Line #48 Creator/OscarWilde


1	[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oscar_wilde_2.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:330:''[[TheDandy Fabulous.]]'']]
3	->''"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that {{Life imitates Art}} far more than {{Art imitates Life}}."''
4	-->-- '''Vivian''', from ''The Decay of Lying''
5
6	Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish[[note]]Traditionally, the British like to say Wilde was a British author but [[NoTrueScotsman an Irish convict]][[/note]] playwright, poet, and journalist of the Victorian Era; he lived in VictorianLondon. A massive celebrity of his day, known for his wit and social commentary, he habitually made perverse and snarky quips and often immortalized them in his work. His most celebrated play, ''Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest,'' is often performed today. His other famous works include the poem ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'', his novel ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', and several beautiful fairy tales, including ''Literature/TheHappyPrince''. He once wrote a break-up letter that became world-famous (''[[http://upword.com/wilde/de_profundis.html De Profundis]]'').
7
8	Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 16 October 1854, the second son of three children born to Sir William Wylde, the foremost eye and ear specialist of his time, and Lady Jane Wilde, a poet and a staunch Irish Nationalist. Oscar's siblings were William "Willie" Wilde and Isola Wilde, who died when she was ten, to Oscar's lasting grief.
9
10	Wilde's education began at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, from which he obtained a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin, where he won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek and received a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a Classical scholar, poseur, wit, and poet. In Oxford, he came under the influence of the writers Creator/JohnRuskin and Walter Pater. Pater taught him the doctrine of "Art for Art's sake", which eventually served as the core teaching of Aestheticism. Wilde set out to idolise beauty for beauty's sake, filling his rooms with blue china and reproductions of paintings by the likes of Creator/DanteGabrielRossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, declaring that beauty was the ideal after which everyone should strive. [[TheDandy He would also dress flamboyantly]], wearing a velvet coat edged with braid, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, a soft, loose shirt with a wide turn-down collar and a large flowing tie, which clashed with the upper middle class's more conventional fashion sense.
11
12	During the 1880s, he was the object of ridicule in Victorian society's antagonism to Aestheticism; the periodical ''Punch'' satirised him, and Music/GilbertAndSullivan made the opera ''Patience'' satirising Aestheticism in general, with Bunthorne, a "fleshly poet", based partly on Wilde. This, however, led Wilde to reinforce the association, so he published his collected poems in 1881. The following year, Gilbert, Sullivan, and Richard D'Oyly Carte, who was both the producer of ''Patience'' and Wilde's booking agent, sent Wilde on a lecture tour in America, seeking to popularise the show's American touring productions (for Wilde's part, he was short on funds and also sought to achieve acclaim in his own right). His lecture tour proved a massive success, and he returned to England in 1883, covered with considerable notoriety, if not glory.
13
14	In 1884, Wilde married Constance Mary Lloyd, the daughter of a prominent Irish barrister; he had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, the latter who became one of his biographers. Meanwhile, Wilde was a reviewer for the ''Pall Mall Gazette'' and became editor of ''Woman's World'' from 1887-89, during which he published ''The Happy Prince and Other Tales'' (1888), a collection of fairy tales.
15
16	In the 1890s, Wilde wrote nearly all of his major works. One of his most famous works is ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'' (serialised in 1890, revised and expanded in 1891), a novel combining Gothic horror with elements from the Decadent movement that predominated France, to harsh condemnations of immorality. He also published ''Intentions'' (1891), a collection of essays affirming his stance on Aestheticism, citing French poets such as Creator/TheophileGautier and Creator/CharlesBaudelaire. He also published a series of plays: ''Theatre/LadyWindermeresFan'' (1891), ''Theatre/{{Salome}}'' (1893), ''Theatre/AWomanOfNoImportance'' (1893), ''Theatre/AnIdealHusband'' (1895), and ''Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest'' (1895).
17
18	Wilde developed a very close friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, which by 1893 had become an affair and also led to him being introduced to the Victorian underground of gay prostitution. This relationship catalysed Wilde's eventual fall.
19
20	The Marquess of Queensbury, the father of Douglas, accused Wilde of "posing as a somdomite [sic]."[[note]]He famously misspelled "sodomite."[[/note]] Douglas, wanting to see his father in the dock, persuaded Wilde to sue for [[MaliciousSlander criminal libel]]. Lord Queensbury was now in the position of having to prove it wasn't libel; it was ''true''. Wilde's friends urged him to [[RunForTheBorder run away to France, where sodomy had already been decriminalized for a century]], but he was confident he would win.
