The Duchess of Padua

The Duchess of Padua is a five-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde, set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while Wilde was in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City under the title Guido Ferranti on January 26, 1891, where it ran for three weeks. It has been rarely revived or studied.

     Wilde first mentioned the possibility of writing a five-act blank verse tragedy in the Biograph in 1880, originally to be entitled The Duchess of Florence. Wilde was strongly influenced by Lucrezia Borgia (1833) and Angelo, Tyrant of Padua (1835), two Italian-set historical plays by Victor Hugo.

A Woman of No Importance

A Woman of No Importance is an original play of modern life, in four acts, first performed on April 19, 1893, at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirizes English upper-class society. It has been revived from time to time since his death in 1900, but has been widely regarded as the least successful of his four drawing room plays. The play was well received by the public, running from April-August 1893 (considered a good run for its time) but received mixed reviews.

 

Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, February 20, 1892, at the St. James's Theatre in London.

    The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an affair with another woman. She confronts him with it but although he denies it, he invites the other woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs. Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs. Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed Mrs. Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs. Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage.

The most notable symbol in the play, Lady Windermere's fan, represents the idealistic view of how women were to behave during the time the play is set. Whenever I hear this play mentioned in idle conversation, or when I sit down to read it again, I wonder what the fan would be in our modern times. A few decades ago, I would have said it was the apron, but now, in the 2000s, I don't really think there is one symbol to embody society's view of how women should behave and that is a symbol in itself, a symbol blatantly stating just how far women have come to remove themselves from prescribed behaviors.

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on February 14, 1895 at the St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest, as it is more commonly referred to, Wilde's most enduringly popular play.

    The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Their feud came to a climax in court, where Wilde's homosexuality was revealed to the Victorian public and he was sentenced to imprisonment. Despite the play's early success, Wilde's notoriety caused the play to be closed after eight-six performances. After his release from prison, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no further comic or dramatic work.

    The Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Dame Edith Evans reprised her celebrated interpretation of Lady Bracknell; The Importance of Being Earnest (1992) by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast; and Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) incorporated some of Wilde's original material cut during the preparation of the original stage production.

If there ever was a literary war concerning the merits and failings of marriage this play is surely its battleground. From the opening dialogue to the player bows, the topic of marriage is discussed thoroughly. After reading this play, I'm not sure which side comes out as the victor, but Wilde always loved to make his audience think about the institutions of his time. Despite the numerous themes, from the limitations of morality, hypocrisy versus inventiveness, the most common theme is the importance of not being earnest because of the negative qualities it could lead to if followed as strict law.

  I've always been one to champion thinking outside of societal constraints and old-fashioned traditions, which is probably why Wilde is such an alluring author to me. Everything should be questioned, even avenues or ideas which are proven true need to be evaluated, analyzed, and re-evaluated in life. If one does not self-reflect and constantly question one's surroundings, complacency is just right around the corner.

An Ideal Husband

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 stage play by Oscar Wilde revolving around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London, in "the present," and takes place over the course of twenty-four hours. After The Importance of Being Earnest, it is Wilde's most popularly produced play.

    In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband; he completed it later that winter. His work began at Goring-on-Thames, after which he named the character Lord Goring, and concluded writing at St James's Place. He initially sent the completed play to the Garrick Theatre, where the manager rejected it, but it was soon accepted by the Haymarket Theatre, where Lewis Waller had temporarily taken control. Waller was an excellent actor and cast himself as Sir Robert Chiltern. The play gave the Haymarket the success it desperately needed.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. The magazine’s editor feared the story was indecent, and without Wilde’s knowledge, deleted roughly five hundred words before publication. Despite this censorship, The Picture of Dorian Gray offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material when revising and lengthening the story for book publication the following year.

     The longer and revised version of The Picture of Dorian Gray published in book form in 1891 featured an aphoristic preface—a defense of the artist’s rights and of art for art’s sake—based in part on his press defenses of the novel the previous year. The content, style, and presentation of the preface made it famous in its own right, as a literary and artistic manifesto. In April 1891, the publishing firm of Ward, Lock, and Company, who had distributed the shorter, more inflammatory, magazine version in England the previous year, published the revised version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.