Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of novelist, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde, who was one of the most popular playwrights in London during the early 1890s and became the target of a criminal prosecution involving his homosexuality. Wilde is most well-known for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and for his plays Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Ernest.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1854. He was the second of three children. Wilde‘s mother was a poet and a supporter of the Irish nationalist movement. His father was Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon. He was also a renowned philanthropist, who was knighted for his service as a health adviser for the nation and also wrote books about Irish archeology and peasant folklore.
Wilde was educated at home, until the age of nine, by a French nursemaid and German governess who taught him their languages. In 1864, Wilde entered the Portora Royal School in Northern Ireland, where he studied for seven years, and was regarded as a prodigy for his ability to speed read. Wilde was able to read two pages simultaneously and could consume a three-volume book in 30 minutes.
In 1871, Wilde won a scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin, where he studied literature and the classics for three years. During this time Wilde established himself as an outstanding student. He was first in his class in his freshman year, and he began publishing poems in magazines.
During Wilde’s second year, he was elected as one of the Scholars of Trinity College, which was described as “the most prestigious undergraduate award in the country.” In his final year, he won the university’s highest academic award, the Berkely Gold Medal in Greek. Wilde was then awarded a scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford, where he continued his studies from 1874 to 1878.
At Magdalen College Wilde wore his hair long, and became a Freemason. He also developed an interest in Catholicism, and he became widely known for his role in the Decadent Movement. The Decadent Movement was an artistic and literary trend that was characterized by a belief in the superiority of fantasy and aesthetic hedonism over logic and the natural world.
In 1878, Wilde won the Newdigate Prize from the University of Oxford for his poem Ravenna, which was about his time in Oxford. That same year he graduated with a degree in the classics from Magdalen College and returned to Dublin, where he regularly attended theater performances.
In 1880, Wilde completed his first play, Vera; or The Nihilists, which is a tragedy set in Russia, and loosely based on the life of writer and social activist Vera Zasulich. A year later arrangements were made for it to be performed in London, but the production was canceled, due to political reasons. The first performance was in 1883 in New York, although it wasn’t a success and folded after just a week.
In 1881, Wilde published a collection of his poetry titled Poems, which sold out the first print run of 750 copies, although it wasn’t generally well received by critics, and the Oxford Union condemned the book for alleged plagiarism. Nonetheless, it had further printings, and Wilde presented many copies of the book to the dignitaries and writers who received him during his later lecture tours.
In 1883, Wilde visited Paris, where he wrote a five-act tragedy titled The Duchess of Padua, which was turned down by the actress it was written for and abandoned until 1891 when it was performed on Broadway in New York, but only ran for three weeks.
In 1890, Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a philosophical story about someone who sells his soul in exchange for lasting youth, so that a portrait of him ages and fades rather than his physical appearance. The book was controversial when it was first published. Many critics felt that it was not only poorly written but “vulgar” and had a “superficial view of beauty,” although today it is largely considered to be a seminal work in literature and a timeless classic.
In 1891, Wilde finished his drama Salome but was met with a refusal for it to be performed in England at the time, due to a prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. However, Wilde produced a sequence of four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights in London and defined his legacy.
In 1892, Wilde completed a social satire titled Lady Windermere’s Fan, which is about a woman who suspects that her husband is having an affair, and it ran for 197 performances that year. In 1893, this was followed by A Woman of No Importance, which satirizes English upper-class society and ran for 113 performances. In 1895, An Ideal Husband was released, which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and it ran for 124 performances.
That same year, The Importance of Being Ernest was released, which became one of his most celebrated works. This play was an exaggerated comedy about someone who maintains a fictitious persona to escape burdensome social obligations. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde’s career, the height of his fame and success, but also heralded his downfall. The Marquees of Queensberry, whose gay son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde’s lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables to disrupt the show. However, Wilde was tipped off about his plans, and Queensberry was refused admission to the theater.
This angered Queensberry, who publicly accused Wilde of illegal homosexual acts. This allegation got Queensberry arrested for criminal libel, a charge with a possible sentence of two years in prison. However, Queensberry was able to avoid conviction for this if he could demonstrate that his accusation was true, so he hired private detectives to find evidence of Wilde’s gay liaisons.
Wilde’s friends warned him that this was a serious situation and that he should flee to France, but he didn’t heed their advice. When the case went to trial, Wilde’s private life, and his associations with male prostitutes in brothels, became public knowledge and began to appear in the press. Queensberry was acquitted after the trial, and Wilde had incurred considerable expenses in his defense, which left him bankrupt.
However, the worst was yet to come. After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was issued for the charges of “sodomy” and “gross indecency,” and soon thereafter he was arrested. Wilde was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labor, and his notoriety caused his play The Importance of Being Ernest to be closed after 86 performances.
In 1897, Wilde was released from prison, bankrupt and embittered. He moved to France and never returned to the United Kingdom again. The following year Wilde wrote his poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which was his last published work, and is an eloquent plea for the reform of prison conditions.
Wilde died in 1900 in Paris, at the age of 46, of acute meningitis brought on by an ear infection. In his semiconscious final moments, Wilde was received into the Roman Catholic Church, which he had admired since his time in college. He is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Paris. Wilde wrote a total of nine plays and 43 poems during his lifetime.
In 1995, Wilde was commemorated with a stained-glass window at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. In 2014, Wilde was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have “made significant contributions in their fields.” In 2017, Wilde was among around 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered criminal offenses in England.
Some of the quotes that Oscar Wilde is known for include:
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.