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Dec 17, 2009

Tosh rated it:

Reading an Oscar Wilde play is sort of like life being perfect. The structure of the work is faultless, the dialogue is uber-clever and fantastic. What's wrong with Wilde? Nothing. He's perfect. I can't imagine any writer who wrote so beautifully in his native language. There are some people who are born with 'it' and Wilde is one of them. Of course for someone so perfect he would have to get involved in some nasty social business via his decade. But when you look back at Wilde, one rea More...

21 comments like (16 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Melissa rated it:

Wilde's wit never bores me, which is why he is one of my favorite authors. Below are a few quotations I particularly liked from Lady Windermere's fan:

"... scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

"What is a cynic?...A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"That is the worst of w More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Cheri rated it:

I enjoyed reading this play, though the situations are so of their period that it can at times feel unrelatable to any modern person.
I have never seen a good performance of it. In fact, it has produced several of the worst stage productions I have ever seen. The play seems to lends itself to stilted acting and un-motivated action. Worse than that, is watching modern actresses who seem to confuse overt sexuality with flirtation, attempt to reproduce the witty and mannered seductions. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2010

Yngvild rated it:

Lady Windermere’s Fan is a collection of catchy aphorisms loosely embroidering a fundamentally silly story. Oscar Wilde understood that the best marketing in the theatre world is to have people quote you, and so he built an entire play around the smart set tossing out modish epigrams like baubles from a Mardi Gras float.

This was the earliest successful Wilde play and it does show some rough edges. The main character, Lady Windermere, is an unappealing puritan, an unlikely target for More...

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Aug 09, 2008

Simba rated it:

God bless Oscar Wilde. Has anyone contributed as much to the conversation of otherwise dull people?

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2012

Artemisia rated it:

LADY WINDERMERE: I'm not interested in her - and - you should not mention this woman and me in the same breath. It is an error of taste.</p>

LADY WINDERMERE: I did not ask her. He insisted on her coming - against my entreaties - against my commands. Oh! the house is tainted for me! I feel that every woman here sneers at me as she dances by with my husband. What I have done to deserve this? I gave him all my life. He took it - used it - spoiled it! I am degraded in my own eyes; and I lack co

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Nov 17, 2011

Duesterwald-Online rated it:

Inhalt:
London im 19. Jahrhundert: Lady Windermere arbeitet an den letzten Vorbereitungen für ihren 21. Geburtstag. Doch genau an diesem Tag erfährt sie, dass ihr Ehemann häufig bei einer Mrs Erlynne zu Besuch ist, die einen sehr zweifelhaften Ruf hat. Als sie dann auch noch erfährt, dass ihr Ehemann dieser Frau größere Geldsummen zukommen lässt, steht die junge Ehe kurz vor dem Aus.
Der Ehemann besteht zwar darauf, unschuldig zu sein, möchte aber, dass seine Frau Mrs. Erlynne zu ihrem G More...

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Sep 30, 2010

Kaung Myat rated it:

ိဝိတိုရိယေခတ္ေႏွာင္းပိုင္း အိုင္းရစ္စာေရးဆရာ၊ၿပဇာတ္ေရးဆရာ ေအာ္စကာဝိုင္းဒ္ေရးသားခဲ့တဲ့ "ေလဒီဝင္ဒီမီယာရဲ့ယပ္ေတာင္"(၁၈၉၂) ၿပဇာတ္မွာေတာ့ ငယ္ရြယ္ေခ်ာေမာလွပတဲ့ အိမ္ေထာင္ရွင္အထက္တန္းအမ်ဳိးသမီး ေလဒီဝင္ဒါမီယာရဲ့ အထက္တန္းၿဗိတိသွ်လူမွဳ ့
အဖြဲ ့အစည္းအသိုင္းအဝိုင္းမွာ ဝင္ဆံ့ေအာင္ထိန္းထိန္းသိမ္းသိမ္းေနထိုင္ခဲ့ရာမွ တစ္ေန ့မွာ မိမိခင္ပြန္းေလာ့ဒ္ဝင္ဒါမီယာကိုယ္တိုင္ဟာ ေအာက္တန္းစားအမ်ဳိးသမီးလို ့နာမည္ၾကီးေနတဲ့ တစ္ခုလပ္ Mrs. အဲႏုိင္း နဲ ့ ပုံမွန္မဟုတ္တဲ့ပတ္သက္မွဳကို သိသြားတဲ့အခါမွာေတာ့.....

