Wilde context

The Life of Oscar Wilde, other plays

Born 16th Oct 1854
Considered an outstanding student of the classics, first at Dublin university and later at Oxford university.
Moved to London after uni where he lived a fashionable life in desirable social circles.
Picture of Dorian Gray 1890
Lady Windermere's Fan performed in 1892.
Convicted of homosexuality with the Marquis of Queensbury - 2 years hard labour.
Wrote 'de Profundus' in Jail.
Died destitute in Paris on Nov 30th 1980.

The Original Staging of An Ideal Husband - Sos Eltis introduction

• Waller, the actor-manager, took the role of Robert, a popular 'did his best to convert the role into a more traditional portrait of the good, pure man trying to forget his one secret sin.'

• Daily News: 'Mr Waller played Sir Robert with a force and earnestness which went far to atone for the inherent weakness of the character.

• H.G Wells: less respectful, critiquing ironically. 'His emotions are terrible, he clenches his fists- one may imagine the nails dug into his palms - he opens and shuts his voiceless lips, rolls his eyes and so lives, through four terrible acts of mental torment.'

-Julia Neilson played Gertrude- also played Hester Worsley - another stern puritan 'forced to revise her moral absolutism'.

Charles Hawtrey portrayed Goring as the 'sensible, shrewd man of the world.'

Mrs. Cheveley's evening dress 'trimmed with an entire flock of dead swallows'.

The Era: Sir Robert is a 'sordid rogue.'

Pall Mall Budget: 'proves himself one of those gentlemen who can be honest only so long as it is absolutely convenient.'

Pick-Me-Up: 'I'll always think kindly of a great man in future if found out to be a masterpiece of moral error. I shall put his drawbacks down to the fact that he must have an abnormally good wife.'

Prowse's 1986 film adaptation

The play was cut short at Robert's line 'is it love you feel for me, or pity merely?' so as to create an uncertainty which changes the tone and causes the audience to interpret the play differently.

Oliver Parker's 1999 film adaptation

-"Part of the job," he said, "was simply drawing back the veil to expose more of that compassion and humanity" that's already present in the play, even if in "coded" form. "In a film, one is trying to tie it down more to an emotional reality" that lies beneath the play's surface.

-"I knew the play and wasn't sure about the idea, and I went to see the [1993 London] production, which was a Peter Hall production, and I still wasn't sure about it. In fact, I thought it was quite a bad idea. It seemed to me so innately theatrical that I wasn't sure how on earth you were going to rip it off the stage."

Korda's 1947 film adaptation

"An Ideal Husband represents Alex's love of irony and paradox - Wilde's dialogue reads like the quintessence of what Alex and [screenwriter Lajos] Birò had been aiming toward for thirty years - and combines a biting portrait of aristocratic life and morals with the possibilities of a lavish and expensive fin-de-siècle treatment. The cost of Cecil Beaton's costumes alone would have been enough to finance a small movie and the sets were planned with reckless extravagance. "

Gilded society

The 'gilded society' describes the late Victorian age, where there was increasingly rapid economic growth and industrialisation.

Idealism of men in public life

Victorian society has what Oscar Wilde referred to as the "Modern mania for morality", and therefore men in public life were idealised by being held up to impossible standards. The scandals of Dilke and Parnell are clear examples that this is unattainable, and that to idealise men in such a way is to be unforgiving and to regard men as inhuman.

Victorian ideals of women

Wikipedia: The status of women in the Victorian era was often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the United Kingdom's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolised by the reign of British monarch Queen Victoria, women did not have the right to vote, sue, or own property. At the same time, women participated in the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian era.

In the Victorian era women were seen, by the middle classes at least, as belonging to the domestic sphere, and this stereotype required them to provide their husbands with a clean home, food on the table and to raise their children. Women's rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married.[1] When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given over to her spouse. Under the law the married couple became one entity where the husband would represent this entity, placing him in control of all property, earnings and money. In addition to losing money and material goods to their husbands, Victorian wives became property to their husbands, giving them rights to what their bodies produced; children, sex and domestic labour.[2] Marriage abrogated a woman's right to consent to sexual intercourse with her husband, giving him 'ownership' over her body. Their mutual matrimonial consent therefore became a contract to give herself to her husband as he desired.[3]

Late Victorian feminism

The suffragette movement where women campaigned for the right to vote so that they might have political power and their voices heard. Questioning of the traditional roles of women and the inequality of legal rights.

The Times

Described the play's devices as the 'commonest order of melodrama'

Terry Eagleton

'[Wilde is a] remorseless debunker of the hightoned gravitas of Victorian England.'

Shaw

'pur only thorough playwright' Wilde 'plays with everything' (wit, philosophy, drama)

Peter Hall

'Through the character of Lord Goring, Wilde expresses his tolerance'

Wilde

The play seemed 'prophetic of tragedy to come'

Wilde on Boucher

Boucher, who made the 'Triumph of Love' tapestry was accused by Wilde as being 'artificial' and 'shallow'

Barbara Belford

'it is primarily a comedy of manners about political corruption, and love'

Comedy of manners

A play, novel, or film that gives a satirical portrayal of behaviour in a particular social group

Well made play

A play constructed according to a predetermined pattern and aiming at neatness of plot and theatrical effectiveness but often being mechanical and stereotyped