We consider a random symmetric matrix X = [X jk ] n j,k=1 in which the upper triangular entries are independent identically distributed random variables with mean zero and unit variance. We additionally suppose that E |X 11 | 4+δ =: µ 4+δ < ∞ for some δ > 0. Under these conditions we show that the typical distance between the Stieltjes transform of the empirical spectral distribution (ESD) of the matrix n − 1 2 X and Wigner's semicircle law is of order (nv) −1 , where v is the distance in the complex plane to the real line. Furthermore we outline applications which are deferred to a subsequent paper, such as the rate of convergence in probability of the ESD to the distribution function of the semicircle law, rigidity of the eigenvalues and eigenvector delocalization.