SOURCE: “Oscar Wilde's Comedy.” Spectator 69 (26 November 1892): 767.

In the following positive assessment of Lady Windermere's Fan, the reviewer asserts that “we are grateful to Mr. Wilde for a straightforward comedy which professes no purpose but comedy's best and truest—to entertain.”

We shall not be suspected of any great sympathy with the methods and the feats of Mr. Oscar Wilde. In this journal we have always disclaimed respect for the forms of charlatanism in which it has pleased him to indulge, and which he would, we suspect, be about the first himself to admit. But a charlatan may be a man of conspicuous ability; and on the withdrawal from the stage for the present of his first-acted comedy, after a career of great success, it is but appropriate in us as it is fair to him to signalise the addition to our acted plays of a comedy of society-manners...