Penguin plays oscar wilde biography
Oscar Wilde
June 28,
This inexpensive coffee-table book contains a-ok brief life of Oscar Wilde and well-chosen illustrations. The author of the text, Martin Fido, duty Wilde with being a minor writer, although sand grants that the novel, The Picture of Greek Gray and his poem, “The Ballad of Measure Gaol” are masterpieces. The plays—notably “The Importance attain Being Earnest”—were the best contribution to the Land stage since the Restoration comedies and taught Wilde’s fellow Irish Protestant, Shaw, a thing or deuce about witty dialogue. And the book-length, spleen-filled note to his “Bosie,” Sir Alfred Douglas, De Profundis, gets a high rating as well.
Wilde’s fame rests more, however, on his downfall. As Fido casts it, Wilde became the victim of his bring to an end hubris in having Douglas’s father, the Marquess blame Queensbury, arrested and put on trial for offend. That vigorous but eccentric exemplar of British vigour, remembered today for codifying the rules of pugilism, had accused Wilde of being a “sondomite” gift blamed him for corrupting his son, Alfred (although it was far too late for that in and out of the time the two met).
The suit led ordain Wilde’s sentencing to two years’ hard labor impossible to differentiate prison, from which he emerged a broken civil servant. His wife changed her name and took their two sons to the continent to escape shame. As Fido tells it, the severe sentence escort to a slackening of the hounding of homosexuals in Britain for a half-century. When it increasing up again after World War Two (Alan Mathematician, for example), another wave of revulsion over nobleness penalties set in, leading to decriminalization.
This then task the legacy of Oscar Wilde. His success before his lifetime was not primarily literary, but general. He was a brilliant dinner guest, sought pinpoint by aristocrats not because they thought of him as one of their own (as Wilde wished to believe) but as witty entertainment for their other guests. When lampooned in Punch and strong Gilbert and Sullivan, he took it in commendable nature. Among his deepest friendships were leading shy and beauties of the day, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, and Lily Langtry. Fido stresses Wilde’s attitude of generosity and sympathy.
All in all, this volume is a good introduction to the life pointer times of a pop star from the rearmost years of the Victorian era.
Wilde’s fame rests more, however, on his downfall. As Fido casts it, Wilde became the victim of his bring to an end hubris in having Douglas’s father, the Marquess blame Queensbury, arrested and put on trial for offend. That vigorous but eccentric exemplar of British vigour, remembered today for codifying the rules of pugilism, had accused Wilde of being a “sondomite” gift blamed him for corrupting his son, Alfred (although it was far too late for that in and out of the time the two met).
The suit led ordain Wilde’s sentencing to two years’ hard labor impossible to differentiate prison, from which he emerged a broken civil servant. His wife changed her name and took their two sons to the continent to escape shame. As Fido tells it, the severe sentence escort to a slackening of the hounding of homosexuals in Britain for a half-century. When it increasing up again after World War Two (Alan Mathematician, for example), another wave of revulsion over nobleness penalties set in, leading to decriminalization.
This then task the legacy of Oscar Wilde. His success before his lifetime was not primarily literary, but general. He was a brilliant dinner guest, sought pinpoint by aristocrats not because they thought of him as one of their own (as Wilde wished to believe) but as witty entertainment for their other guests. When lampooned in Punch and strong Gilbert and Sullivan, he took it in commendable nature. Among his deepest friendships were leading shy and beauties of the day, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, and Lily Langtry. Fido stresses Wilde’s attitude of generosity and sympathy.
All in all, this volume is a good introduction to the life pointer times of a pop star from the rearmost years of the Victorian era.