Oscar Wilde was already one of the best known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and 1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays which spearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s and retain their powertoday.The social comedies, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband, offer a moving as well as witty dissection of society and its morals, with a sharp focus on sexual politics. By contrast, the experimental, symbolist Salome, written originally in French, was banned forpublic performance by the English censor. His final dramatic triumph was his `trivial' comedy for serious people, The Importance of Being Earnest' arguably the greatest farcical comedy in English.Under the General Editorship of Dr Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C

My introduction to Oscar Wilde was the 1999 film made of An Ideal Husband with Rupert Everett and Minnie Driver. I loved it! Witty, romantic. So one day when I saw this book in a used book store, I grabbed it. As it turned out, I had read, or rather experienced another of these plays

before--Salome. It's the outlier among the five plays included here. The rest are light comedies set in England among the titled rich in the present day of the plays' writing. Salome is an overwrought verse Biblical drama, an "examination of sexual passion" says the introduction. And as it turns out, the basis of Richard Strauss' opera Salome. It seems identical with the libretto from best I can tell from memory without comparing it side by side. I think I prefer it with the music... The other plays, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest do strike me as frothy fluff, even if there is some social commentary on upper crust hypocrisy. Ah, but what fluff! Some lines:

"I can resist anything but temptation." - Lady Windermere's Fan

"Nothing succeeds like excess." - A Woman of No Importance (It has the perfect last line too.)

"The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public." - The Importance of Being Earnest

These are, all of them (well, other than Salome) absolutely a delight to read. Great fun. (And Salome did make a nifty opera.)

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LibraryThing member bojnberry

This is the expurgated version. One of my favourite lines has been edited out. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell's response below loses everything before the semi-colon. What a shame.

Jack: I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded

as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

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LibraryThing member echomikeromeo

I find Wilde's use of language positively charming! It's almost as good as Wodehouse - it just makes you wriggle in spasms of delight.

LibraryThing member rampaginglibrarian

This is a wonderful collection of plays that displays the marvelous wit of Oscar Wilde~if you've never been exposed you are truly missing out.

LibraryThing member BarbBowling

Wilde was something of a subversive...born in Ireland and bisexual, he saw life from the perspective of the outsider, the 'Other.' Consequently beneath the infectuous wit and sparkling dialogue, is the voice of dissent....against colonial British arrogance, against 'proper' Victorian high society,

against conventional morality. Beneath the charming, rifined exterior of society's dashing darling, beneath the dissembling costumery, lay a brilliant intellect, a call to higher conscience, a wonded soul.....I find his work astounding.....one of my favorite authors!

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LibraryThing member Bduke

Review of "The Importance of Being Earnest":
Oh how I love this play!! When I want a funny, quick, great read - this is what I pick up. I love everything that comes out of Lady Bracknell's mouth - and Algy's - and Gwendolen's - and Cecily's... Some of my favorite quotes:
"I don't play accurately -

any one can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte."

"Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?"

"The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public."

"The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune...to lose both seems like carelessness."

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."

"Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out."

And those are just in Act 1. Don't even get me started on Act 4! Love it!! Now if only I could find my copy of the movie I would totally watch that too, because seeing Dame Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell and Rupert Everett as Algernon is hilarious. Not to mention Colin Firth as Jack.

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LibraryThing member missbrandysue

This book contains five of Oscar Wilde's most famous plays: The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and the somewhat unique Salome-a tragedy in one act. Each have their own personality but most contain the witty, banter between people

connected to each other through high English society longing for a life full of love and entertainment. Salome is a very dark tragedy where the king yearns for his step-daughter in the town Sodom-Gommorah.

I really enjoyed the wit in the plays (excluding Salome). Having all four romantic plays together makes it hard to remember the wit behind each of them separately. But I enjoyed each one in its own. Salome was equally as interesting, but just extremely different! A great read, though. I enjoyed reading the plays while I was in Ireland, the birth place of Oscar Wilde!

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LibraryThing member leslie.98

I find it difficult to rate collections, as the individual parts are almost always vary in quality. For this collection, I thought that I would give a very brief review & a rating for each play...

Lady Windermere's Fan - 4 stars; funny play about the importance (or lack thereof) of appearances re

married women & their virtue

Salomé - 3 stars; I like the satire but the Biblical setting just wasn't my thing.

A Woman of No Importance - 2½ stars; to be quite honest, this play made so little impression on me that I can't remember what it is about! Time to reread it.

An Ideal Husband - 4½ stars; very good satire about trust & love between a married couple.

The Importance of Being Earnest - 5 stars; so hilariously funny. My favorite of all Wilde' s work

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LibraryThing member bookwoman247

Wow! The Importance of Being Earnest is now my favorite play, ever! I laughed out loud the whole way through! The satire and humor were delicious!

The other plays were excellent and I enjoyed them all, too, with the exception of Salomé. They were interesting social commentaries on the Victorian

era.

It is the title play that stands out, though. It is satire and high comedy at its best!

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LibraryThing member Devil_llama

Works of the Irish wit that include his best known piece, The Importance of Being Earnest. Throughout this collection, one fact remains consistent: Wilde demonstrates his distaste for the uber-morality and frivolity of the English upper classes, while getting in a few swipes at American puritanism

at the same time. The world of "society" is laid bare with all its pretensions, and the class system is skewered. A worthwhile read, though if you have no concept of the British class system of the time, some of the references might leave you scratching your head and thinking "nobody really acts like that, right?" Just remember you are reading works from a different time, a time when it was still considered appropriate to jail someone for having a same-sex relationship, and children who were born of unmarried parents were considered tainted, even though they had no role in the decision-making process that brought them into the world.

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