An Ideal Husband: Summary

The play opens at an evening party in the octagon room of Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square. Sir Robert, Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, is admired for his integrity, and his wife Gertrude receives the guests at the top of the staircase. Society women trade languid complaints about their perfect husbands, Lord Caversham grumbles about his idle son Lord Goring, and Robert's sister Mabel defends Goring. Lady Markby arrives with a guest, Mrs Cheveley, lately of Vienna, and Lady Chiltern greets her coldly: they were at school together.

Mrs Cheveley draws Robert aside. She has invested heavily in an Argentine Canal scheme, which Robert calls "a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle" and means to condemn in the House the next night. She wants him to withdraw the report and speak for the scheme instead. Her weapon is a letter he wrote as secretary to Lord Radley, telling Baron Arnheim to buy Suez Canal shares three days before the Government announced its own purchase. Robert offers her any sum of money; she refuses, threatens to take the story to the newspapers, and he gives in. Before leaving, she tells Lady Chiltern that Robert will support the scheme.

Mabel finds a diamond brooch on the sofa, and Goring quietly pockets it, asking her to tell him if anyone claims it. Gertrude then questions her husband. She tells him Mrs Cheveley was sent away from school as a thief, insists that "One's past is what one is", and asks whether he hides any secret dishonour. He tells her there is nothing in his past she might not know, and at her insistence writes to Mrs Cheveley refusing to support the scheme. Left alone, he tells Mason to put out the lights.

The next day Robert confesses everything to Goring. Baron Arnheim, preaching "the gospel of gold", once promised to make him rich in return for private information; Robert sent him the state secret, received £110,000 and went straight into the House. He insists that yielding took courage, not weakness. Goring, who was once engaged to Mrs Cheveley for three days, urges him to tell his wife and to fight, and Robert wires the embassy in Vienna for anything scandalous about her. Goring then warns Gertrude that she makes too few allowances for weakness, and promises her his help if she is ever in trouble.

Lady Markby and Mrs Cheveley call to ask about a lost diamond snake-brooch with a ruby. Once Lady Markby has gone, Gertrude tells Mrs Cheveley she would never have invited her had she known who she was. Mrs Cheveley, learning that Gertrude forced Robert's letter of refusal, sets a deadline of noon the next day, and when ordered out of the house she reveals the truth as Robert walks in. He admits it. Gertrude recoils from "a horrible painted mask", and Robert answers that women ruin men by making "false idols" of them, then leaves her sobbing.

That night Goring receives a note from Gertrude on pink paper: "I want you. I trust you. I am coming to you. Gertrude." His father arrives to order him to marry, and Goring tells his butler Phipps to show a lady into the drawing room when she comes. It is Mrs Cheveley who calls, and while she waits she finds and reads the note. Robert then arrives in despair: Vienna has found nothing against her, except that Baron Arnheim left her most of his fortune. When a chair falls in the next room, Robert forces his way in, finds Mrs Cheveley and storms out, taking her for Goring's mistress, while Goring, believing the hidden woman is Gertrude, swears she is innocent.

Mrs Cheveley offers Goring the letter if he will marry her, and he refuses. When she mentions her lost brooch, he produces it, clasps it on her wrist as a bracelet, and reveals that she stole it ten years earlier from his cousin, Lady Berkshire. Unable to find the hidden spring, and threatened with the police, she gives up Robert's letter, which Goring burns. While his back is turned she steals Gertrude's note, which she means to send to Robert as a love letter, and escapes by ringing for Phipps.

Next morning Lord Caversham reports that Robert has denounced the canal scheme in the House to the praise of The Times, and Goring proposes to Mabel, who accepts. Goring tells Gertrude that the letter is burnt but her note is stolen; before it can be intercepted, Robert enters reading it, takes it as written to him, and she lets him. He offers to leave public life, and declines the Cabinet seat that Lord Caversham brings from the Prime Minister. Goring persuades Gertrude to forgive rather than punish, and she tears up Robert's letter of refusal. When Robert forbids Goring to marry Mabel because of Mrs Cheveley's visit, Gertrude tells him the whole truth about the note. Robert consents, accepts the seat, and Gertrude assures him that what she feels is "Love, and only love."