Oscar Wilde's first major success on the stage, Lady Windermere's Fan premiered in London in 1892 to sold-out fashionable crowds. The social comedy centers on a woman who has been cast out of and hopes to re-enter society but ultimately sacrifices herself to save her grown daughter's dignity and social standing. Filled with some of Wilde's best-known and wittiest epigrammatic sayings, the play's exposure of upper-class hypocrisy is far deeper and more poignant than such funny writing ought to allow.