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Aug 29, 2010

Erik rated it:

This play was amazing. I started reading it tonight and then realized that it was a play and I could probably find a badass version of it being performed on youtube. I was right! I watched the 1985 TV version thing. Really good. I think it's as effective as reading the play in some respects. I got the plot the same, if not better, seeing it performed, however I probably missed many double meanings and things that I would have found in reading it. The only solution must be to do both? That's defi More...

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Oct 21, 2009

Liz (Consumed by Books) rated it:

This was my first Oscar Wilde, and I have to say that I read it more quickly than I would have liked. I was trying to finish it before my Vic Lit book club (which I did) and I think later, I will wish I had spent more time reading the play and enjoying Wilde's writing. This is definitely something which I want to own and re-read, and it really made me want to explore more Oscar Wilde.

A lot of people probably think "homosexual undertones/overtones" when they're reading Osc More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2012

Miriam rated it:

"Lady windermere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde is a story about a young woman who has been married for only two years and gave birth to a son who is six month old at the time the story takes place. The family lives in a house in London and everything seems perfect until, at Lady Windermere's twenty-first birthday, her husband wants her to invite a woman that he is said to have an affair with. Of course this cannot but cause a lot of trouble and questioning how far anyone should go for love.
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Feb 12, 2011

Christine rated it:

This is the first play I read merely for pleasure. The rest I read for my Lit classes. I admit, the fact that it was on sale at 80% off was a big factor in my purchasing it.

Oscar Wilde's most popular work is of course The Importance of Being Earnest. It's on my to-read list, and if Lady Windermere's Fan is a valid preview of Wilde's style and wit, then I guess I shouldn't wait any longer in reading his other play.

Lady Windermere's Fan is a short easy read, but indeed full of More...

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Mar 28, 2010

Núria rated it:

Ya aviso que ésta probablemente será otra entrega de mi larga serie de “opiniones impopulares”. No soy fan del teatro de Oscar Wilde. El mayor problema creo que está en que Oscar Wilde es uno de los autores más citados de la historia. Has oído tantas veces citas suyas fuera de contexto que cuando las ves inseridas en su contexto original te suenan forzadas, falsas, metidas con calzador, “la gente nunca ha hablado así, soltando aforismos” dices. Otro problema que me cuesta digerir es que sus alta More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 29, 2010

Bruce rated it:

Wilde’s wonderful play is both amusing and poignant, in that respect even a greater work than the merely amusing, “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Oh yes, it is filled with the usual scintillating aphorisms that charm and delight us, particularly in Act III:

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting wh More...

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Jul 27, 2010

Tanya rated it:

"Аз съм загадка - за себе си. От всички хора на света бих искал да опозная напълно единствено себе си; но засега не виждам никаква възможност за това."

"Между мъж и жена приятелство не може да съществува. Страст, ненавист, обожание, любов, да, но не и приятелство."

"Всички се валяме в калта, но някои от нас поглеждат към звездите"

"На този свят има само две нещастия. Едното е да не получиш това, което желаеш, а другото е да го п More...

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Jun 16, 2010

Neil rated it:

The trouble with this play for modern audiences is that one has to relate to Victorian morality for the satire to really work. Otherwise, it comes off as kind of stiff and frumpy for an Oscar Wilde work.

Redeeming this somewhat is that the play is stuffed to the gills with tasty aphorisms, quotes that you probably know but didn't know where they originated.

Ultimately it's a problem that the quotes hold up but the central plot doesn't. The ending is abrupt. Lady Windermere More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 01, 2011

Esther rated it:

This book was written by Oscar Wilde.

After Lady Windermere realizes that her husband was with another woman and wants to invite her, Mrs Erlynne to Lady Windermere's birthday celebration, Lady Windermere tries to stop him from bringing her to her ball. How will Lady Windermere stop him? Will her husband listen to her?

My favourite part was when Mrs Erlynne helps Lady Windermere and I liked it how Mrs Erlynne was actually Lady Windermere's mother. This story was really humo More...

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Dec 07, 2011

Brett rated it:

This is the absolute best play I have ever read. Wilde does a perfect job of balancing the satire, humor, wit, and theme in this work. It's on par with his writing in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Again the subject is the balance between good and evil in individuals, though this time the conclusion is not a depressing and grim one. It's certainly his most well-thought out work, as it's flow is absolutely perfect without any sign of the heavy-handedness that sometimes makes it's way into his writin More...

