Plays

By Oscar Wilde

Subjects: Fiction, general, English drama, Plays, Dramatic works, Drama in English

Description: This Penguin collection contains Oscar Wilde's five wittiest and best known plays. He himself described **Lady Windermere's Fan** his first great stage success, as 'one of those modern drawing-room plays with pink lampshades'. Its combination of polished social drama and corruscatingly witty dialogue was repeated in **A Woman of No Importance** and **An Ideal Husband** both of which were enthusiastically received by the public but savaged, much to Wilde's delight, by affronted critics. His greatest play, **The Importance of Being Earnest** was first produced in 1895. Wilde wrote of it: 'It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy . . . that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all of the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality'. This volume also includes Lord Alfred Douglas's translation of **Salomé** a short drama which Wilde wrote in French.