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heroine, Lady Windermere, has learnt that her husband has of late been
seen to call very frequently at the house of a certain Mrs. Erlynne,
whom nobody knows. Her suspicions thus aroused, she searches her
husband's desk, discovers a private and locked bank-book, cuts it open,
and finds that one large cheque after another has been drawn in favour
of the lady in question. At this inopportune moment, Lord Windermere
appears with a request that Mrs. Erlynne shall be invited to their
reception that evening. Lady Windermere indignantly refuses, her husband
insists, and, finally, with his own hand, fills in an invitation-card
and sends it by messenger to Mrs. Erlynne. Here some playwrights might
have been content to finish the act. It is sufficiently evident that
Lady Windermere will not submit to the apparent insult, and that
something exciting may be looked for at the reception in the following
act. But Oscar Wilde was not content with this vague expectancy. He
first defined it, and then he underlined the definition, in a perfectly
natural and yet ingenious and skilful way. The day happens to be Lady
Windermere's birthday, and at the beginning of the act her husband has
given her a beautiful ostrich-feather fan. When he sends off the
invitation, she turns upon him and says, "If that woman crosses my
threshold, I shall strike her across the face with this fan." Here,
again, many a dramatist might be content to bring down his curtain. The
announcement of Lady Windermere's resolve carries forward the interest
quite clearly enough for all practical purposes. But even this did not
satisfy Wilde. He imagined a refinement, simple, probable, and yet
immensely effective, which put an extraordinarily keen edge upon the
expectancy of the audience. He made Lady Windermere ring for her butler,
and say: "Parker, be sure you pronounce the names of the guests very
distinctly to-night. Sometimes you speak so fast that I miss them. I am
particularly anxious to hear the names quite clearly, so as to make no
mistake." I well remember the effect which this little touch produced on
the first night. The situation was, in itself, open to grave objections.
There is no plausible excuse for Lord Windermere's obstinacy in forcing
Mrs. Erlynne upon his wife, and risking a violent scandal in order to
postpone an explanation which he must know to be ultimately inevitable.
Though one had not as yet learnt the precise facts of the case, one felt
pretty co