An Ideal Husband Act 1

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SCENE.- The octagon room at SIR ROBERT CHILTERNs· house in Grosvenor Square.

[The room is brilliantly lit and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands LADY CHILTERN, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age. She receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illuminates a large eighteenth-century French tapestry- represent ing the Triumph of Love, from a design of Boucher- that is stretched on the staircase well. On the right is the entrance to the music-room. The sound of a string quartet is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms. MRS MARCHMONT and LADY BASILDON, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved to paint them.]

An Ideal Husband

By Oscar Wilde

Adapted by ScriptsandSketches.com

A4 Printable Version (38 pages)

LADY CHILTERN: (Advances toward MRS CHEVELEY with a sweet smile. Then suddenly stops, and bows rather distantly). I think Mrs Cheveley and I have met before. I did not know she had married a second time.

LADY MARKBY: (Genially). Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable. (To DUCHESS OF MARYBOROUGH) Dear Duchess, and how is the Duke? Brian still weak, I suppose? Well, that is only to be expected, is it not? His good father was just the same . There is nothing like race , is there?

MRS CHEVELEY: (Playing with her fan). But have we really met before, Lady Chiltern? I can’t remember where. I have been out of England for so long.

LADY CHILTERN: We were at school together, Mrs Cheveley.

MRS CHEVELEY: (superciliously) Indeed? I have forgotten all about my school days. I have a vague recollection that they were detestable.

LADY CHILTERN: (coldly) I am not surprised!

MRS CHEVELEY: Do you know, I am quite looking forward to meeting your clever husband, Lady Chiltern. Since he has been at the Foreign Office he has been so much talked of in Vienna. They actually succeed in spelling his name right in the newspapers. That in itself is fame, on the continent

LADY CHILTERN: I hardly think there will be much in common between you and my husband, Mrs Cheveley (moves away)