An Ideal Husband is set in London in the 1890s, at around the same moment in which it was written. The play unfolds in the grand residences of the London political elite—much of the play takes place in the morning room and “octagon room” of Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor square, but scenes also take place in Lord Goring’s own house and library. Wilde is quick to point out how such lavish accommodations bely complicated and sinister intentions. During Chiltern’s account of an interaction with the sinister Baron Arnheim, in Act 2, Part 1, Wilde writes that “luxury was nothing but a background, a painted scene in a play” in which the only thing that really mattered was “power, power over other men, power over the world.” This is, assuredly, a sentiment that Wilde saw reflected in the real political dealings of the 1890s.
An Ideal Husband is unmistakably a product of its time: Wilde works in a number of allusions to real political events of the 19th century, especially the construction of the Suez Canal in the middle of the century, and much of the play concerns the political subterfuge, backstabbing, and blackmailing that surrounded such political efforts—and that felt commonplace among the elite in Wilde’s England. Wilde’s readiness to critique his own world in real time landed him in quite a bit of trouble—he was arrested by the end of the show's first run.