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Jan 29, 2011

Malak rated it:

The dialogue is witty especially in the III act I kept going back to it and laugh every time! ✔ checked.
the writing? come on it's Wilde! He invents words and amaze you with every line he writes! ✔ checked.
Morals? Well, in this play Wilde is kinda mocking of the morals of the Victorian's society back then, and how must of people are judging each other according to their appearance & their reputations they never actually try to give others a chance to show themselves truly. It also More...

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Sep 07, 2011

Benjamin rated it:

My first Oscar Wilde play. I'll be honest and say that my only knowledge and interest in reading any Wilde work is derived from Morrissey's fondness of his writing. It makes sense that every piece of work I've read by Wilde I've enjoyed immensely. A play that deals with trust and deceit, this is a very well done story that proves to be an excellent starting point for the transition into more work by Oscar Wilde.

"Men become old, but they never become good."

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Jun 06, 2011

Kelly rated it:

Oscar Wilde's quotes are so ubiquitous --and we know so many of them-- that it's easy to forget that he wrote plots that originally strung them all together.

Lady Windermere's Fan is not my favorite of the Wilde plots. We may be so far removed from the moral sensibilities of the 19th century that the histrionics over mistaken intentions can only read as melodrama.

Even the wacky Wilde one-liners are a tad more overblown than witty ("We are all in the gutter, but some of u More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 01, 2011

Gretchen rated it:

I happened on a film adaptation of this play on TV the other night and decided afterwards to read the original. Not the most deliciously clever of Wilde plays, but I think my impression of how good it is might change based on a performance of it. It seems like there is room to do great things with any of the main characters. The film version I saw, A Good Woman, features a woefully miscast Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johannassen (both actresses I normally admire), but I still like the expanded scrip More...

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May 08, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

Quick, witty and all Oscar Wilde. (And, incidentally, not a bad play to read on the second Sunday in May!)

I was surprised to learn that many of the quotes for which Wilde is known come from Lady Windermere's Fan:

Men become old, but they never become good.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

[A cynic is] a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Experience is the name everyone gives to More...

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Aug 21, 2011

Chenlu rated it:

An incredibly witty play! I read this book while listening to the audio production by the Recorded Drama Society at the University of Cambridge available on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Winder... Really interesting to hear each character's view about the good woman vs. the bad woman and how a woman shall behave. What women think: "We make gods of men and they leave us. Other make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful. " And what the guys think: "Wicked wo More...

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Mar 18, 2010

Libby rated it:

I simply love Oscar Wilde. His biting social commentary dressed up in florid prose always makes me smile. My only complaint about this classic is that it was quite similar to An Ideal Husband; however, I liked this play even better. He deals with very difficult, and at times absurd, social issues in a way that says so much in so few words. His dialogue is genius and can be read again and again. He was a master of multi-layered dialogue - on the surface it’s all within social convention, but you More...

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Aug 01, 2011

Shriya rated it:

Oscar Wilde is truly the emperor of maxims and master of tragedies. 'Lady Windermere's Fan' was my first experience of the magical world of Wilde (if we don't count the much read, much loathed 'The Happy Prince ' that is!). A poignant play revolving around an insignificant fan, 'Lady Windermere's Fan' portrays so many things at once-the hypocrisy of the so-called British society, the fickle-mindedness of women, their tendency to be suspicious about anything they don't understand and the role of More...

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May 04, 2011

Bethany rated it:

My sister-in-law sitting across from me quickly turned her head in my direction when I would gasp on occasion. She assumed of course that some character had just met with a shocking death. I was quick to inform her that was not the case, indeed it was much more serious than that!
Ha, I LOVED IT! It had the satire and wit that you would expect after reading The Importance of Being Earnest by the same author, but it still had a more serious tone throughout. I very much enjoyed it:D

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Jun 22, 2010

Angela marked it as to-read

We really own this as part of an omnibus with 5 plays (The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, Salomé): The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

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Jan 26, 2012

Larissa rated it:

wow! Definately a slow starter which I almost bypassed, but then it got really dramatic. Not anywhere near as witty as his later plays, but still engaging! I really enjoy Wilde! A memorable and thoughtfl play! S many ethical questions that this brings up!! Not what you expect and yet exactly what you expect! Definately not a happily ever after which many people describe this as, but a "wow did we really make it out of this mess we got ourselves into" ending.

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Oct 06, 2009

Tracey marked it as to-read

"One pays for one's sin, and then one pay again, and all one's life one pays" (p.515) Collected Works of Oscar Wilde The Plays, the Poems, the Stories, and the Essays Including De Profundis

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