Critical Quotes for 'An Ideal Husband'

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  • Critical Quotes for 'An Ideal Husband'
    • Henry James to Mrs Hugh Bell (23 February 1892)
      • "the pit and gallery are so pleased at finding themselves clever enough to catch on... that it makes them feel quite decadent and raffine"
      • "All the people talk equally strained Oscar"
      • "Everything Oscar does is a trap for the literalist"
    • Sunday Times (23 April 1893)
      • "can scarcely, with justice, be said to advance Mr Oscar Wilde's position as a dramatist"
      • "Its primary quality is showiness"
      • "Avowedly cynical talk"
      • "departs from the customary methods of the dramatic artist"
      • "it is the epigram and the paradoxes that we remember with interest rather than the relation of one character to another, with the incidents that arise therefrom"
    • Unsigned Review
      • "nothing on the stage can be quite so stupid as cleverness and, unfortunately, 'A Woman of No Importance' is too clever by half"
      • "[Oscar Wilde] his tendency towards repeating himself in his creations"
      • "It's author's employment of resources is so lacking in discrimination that he not only wastes them but actually uses them to his own disadvantage"
    • Graphic, 1893
      • "Mr Wilde has done little more than suggest a noble theme and garnish it with cynical epigrams"
      • "rebuking the rich and idle class of society for its love of pleasure, its cynicism, its mean profligacy, its contempt of principle, its hatred of enthusiasm, its profound disbelief in the existence of anything better than itself"
    • Morning Advertiser (4 January 1895)
      • "viewed dispassionately, An ideal Husband was a thing of shreds and patches"
      • "Only dramatic value was that they have been in use for years past"
    • Wilde educating his critics (January 1985)
      • "[The first act had] absolutely no action at all. It was a perfect act"
      • "We must educate our critics"
      • "The critics subordinate the psychological interest of a play to its mere technique"
      • "he moved us by a terrible human tragedy not by his knowledge of stage-methods.
  • Lady Windermere's fan

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