3 January: An Ideal Husband

On this date in 1895 Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband opened in London. 10 facts about the play:

1. One of the characters in the play is Lord Goring, who is named after Goring-by-Sea, the town Wilde was staying in when he wrote the first act.

2. The play was written as a commission for actor-manager John Hare. However, Hare didn’t like the play and rejected it.

3. So Wilde offered it instead to a rival theatre, the Haymarket, which did take it on.

4. It was billed as "A new and original play of modern life".

5. It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded as a good run at the time. Audiences loved it, but critics weren’t so keen. HG Wells wrote: “It is not excellent; indeed, after Lady Windermere's Fan and The Woman of No Importance, it is decidedly disappointing.”

6. The plot concerns a politician with an untarnished reputation, and whose wife believes he is an ideal husband. However, he made a transgression early in his career that no-one knows about – he sold secrets about the Suez Canal. A woman called Mrs Cheveley shows up uninvited at a dinner party and threatens to spill the beans.

7. When the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre. Oscar Wilde’s name was removed from the programmes and posters, because, on its last day at the Haymarket, Wilde had been arrested for gross indecency. Unlike today when the play would be cancelled entirely, it went ahead without him.

8. The play was published in book form a few years later as "By the author of Lady Windermere's Fan".

9. The play has been made into a movie at least five times. Three of the adaptations were British, one German and one from the Soviet Union.

10. The BBC has broadcast seven Radio adaptations since in 1926.

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