There's so much I like about this, and one thing that I really don't. The meat of the play, and the issue driving the central couple apart, is that back in the day the husband, who is in politics, did something terribly corrupt, and it's all about to come out. His best friend, Lord Goring, appears to most to be good-natured, flippant and incredibly useless, but only the first two are true, and he manages things so that the danger is removed, the husband and wife reconciled, and his own connection to the family assured. He does this, too, with a clear-sighted view of what Sir Robert has done wrong, and he calmly, sympathetically, makes Robert aware of his utter disappointment. The scene between them is the best in the play, and I was all set to give this four stars, but the weakness here is how the play presents Robert's wife Gertrude. She's a decent person who's also disappointed in her husband, but there's a horrible scene in which Robert blames her for the whole thing by saying it's her standards that have ruined them, and not his shocking behaviour, which, get fucked Sir Robert. Goring convinces Gertrude that men are more valuable than women, and so she should continue to support him in his political career, even knowing what he's capable of. Up to this point I'd sincerely liked Goring, but I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth there, and it's not much wiped away by the fact that Robert's truly ethical behaviour at the end proves his early sin a one-time lapse.

An enjoyable play, with a fantastic central scene between the two men, and a heaping side of misogyny. I'd like to say it's a product of its time, but given his own experience of marginalisation I expected Wilde to make an attempt at better.