Editorial Journal of John Cooper on Oscar Wilde
Sarah Snook Wins The Tony Award
The Picture of Dorian Gray’ on Broadway
As widely expected, and as prefaced in my review of the play, Sarah Snook tonight received the Tony Award for ‘Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play’—for her remarkable performance in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ on Broadway
A Literary Review
The Tony Awards for excellence in Broadway Theatre were announced last week, and it was pleasing to see an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray among the nominees.
The production is currently enjoying a limited engagement at Music Box theatre on W 45th St. in New York, after transferring from a successful run in London’s West End where it won two Olivier Awards. The Tonys are Broadway’s equivalent awards and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ received six nominations—including Best Performance by an Actress (Sarah Snook), and Best Direction (Kip Williams).
It is a truly remarkable staging of the work, and as a segue into what makes it remarkable, it is worth alluding to a little known Oscar Wilde-related parallel in the history of the Tony Awards.
Continue reading “Playing to the Camera”
VYVYAN OSCAR BERESFORD WILDE
December, 1891
This photograph is not new, but it is not often seen in close up like this, nor usually as a full cabinet card [below] which is in the Oscar Wilde Collection at Trinity College, Dublin.
Continue reading “Vyvyan”
OUR NATIONAL THEATRE of 1885
How Many Can You Recognize?
Funny Folks was a London periodical published between 1874—1894 by the Scottish newspaper proprietor James Henderson.
In the Christmas number of 1885 there appeared a two page cartoon1 depicting Father Christmas introducing a débutante to the assembled elites of ‘Our National Theatre’—the débutante in question being the year 1886.
Among the audience are familiar luminaries such as Henry Irving and Queen Victoria. But how many more can you find?
Oscar Wilde is, of course, quite conspicuous.
Continue reading “Where’s Wilde?”
Oscar Wilde Meets Pope Leo XIII
—Spring, 1900—
In the Spring of 1900, Oscar Wilde arrived at the Vatican, and like any tourist he had his photograph taken. He was on a Roman holiday to spend a little time with friends—but, as it turned out, he spent a lot of time with the Pope.
Wilde was no stranger to the Vatican. In April 1877 as he was returning from a tour of Greece with his Trinity College tutor, the Rev. John Mahaffy, when his friend David Hunter-Blair arranged an audience for him with the then Pope Pius IX.
23 years later in 1900, again in April, and just seven months before he died, Oscar met the current pontiff—this time the aging Pope Leo XIII.1
Continue reading “Wilde at the Vatican”
SKETCH OF OSCAR WILDE
By Frederick Pegram
Frederick Pegram (1870-1937), was an English illustrator and cartoonist for various publications including Pall Mall Gazette, Punch, The Idler, The llustrated London News, Tatler, and The Daily Chronicle.
It seems that he made drawings wherever he went.
For such was the case between 1888—89 when he attended sessions of the Parnell Special Commission at the Royal Courts of Justice—which was a judicial inquiry investigating allegations against Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish-born member of the UK Parliament.
While Pegram was at the hearings he made a set of 17 portrait sketches—mostly of the lecturer Alexander Gow, but also at least one of Oscar Wilde, who was frequently in attendance during Parnell’s testimony.1
Continue reading “The Pegram Sketch”
WILLIAM THEODORE PETERS
As Ernest Dowson’s ‘The Pierrot of the Minute’
William Theodore Peters—remember him?
He is the American poet and actor with recent claims on this blog to be the ultimate decadent of the 1890s.
Peters’s decadent persona is supported by a photograph featured in that article which was thought to be the only one of him known to exist. However, I concluded by hinting at the existence of two other images of Peters that have recently come to my attention.
The first of these is the photograph below of Peters in Pierrot costume.
Continue reading “The Pierrot of the Minute”
MRS. OSCAR WILDE AT HOME
And a rare photograph of her in profile
Below is an illustrated interview with Constance Wilde that appeared in the journal To-day on Saturday, November 24, 1894. In it she talks about art, home decoration, handicrafts, and shows off her autograph book.
The article features a rare photograph of Constance taken in profile which does not appear to have been published elsewhere.
Continue reading “Profile of Constance”
THE GOLD ROOMS OF WILDE AND KLIMT
—And the Vienna Inheritance of an Oscar Wilde Poem—
‘In the Gold Room’ is a poem that has attracted limited attention since it first appeared in Oscar Wilde’s self-published debut volume of Poems (1881).
Since then the poem has dimmed in the memory of even the seasoned scholar—and a visit to a museum of Germanic art hardly seemed likely to bring it back into the light.
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AN ALLEGORICAL PLEA TO OSCAR WILDE
In Bohemia: A Masque
by Christian Gauss, the future Dean of Princeton University.
The fifth and final article of my Three Times Tried series featured the third appearance in 1899 of a sonnet by Oscar Wilde. On this occasion he presented it to a young man named Christian Frederick Gauss, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, who would eventually become Professor of Modern Languages at Princeton.
We saw how Gauss had incorporated his meetings with Wilde into a striking work titled In Bohemia: A Masque, first published in the literary monthly East and West in June 1900.
As the previous article only featured selections of the poem, it is worth presenting it in full here separately, for the record.
Continue reading “In Bohemia: A Masque”