Short story: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Objective & content

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde (1887), a dark comedy retold at B1+. The language is simplified, the story is not: every plan and the ending are Wilde's. At a party in London, a palm reader, Mr Podgers, looks at the hand of a young lord and goes pale: he has seen a murder in it. Lord Arthur is about to marry Sybil, and he is a practical young man, so he decides that it is his duty to commit the murder before the wedding. He tries a poisoned sweet and then an exploding clock, and both go comically wrong, until one night by the River Thames he meets the palm reader again. By the end, pupils can follow a story of about 1,650 words, see how a prediction comes true in an unexpected way, and enjoy the humour of a narrator who tells a crime story very lightly.

Pedagogical guide

The story runs over four pages, set like a novel, with one drawing on each page. Page 5 holds the tasks. Six choice and true or false questions check the story. "Find the clues. Bad luck or good luck?" sends pupils back into the text: how the prediction of "a voyage" and "a relative" came true, how Lord Arthur found out that his old cousin never took the poison, why the Dean's family found the clock funny, and why Lord Arthur says that he owes palm reading "all the happiness of my life". A box gives three verb forms from the story (the past passive, the past perfect and reported speech with would), then pupils complete four sentences from the story with them. In the last task, pupils work in pairs: one "reads" the other's hand and tells them five things about their future, and the partner writes them down in reported speech. Page 6 is the answer key with the teacher notes. The crimes are told lightly and nothing is described; the teacher notes say how to handle the newspaper headline about the palm reader's death.

Suggested procedure

1. (5 min) Ask "Do you believe in palm reading or horoscopes? Why do some people believe them?"
2. (20 min) Read the story aloud, or pupils read in pairs. Stop after "I am quite ready." and ask "What do you think Mr Podgers saw?" Stop again after "It was Mr Podgers!" and ask "What do you think Lord Arthur will do?"
3. (10 min) Pupils answer the choice questions, then the "Find the clues" questions; check together.
4. (10 min) Pupils read the box and complete the four sentences.
5. (15 min) In pairs, pupils read each other's hands and write their partner's predictions in reported speech; a few pupils read the funniest ones to the class.

Adaptations

[S] Read the story over two lessons, two pages at a time, and go through the words they may need first (palm reader, engaged, poison, capsule, explode, fraud). Pupils can answer the choice questions and two of the clues only, and write three predictions instead of five.

[A] Pupils retell the story from Mr Podgers's point of view: what did he really see in Lord Arthur's hand?

Materials & prerequisites

One copy per pupil, in colour or black and white: pages 1 to 5 are for pupils, page 6 is the answer key. Pupils should know the past simple, the past continuous and will for the future.