21
22
23	A wild trial insured, featuring Wilde being caught [[AgeInsecurity lying on the stand about his age]], his AffairLetters to Douglas, a debate about whether there was HomoeroticSubtext in ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', and finally, the crux of the matter: a procession of young men who testified they'd had relationships with Wilde. Lord Queensbury was acquitted, and his place in the dock was taken by Wilde. A second criminal trial followed, featuring Wilde waxing poetic about LoverAndBeloved as "the love that dare not speak its name," resulting in a hung jury and a third trial. This time, the focus was placed on the UnequalPairing nature of Wilde's relationships with younger, lower class, uneducated men.[[note]]The closing prosecution said, "He is a man of culture and literary tastes, and I submit that his associates ought to have been his equals and not these illiterate boys whom you have heard in the witness box."[[/note]] Wilde was sentenced to two years imprisonment for "gross indecency."[[note]]Meaning gay sexual acts short of sodomy.[[/note]] This was a hardline stance at the time when people wanted to overlook Wilde's misdeeds on account of his being a brilliant artist. It's suspected the instance on pressing the case was related to the fact that Prime Minister Archibald Primrose was rumoured to once have had a relationship with Francis Douglas -- Queensberry's ''other'' son, brother of Oscar's lover -- and Queensberry threatened to expose that unless Wilde was aggressively prosecuted.
24
25	While in prison, he wrote a long denunciatory letter to Douglas that detailed their relationship (published in part in 1905 under the title ''De Profundis'').
26
27	In May 1897, Wilde was released from prison, and he went to France in the hopes of regenerating himself as a writer. However, his only work after his release from prison was ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' (1898), a poem revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. Despite being bankrupt, he maintained "an unconquerable gaiety of soul" that sustained him and received the support of friends such as Max Beerbohm and Robert "Robbie" Ross, who would become his literary executor; he also reunited with Douglas.
28
29	All his life, Wilde, who was baptised in the Church of Ireland, was strongly attracted to the Catholic Church and its aesthetics, and a couple of poems, like his sonnet ''E Tenebris'', also reveal a Catholic sensibility. He even expressed a desire to be received into the Church, but he admitted that his hesitation stems from the fact that his father might have frowned upon it; were it not for this, "the artistic side of the Church and the fragrance of its teaching would have cured [his] degeneracies." That said, he specifically instructed Ross to call a priest just in case he fell ill and was in danger of dying... which is exactly what happened.
30
31	On 28 November 1900, Wilde was deathly sick from acute meningitis from an ear infection. As instructed, Ross called a priest, a Passionist named Fr. Cuthbert Dunne, CP, to receive Wilde into the Church and give him the Last Sacraments. When Wilde lapsed from delirium to lucidity, Fr. Dunne took this time to examine him, and he confirmed that Wilde was being received into the Church of his own free will. Wilde eventually died two days later. He was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}; in 1909, his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, the biggest and most famous inside the city.
32
33	Wilde is famous for producing an enormous body of quotable wit -- enormous enough that of the hundreds of quotes ''attributed'' to him, as many as half may resemble things he actually said. This tendency to gather misattributions is the root of his status as Website/{{Uncyclopedia}}'s MemeticBadass in chief. Not to be confused with the other [[Webcomic/WildeLife "Oscar Wilde"]].
34	----
35	!!'''Works with their own pages:'''
36
37	[[index]]
38	* ''Theatre/AnIdealHusband''
39	* ''Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest''
40	* ''Theatre/LadyWindermeresFan''
41	* ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray''
42	* ''Theatre/{{Salome}}''
43	* ''Literature/TheHappyPrince''
44	* ''Literature/TheSelfishGiant''
45	* ''Literature/TheCantervilleGhost''
46	[[/index]]
47
48	!!'''Other works provide examples of:'''
49
50	* AuthorAvatar: The character with all the good lines generally is this.
51	* AuthorTract: Nearly everything he wrote, to some extent. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is a bitter indictment of the Victorian penal system.
52	* BalladOfX: "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".
53	* BlackComedy: "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime".
54	* BreakTheCutie: Prison did this to him, as illustrated in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
55	--> ''Something was dead in each of us''\
56	''And what was dead was Hope.''
57	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: His comment on the wallpaper, dressing like prince Rupert for a costume party then wearing the same costume every day, holding only a lily in a blue vase in his rooms, wanting to satisfy his blue porcelain set.
58	** TheCuckoolanderWasRight: "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" gives a heartbreakingly realistic depiction of Victorian prisons.
