SOURCE: Review of An Ideal Husband. Athenaeum 105 (12 January 1895): 57.

In the following excerpted review, the anonymous critic offers a favorable assessment of An Ideal Husband.

One of the constituent elements in wit is the perception of analogies in things apparently disparate and incongruous. Accepting this as a canon and testing by it the pretensions of Mr. Oscar Wilde in his latest play, that writer might be pronounced the greatest of wits, inasmuch as he perceives analogies in things absolutely antagonistic. His presumable end is gained, since a chorus of laughter attends his propositions or paradoxes. It requires, however, gifts of a kind not usually accorded to humanity to think out statements such as “High intellectual pleasures make girls' noses large,” “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,” “All reasons are absurd,” and the like. Uttered as these things are by Mr. Charles Hawtrey, who for once is entrusted with...