OSCAR WILDE

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

Act I

Mrs. Chiveley, a cunning adventuress, comes to sir Robert Chiltem - a prominent public figure with the purpose of backmailing him. Mrs.Cheveley: Sir Robert, I will be quite frank with you. I want you to withdraw the report that you had intended to lay before the House, on the ground that you have reasons to believe that the Commissioners have been prejudiced or misinformed, or something. Then I want you to say a few words to the effect that the Government is going to reconsider the question, and that you have reason to believe that the Canal, if completed, will be of great international value. You know the sort of things ministers say in cases of this kind. A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin. Will you dc that for me?

Sir. RobertChiltern: Mrs. Cheveley you cannot be serious in making me such a proposition!

Mrs.Cheveley: I am quite serious.

Sir Robert Chiltern (coldly): Fray allow me to believe that you are not.

Mrs. Chevel ey (speaking with great deliberation and emphasis): Ah! but I am. And if you do what I askyou, I... will pay you very handsomely!

Sir RobertChiltern: Pay me!

Mrs.Cheveley: Yes.

Sir RobertChiltern:! am afraid I don't quite understand what you mean.

Mrs.Cheveley (leaning back on the sofa and looking at him): How very disappointing! And I have come all the way from Vienna in order that you should thoroughly understand me.

Sir Robert Chiltern: I fear I don't.

Mrs. Chevel e у (in. her most nonchalant manner): My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am. I hope you will be more reasonable in your terms.

Sir Robert Chiltern (rises Indignantly): If you will allow me, I will call your carriage for you. You have lived so long abroad, Mrs. Cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realize that you are talking to an English gentleman.

Mrs.Cheveley (detains him by touching his arm with her fan, and keeping it there while she is talking): I realize that I am talking to a man who laid the foundation of his fortune by selling to a Stock Exchange speculator a Cabinet secret.

Sir Robert Chiltern (biting his lip): What do you mean?

Mrs. Cheveley (rising andfacing him): I mean that I know the real origin of your wealth and your career, and I have got your letter, too.

Sir Robert С h i 11 e r n: What letter?

Mrs. Cheveley (contemptuously): The letter you wrote to Baron Amheim, when you were Lord Radley's secretary, telling the Baron to buy Suez Canal shares — a letter written three lays before the Government announced its own purchase.

Sir Robert Chiltern (hoarsely): It is not true.

Mrs. Cheveley: You thought that letter had been destroyed. How foolish of you! It is in my possession.

Sir Robert Chiltern: The affair to which you allude was no more than a speculation. The House of Commons had not yet passed the bill; it might have been rejected.

Mrs.Cheveley: It was a swindle. Sir Robert. Let us call things by their proper names. It makes everything simpler. And now I am going to sell you that letter, and the price I ask for it is your public support of the Argentine scheme. You made your own fortune out of one canal. You must help me and my friends to make our fortunes out of another!

Sir Robert Chiltern: It is infamous, what you propose — infamous!

Mrs. Cheve ley: Oh, no! This is the game of life as we all have to play it. Sir Robert, sooner or later!

Sir Robert Chiltern: I cannot do what you ask me.

Mrs.Cheveley: You mean you cannot help doing it. "You knowyou are standing on the edge of a precipice. And it is not for you to make terms. It is for you to accept them. Supposing you refuse -

Sir Robert Chiltern: Whatthen?

Mrs. Cheveley: Mydear Sir Robert, whatthen? You are ruined, that is all! Remember to what a point your Puritanism in England has brought you. In oil days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbors. In fact, to be a bit better than one's neighbour was considered excessively vulgar and middle-class. Nowadays, with our modem mania for morality, every one has to pose a' a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues - and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins - one after the other. Not a year passes in England without somebody disappearing. Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man - now they crush hem. And yours is a very nasty scandal. You couldn't survive it. If it were known that as a young man, secretary to a great and important minister, you sold a Cabinet secret for a large sum of money, and that was the origin of your wealth and career, you would be hounded out of public life, you would disappear completely And after all, Sir Robert, why should you sacrifice your entire future rather than deal diplomatically with your enemy? For the moment I am your enemy I admit it! And I am much stronger than you are. Tie big battalions are on my side. You have a splendid position, but it is your splendid position that makes you so vulnerable. You can't defend it! And I am in attack. Of course I have not talked morality to you. You must admit h fairness that I have spared you that. Years ago you did a clever, unscrupulous thing; it turned out a great success. You owe to it your fortune and position. And now you hive got to pay for it. Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do. You have to pay now: Before I leave you to-right, you have got to promise me to suppress your report, aid to speak in the House in favour of this scheme.

Sir Robert Chilter: What you ask is impossible.

Mrs.Cheveley: You must make it possible. You are going to make it possible. Sir Robert, you know whatyour English newspapers are like. Suppose that when I leave this house I drive down to some newspaper office, and give them this scandal and the proofs of it! Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in. Think of the hypocrite with his greasy smile penning his leading article, and arranging the foulness of the public placard.

Sir Robert Chiltern: Stop! You want me to withdraw the report and to make a short speech stating that I believe there are possibilities in the scheme?

Mrs. Cheveley (sifting down on the sofa): Those are my terms.

Sir Robert Chiltern (in a low voice): I will give you any sum of money you want.

Mrs.Cheveley: Even you are not rich enough. Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

1. Note the structure of the excerpt, the role and the character of the author's remarks.

2. Note the blending of colloquial and literary variants of language in the speech of the characters.

3. Pick out sentences of epigrammatic character in Mrs. Cheveley's speech and dwell on the typical features of bourgeois society revealed in them.

4. Comment on the connotation of the word "gentleman" in Sir Chiltern's indignant speech: "You seem to be unable to realize that you ere talking to an English gentleman".

5. Note the peculiar use of the verbs: "to buy", "to sell", "to pay" in the speech of the characters. What insight into bourgeois society is given through manipulations with these words.

6. Discuss the EMs and SDs used by Mrs. Cheveley in her monologues. Whit insight into Mrs. Cheveley's character is given through the EMs and SDs she uses.

7. Speak on the SDs used by Mrs. Cheveley to characterise the English press.

8. Comment on the language used by Sir Robert Chiltern and Mrs. Cheveley and say how the author shows their characters through their speech.

9. Summing up the discussion of the scene speak on Wilde's exposure of the evils of bourgeois society.

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