Wilde's Earnest & Other Plays

BOOK REVIEWS professional writer. The poems, though frequently narratives, do not depict what Hardy's novels are often concerned with, as Thornton and SmaU observe: ". . . that conflict between the social and moral which gives the fiction its energy. Hardy's subject is most fittingly described in the words of the title of an earlier volume [of tales]—life's Uttle ironies." The concluding poem of Wessex Poems provoked Meredith, who wrote: "What induces Hardy to commit himself to verse!": I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, "Would God it came to pass My heart had shrunk as thin!" The inclusion of Wessex Poems in the Woodstock reprints series reminds us that Hardy's anguished grasp of human isolation in an absurd cosmos aligns him with the proto-Modernists of the late nineteenth century. Karl Beckson --------------------- Brooklyn College, CUNY Wilde's Earnest & Other Plays Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other PL·ys. Peter Raby, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xxxii + 368 pp. Cloth $49.00 Paper $6.95 IN 1891, AFTER WRITING many poems, several essays, a few works of fiction and a novel, Wüde turned his full attention to the drama. That he should explore the medium of the theatre was more than a logical progression in his literary career. A supreme exponent of clever conversation, an experimenter with masks who courted publicity and who loved to hold court, he took naturaUy to playwriting: it allowed him a symbiotic interaction with an audience and a wonderful opportunity to exploit his talent for the dramatic in all things—to say little of a possible lucrative source of income. During the eighties he first tried his hand at writing for the stage with Vero, or the Nihilist, a melodrama set in contemporary Russia; but it was a disappointment both to its audiences and author. Transparently a drama about a modern non-conforming woman and a quick-witted Prince who spouts epigrams, it had scant success when first produced in New York in 1883. In the same year of his first faüure, he completed The Duchess of Padua, a revenge drama with echoes of Shakespeare, Webster, Shelley, and a half dozen more authors. It had a short run, under the title Guido Ferranti, once again in New York. Being a regular and discriminating playgoer with a close knowledge of the contemporary 113 ELT 39:1 1996 theatre, Wilde soon realized that if he were to have the success he hoped for he had to forgo the political and the pastiche and try a modern polished comedy. About the same time that his second play was fading into obscurity, he was planning another work, Lady Windermere's Fan. When Lady Windermere's Fan opened at London's St. James's Theatre on 22 February 1892, it proved a popular and critical success. The public loved this brilliant social comedy, especiaUy its verbal wit and shocking paradoxes. Wilde's next play, A Woman of No Importance, followed in 1893. Once again, its audiences enjoyed a string of paradoxes and epigrams that, admittedly, slowed down the action but added to the sophistication and humor in which they had greater interest anyway. Wüde's third theatrical success came the following year, 1894, with An Ideal Husband, a dramatic discourse on marriage. Though actuaUy it had less action and conflict than his previous hits, the play so pleased Shaw, who had recently been appointed drama critic for the Saturday Review, that he wrote: "In a sense Mr. Wilde is . . . our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything, with wit, with phüosophy... with actors and audiences, with the whole theatre." In 1895 still another play, The Importance of Being Earnest, was received with rapturous acclaim. Wilde was now at the pinnacle of his career. His "trivial" comedy for "serious" people was hailed as one of the greatest farcical comedies in English. In the short span of four years WUde had become one of the most admired and wealthy playwrights of the century. Actors and producers entreated him to write plays for them. Since it took him only about four weeks to draft a comedy and sprinkle it with...