Author: Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. He was born in 1854 and died in 1900. He was not just a writer of drama but also many other different kinds of writing and throughout his life he changed his types of writing. He became most popular for playwriting, like An Ideal Husband, in the 1880's . He became London's most popular playwritist on the 1890's. 
After studying University, where he studied first in Dublin then at Oxford, he proved himself to be a very good classicist. He was firstly very involved in philosophy of aestheticism. Then he became involved in different literary activites - first he published  book of poems. They got all the way to the United States and to Canada; they were bout English Renaissance in Art. After this, he came back to London to be a journalist. 
In the 1890's he finally started writing novels- his first novel was The Picture of Dorian Grey, which became very successful. The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama (wikipedia). So then, he started writing drama's like An Ideal Husband. An Ideal Husband wasn't just one society drama that he wrote, but there were many more. He liked to observe the English society and in more detail, social classes, so he wrote about them and made them into drama's. Oscar Wilde published four society comedies in the 1890's which made him one of the most successful playwriters of the Victorian London. 


What is the primary motivation of the protagonist and antagonist?  How do they play off of each other?
Protagonist: Sir Robert Chiltern
Antagonist: Mrs. Cheveley


In this case, the protagonist is under a lot of pressure by the antagonist because there is a lot of blackmail going around. Mrs. Cheveley came to town just to tell Sir Chiltern that she knows something that he hoped would never get out to his wife and other people in his surrounding. With this information, she has the power to get him to do anything that he wants. The make a deal, and with this deal, Mrs. Cheveley promises that his secret will never get out if he does what she wants. The only problem is that Sir Chiltern's wife, Lady Chiltern, is a very caring wife not only at home, but in his career, and wants to know everything that is going on. When she suspects something is going on she starts to ask him and investigate what the situation is. Of course, Sir Chiltern is very afraid that this whole situation is going to blow because he does not want his wife to find out his dirty secret about his past that Mrs. Cheveley is blackmailing him about. 
Another big problem is that Mrs.Cheveley is a pretty, well dressed, sophisticated woman that threatens other woman by her success and beauty. Not only this, but Lady Chiltern and Mrs. Cheveley know each other  for a very long time because they went to school together. They didn't like each other back then, and they don't like each other now. So when Lady Chiltern sees her husband and her enemy talking in private she suspects something right at that moment. The question is how long can it go on?