🌻 The Leading Online Digest of Oscar Wilde Studies
Alfred Douglas on Wilde’s prose style and his place in the ‘new culture’.
In September 1893, Lord Alfred Douglas wrote a letter to the poet Charles Kains Jackson in which he used two moderately coded expressions.
Continue reading “The ‘Jeweled Style’”
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.
Continue reading “Sarah Snook Wins Tony Award”
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”
Coming to Broadway in New York this Spring are two new productions of Oscar Wilde works—and each for a limited time only.
The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Music Box Theatre, and Salome at The Metropolitan Opera.
See below for details.
Continue reading “Wilde on Broadway”
In its inaugural year, Oscariana is a celebration of the birth of one of Ireland’s greatest sons. Join the good folks at Wilde’s childhood home and other locations in Dublin for a fabulous festival taking place from October 14-16, 2023.
Hear Oscar’s fairytales in the very nursery where he spent his childhood. Experience the acclaimed guided tour of Oscar Wilde House – the amazing and tragic stories of the Wilde family, in the very rooms where the dramas took place. See the dark and dangerous 1945 film noir version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar’s novel that caused a scandal, in the stylish and historic Stella Cinema in Rathmines. Laugh along with Wilde’s comic genius with the epic, technicolour 1952 version of The Importance of Being Earnest at Smithfield’s Lighthouse Cinema. See the classic Wildean play The Importance of Being Oscar in a room overlooking Merrion Park and Oscar’s iconic statue.
Oscar’s mother’s famous weekly gatherings of musicians, politicians and poets at One Merrion Square were famous across the 20 years or more the Wildes lived at the house. Sample what is was like to be at one of these events with our online event – Speranza’s Salon. This is a look inside the house, where you will be taken on a historic journey and see the artists, musicians and poets of today, performing in the rooms where the salons took place.
Visit the web site for schedule, tickets, and more.
© John Cooper, 2023
On February 20, 1882 Wilde was in Cincinnati but not to lecture. It was a stopover on his way to Louisville, KY where he lectured on the following night. Wilde did return to Cincinnati to lecture, as he had planned to do on February 23.
Continue reading “Patti in Cincinnati”
Oscar Wilde was 27 years of age when left England for America on board the S.S. Arizona. By the time he reached New York eight days later he was 26—this being the age he insisted upon in press interviews.1
A simple mistake for anyone to make who was awful at arithmetic or a victim to vanity; but it takes a declared genius to incorporate the error years later into his works, as we shall see.
Continue reading “Twenty-seven”
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.
Continue reading “Homophones”
It styles itself as Simple, Cheery, and Charming—which it is, and that will have to suffice as a review as I was only there long enough for one drink. And therein lies a tale.
Continue reading “The Pictures of Dorian Gray”
Focused though I am on Oscar Wilde In America, I like to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
However, I know that to see the brushstrokes up close it is sometimes necessary to depart from topical and geographical constraints and visit the works themselves.
So last weekend I attended the Oscar Wilde Festival in Galway, Ireland, where I discovered part of the Wilde canvas rendered in two books with contrasting techniques.
Continue reading “Useful Editions”