A Woman of No Importance

A Woman of No Importance is the 1893 society comedy by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the second of the four West End comedies that made him the most successful playwright of the early 1890s. The play turns on Mrs Arbuthnot, a woman with a hidden past, whose grown son is offered a secretaryship by the brilliant and cynical Lord Illingworth, the man who long ago seduced and abandoned her. Around this melodramatic core Wilde arranges his most glittering country-house talk, with Lord Illingworth delivering some of the most famous epigrams in English drama. The play premiered at the Haymarket Theatre under Herbert Beerbohm Tree and consolidated the success of Lady Windermere’s Fan. It remains in the standard repertory of English comedy. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.