Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations by John Stokes (review)

Book Reviews 501 JOHN STOKES. Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, arullmitations. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press 1996. Pp. 216, illustrated. $49·95· What is pleasingly apparent from John Stokes's Oscar Wilde: Myths, Mira- . c/es, and Imitations is that the author forgoes the popular twentieth-century assumption that a single professional title must serve as one's lifelong identity . Instead, he adopts the ideal perspective from which to consider many of Wilde's interpreters who have attempted to bore through the layers of Wilde's eclectic personality in order to define the single quintessential Oscar. Stokes discusses an ample supply of such interpretations, and although each may be regarded with scepticism, his strategy is neither to privilege nor to condemn any as more or less credible than the others. The strategy is most fitting. However diverse and arbitrary they may be, the assorted impressions that Wilde worked ceaselessly to create now playa collective role that we must acknowledge. Wilde's ways of mirroring life elicited responses that became themselves subjects to be mirrored. The performative complexity of Wilde's career, as Stokes points out, is that process and effect generate each other mutually and perpetually. As example, Stokes introduces the notion of Wilde's continuing presence on the stage itself. The legendary one-man theatrical impersonations and the frequent practice of staging Wilde's comedies with one character dressed as Wilde himself are often random characterizations extending from the biases inherent in each production. Paradoxical1y, such perfonnances influence perceptions of the genuine Wilde. Stokes's aim, however, is to describe not who Wilde actually was, but who he was believed to be; this purpose is well sustained through the first six chapters, which offer a generously informative account of contemporary contexts within which Wilde coexisted and presumably conformed. Chapter one examines the content and cultural context of a story about deception and miracles, attributed to Wilde, written by Frank Harris, and cited by Stokes as evidence of Wilde's sincere belief in paraphenomena. Chapters two and three introduce two major unpublished documents, each claiming Wilde as an ally in the cause of the author: the first of these is James Wilson, whose critique of British justice singled out Wilde as its definitive victim; the second is George [ves, whose diary refers to Wilde as the prototype for a brooding gay subculture. Chapter four's contrast of Wilde's and Arthur Symons's readings of the Romantic poets reveals the uniqueness of Wilde's facility in both parodying and paying homage to genius and individualism. Chapter five's discussion of Aubrey Beardsley and Alfred Jarry, who, supposedly like Wilde, cultivated the aesthetic of exaggeration and outrage, serves indirectly as a reminder of how each distinctly adhered to form. Chapter six's 502 BOOK REVIEWS intriguing profile of Dieppe, a trendy holiday haven for artists and a setting for popular novels with Wildean characters, describes the kind of liminal social space where Wilde would be expected to belong. Readers interested primarily in Wilde's drama might prefer to begin with the seventh and last chapter, a selective examination of the 1990S theatrical versions of the four major comedies. In his discussion of performances directed by Philip Prowse, Peter Hall and Nicholas Hytner, Stokes suggests that these directors, while they have represented current analytical trends, have also unearthed "hidden or unacknowledged" intentions originating from Wilde himself. Although he cannot verify such a premise, Stokes does offer a vividly detailed account of the interpretive decisions featured in the four productions. The critical position of each is documented almost exclusively from reviews, and it seems possible that Stokes has consciously adopted such a reductive perspective as the most recent link in achain of interpretive responses fromwhich to begin what he calls the critical process of "backtracking." To this end, Stokes most effectively defines contemporary reviewers' and his own impressions of Maggie Smith's 1993 version of Lady Bracknell as the inverse of Edith Evans's seminal 1939 performance. These disparate interpretations are scrupulously explained as different hues of Wilde's writing, the apparent prism through which are refracted particular conditions of class, nuances of manner and conventions of perfonnance. Perhaps several other...