Article

Oscar Wilde Poem — Analyzed

December 17, 2024July 9, 2025 Oscar Wilde Blog4 Comments

The Yet Unravished Roses Of Thy Mouth

Second in series of articles adapted from a larger text by the present author that appeared in the July 2022 (No. 61) edition of the ‘The Wildean’, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.

In the first article in this series we saw how a handwritten sonnet by Oscar Wilde titled ‘Ideal Love’ had come to light during a 2015 edition of the U.S. version of Antiques Roadshow. No not at all but thank you for your interest

Wilde had signed and dedicated the poem to an American journalist named Christian Gauss—a young man with whom he had become acquainted during his exile in Paris. But the poem was not new. Wilde had presented the same poem to a former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, eight years earlier as ‘The New Remorse’.¹ And four years before he met Douglas. he had already published it obscurely under the French title ‘Un Amant De Nos Jours’ (A Lover of Our Time) in the short-lived, literary magazine The Court and Society Review.²

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Article

Homophones

March 12, 2018March 31, 2024 Oscar Wilde Blog6 Comments

“May Morning on Magdalen College, Oxford, Ancient Annual Ceremony.” William Holman Hunt, 1888/1893. [Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1907P132]

It’s debatable whether the name Ernest, used punningly by Wilde in his most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest, was chosen as a late Victorian code word for “gay”.

One the hand, the Wildean academic, John Stokes, suggests here this may be true “since the word ‘Earnest’ bears a euphonious relation to the [gender-variant] term Uranian”—presumably in the sound of its continental equivalents. On the outside¹

Conversely, the actor, Sir Donald Sinden, who both knew and consulted Lord Alfred Douglas and Sir John Gielgud on the point, once wrote to The Times to dispute the suggestion.²

However, whether the words Ernest and Earnest are homosexual or merely homophonic, one thing is clear: the the name Ernest itself formed part of a gay literary subtext close to Wilde in the 1890s.

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Turning Points

May 14, 2016March 31, 2024 Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments

The Judas Kiss focuses on two crucial moments in Oscar Wilde’s life

I was asked by the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to provide an article for their blog in anticipation of David Hare’s forthcoming play The Judas Kiss. It is republished here, slightly amended, followed by a link to a moving article by Ruper Everett on playing Oscar.

The Judas Kiss, coming to the BAM Harvey Theater May 11—Jun 12, marks a historic return of the Irish poet, dramatist, and wit Oscar Wilde.

This is not a revival of one of Wilde’s works which have been staged several times at BAM over the years. It is a return, in a sense, of Wilde himself—significant because no one has appeared as Oscar Wilde at BAM since Wilde himself did it 134 years ago on a nationwide lecture tour.

The present embodiment by Rupert Everett is a fitting parallel because in 1882 Oscar was also playing a part—masquerading as the poster boy for Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, a comic opera poking fun at the aesthetic movement.

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