I had a box the first night and, thinking it might do Oscar some good, I took with me Arthur Walter of _The Times_. The first scene of the first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it if not freshness. The delightful, unexpected humour set off the commonplace incident; but it was only the convention that Arthur Walter would see. The play was poor, he thought, which brought me to wonder.
After the first act I went downstairs to the _foyer_ and found the critics in much the same mind. There was an enormous gentleman called Joseph Knight, who cried out:
"The humour is mechanical, unreal." Seeing that I did not respond he challenged me:
"That is for you critics to answer," I replied.
"I might say," he laughed, "in Oscar's own peculiar way, 'Little promise and less performance.' Ha! ha! ha!"
"That's the exact opposite to Oscar's way," I retorted. "It is the listeners who laugh at his humour."
"Come now, really," cried Knight, "you cannot think much of the play?"
For the first time in my life I began to realise that nine critics out of ten are incapable of judging original work. They seem to live in a sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left.
"I have not seen the whole play," I answered. "I was not at any of the rehearsals; but so far it is surely the best comedy in English, the most brilliant: isn't it?"
The big man started back and stared at me; then burst out laughing.
"That's good," he cried with a loud unmirthful guffaw. "'Lady Windermere's Fan' better than any comedy of Shakespeare! Ha! ha! ha! 'more brilliant!' ho! ho!"
"Yes," I persisted, angered by his disdain, "wittier, and more humorous than 'As You Like It,' or 'Much Ado.' Strange to say, too, it is on a higher intellectual level. I can only compare it to the best of Congreve, and I think it's better." With a grunt of disapproval or rage the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange bleatings with one of his _confrères_.
The audience was a picked audience of the best heads in London, far superior in brains therefore to the average journalist, and their judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play. Though the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery of stage-effect. Oscar Wilde had at length come into his kingdom.