The play could have run longer at the Criterion, but the theatre was required by its proprietor, Charles Wyndham, for a new production. In April, on the last day of the Haymarket run, Wilde was arrested for gross indecency his name was removed from the playbills and programmes when the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre, where it ran for a further 13 performances, from 13 to 27 April. It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded as a good run at the time. The play was put into rehearsal in December 1894 and opened on 3 January 1895, billed as "A new and original play of modern life". Hare rejected the play, finding the last act unsatisfactory Wilde then successfully offered the play to Lewis Waller, who was about to take temporary charge of the Haymarket in the absence in America of its usual manager, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Between September 1893 and January 1894 he wrote the remaining three acts. He completed the first act while staying at a house he had taken at Goring-on-Thames, after which he named a leading character in the play. In June 1893, with his second drawing room play, A Woman of No Importance, running successfully at the Haymarket Theatre, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband for the actor-manager John Hare.
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