ABSTRACT
The humour of Oscar Wilde’s jeu d’esprit thus entitled is of a very different order. As pure farce-and what can be better than farce at its best?—it deserves to live; for it is independent of passing circumstances, and is written with all the grave, simple, matter of fact seriousness which is more essential to farce than to tragedy. Nobody with the slightest sense of humour, or, for that matter, nobody with the strongest, can fail to enjoy the story of a man to whom murder presented itself in the light of a simple duty. It is worth all Mr. Wilde’s serious work put together. The stories which follow are also excellent, and their author is to be congratulated on having introduced an entirely new and original ghost to the world-no slight feat in these days. But for its degeneration into sentiment, the story in which it appears would be almost as good in its way as that of ‘Lord Arthur’s Crime’.
