The Works Of Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde is one of the great playwrights and dramatists of the Victorian Age, known for his barbed and clever wit. He is regarded as one of the most proficient and versatile writers of the English language. He is perhaps best known for his sharp and witty rejoinders. Indeed, the playwright spoke in aphorisms on his deathbed when he stated through fevers, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” His plays continue to dazzle audiences even a century after his death.
Wilde wrote only nine plays during his lifetime. They include Salome, The Duchess of Padua, Lady Windermeres Fan, A Woman of no Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Salome is a tragedy that tells the Biblical story of Salome, who dances the “Dance of the Seven Veils” for her step father King Herod and asks for the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward. The play was originally published in French. It was banned on the basis that it was illegal to depict Biblical characters on stage. Salome was not performed on stage in England until 1931, when the ban was finally lifted. Salome even inspired an opera of the same name by Richard Strauss. Since then, bands like U2 and Smashing Pumpkins have also been heavily influenced by the play.
Lady Windermeres Fan is a biting satire on Victorian society. Like most of Wildes other plays, it has a dark side. The story concerns the attempts of a disreputable older woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to blackmail Lord Windermere, the husband of her daughter. Lady Windermere is not aware of her mothers true identity, and Lord Windermere believes his wife, a fastidious woman of high principles, would be greatly ashamed if this knowledge became widely known. Wilde described it as “one of those modern drawing-room plays with pink lampshades”. A film adaptation called A Good Woman was released in 2005, starring Scarlet Johansson and Helen Hunt.
A Woman of No Importance is another classic example of Wildes style. He exposes the hypocrisy of the Victorian upper classes. The ease, with which the characters that are obviously exaggerated caricatures ensconce themselves in the fabric of society, is to Wilde, societys unconscious, embarrassing comment on itself. It repeated the success of Lady Windermeres Fan, consolidating Wildes reputation as the best writer of “comedy-of-manners”.
An Ideal Husband is a comedy that contains the themes of blackmail and political corruption, along with the usual Wildean epigrams, bon mots and social commentary. The action is set in London and takes place within a single day. It was adapted into a film in 1999. It is about Sir Robert Chiltern, a rising star in politics, and considered to be a man of great honor, whose fortune is based on a single dishonest act. Mrs. Cheveley who wants his assistance to commit another dishonest act blackmails him. In a delimma, Chitern finally resolves his inner conflict and refuses to give in to blackmail.
The Importance of Being Earnest is Wildes masterpiece. It is free of any melodrama, or even of any plot worth speaking about. It is in a class of its own in the whole of English drama as a piece of pure, delightful nonsense. It has proven to be Oscar Wildes most enduring–and endearing–play. Wilde builds a farcical–albeit realistic– world of Victorian social mores by using double entendre, aphorisms, and witty repartee.
The Portrait of Dorian Gray is the only novel that Wilde ever wrote. It is the story of a young and incredibly handsome man named Dorian Gray, who has his portrait painted. On the day the portrait is finished, Dorian expresses a wish to never grow old and always maintain his good looks. He is granted his wish. Instead of him, the image in the portrait grows old. Dorian Gray is a sophisticated dandy who is determined to find beauty and pleasure in sin and corruption. In fact, there were moments when Dorian looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful. Dorians vices are never specified, but only exhibited by the deformity of his portrait and hinted at by vague rumours that he ruined the reputations of many women and corrupted various young noblemen. Consequently, the interpretations of Dorians corruption widely vary from homosexuality and venereal diseases to a drug addiction or masturbation. By leaving blanks in his story and avoiding any moral stance as a narrator, Wilde makes the reader responsible for possible interpretations. As one of his maxims assert: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”
Dorian Gray actually corrupts the Greek principle of kalos k agathos or that beauty is necessarily good and that evil is disgusting. He uses his beauty and charm as