59	* CorruptTheCutie: Wilde’s cynically witty lead characters are rarely above a little casual corruption of any passing cuties. Certainly, Lord Illingworth in ''A Woman of No Importance'' seems incapable of seeing a cutie of either gender without contemplating some kind of corruption...
60	-->'''Lord Illingworth:''' Do you know, I don't believe in the existence of Puritan women? I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.\
61	'''Mrs. Allonby:''' You think there is no woman in the world who would object to being kissed?\
62	'''Lord Illingworth:''' Very few.
63	* {{Cuckoosnarker}}: Known for both his eccentricity and his sharp witticisms.
64	* DeadpanSnarker: Wilde was known for this in real life, and he people his plays with quippy characters as well.
65	* DoubleStandard: Several of his plays at least touch upon the unfairness of women's reputations being ruined by activities that men are fairly freely allowed to get away with. ''A Woman of No Importance'', for one, is a quite explicit attack on the idea that a woman must be DefiledForever by something that marks the man involved out as no more than a charming cad.
66	* DownerEnding: Various works, to say nothing of the last few years of his own life, which border on DiabolusExMachina territory.
67	* FairWeatherFriend: A literal example with Hugh Miller in "The Devoted Friend", who visits Hans during the spring, summer, and autumn, but not during the winter when Hans is left to endure the cold weather by himself. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Hugh:
68	-->'''Hugh:''' There is no good in my going to see little Hans as long as the snow lasts, for when people are in trouble, they should be left alone, and not be bothered by visitors.
69	* FalseWidow: Mrs. Arbuthnot from ''A Woman of No Importance''.
70	* GloveSlap: Discussed in ''A Woman of No Importance'':
71	-->'''Mrs Allonby:''' Miss Worsley would not let you kiss her.\
72	'''Lord Illingworth:''' Are you sure?\
73	'''Mrs Allonby:''' Quite.\
74	'''Lord Illingworth:''' What do you think she'd do if I kissed her?\
75	'''Mrs Allonby:''' Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove?\
76	'''Lord Illingworth:''' [[SlapSlapKiss Fall in love with her, probably.]]\
77	'''Mrs Allonby:''' Then it is lucky you are not going to kiss her!\
78	'''Lord Illingworth:''' Is that a challenge?
79	** Later in the play, an actual glove slap does occur — but ''not'' involving Miss Worsley.
80	* TheHeartless: In "The Fisherman and His Soul", a Fisherman cuts his shadow (which holds his soul) free from his body so that he can live in the sea with his love, a mermaid. The soul, lacking a heart, becomes evil.
81	* HellholePrison: ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' details the horrors he experienced during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol. He writes of the inedible food, back-breaking hard labor, and crushing misery that makes prisoners worse instead of rehabilitating them.
82	-->''The vilest deeds like poison weeds\
83	Bloom well in prison air.\
84	It is only what is good in man\
85	That wastes and withers there.\
86	Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate\
87	And the Warder in Despair.''
88	* HomoeroticSubtext: Played with in ''[[http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/gsr/portmrwh.htm The Portrait Of Mr. W. H.]], where the characters debate over supposed Homoerotic Subtext in Shakespeare's sonnets. Wilde plays with EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory, and even the reader starts wondering if the assumptions could be true.
89	* HotWitch: In "The Fisherman and his Soul", the one who tells the Fisherman how to get rid of his soul so he can court a mermaid is a beautiful red-headed witch. She bitterly lampshades the trope via lamenting how the Fisherman is hung up on the mermaid when he should be smitten with her due to her own beauty.
90	* IgnoredAesop: Invoked and enforced by the water rat at the end of ''The Devoted Friend''; after the linnet concludes his story, the water rat asks [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse what became of Hugh Miller]], and the linnet attempts to dismiss this by attempting to tell the story's moral, only for the rat to storm away before the linnet starts, with the rat admitting that he wouldn't have listened to the linnet's story if he had known a moral would be involved.
91	* InsaneTrollLogic: "The Devoted Friend", "The Remarkable Rocket", "The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile".
92	* InterspeciesRomance: "The Fisherman and His Soul" has a Handsome Fisherman who catches a cute little mermaid in his fishing nets, and releases her when she promises to sing every day so he can catch more fish. Within a few days he falls head over heels in love, and while she likes him back, she can't accept his feelings because he has a soul, unlike non-humans like her. And so the young Fisherman begins to work on getting rid of his own soul...
93	* ItsAllAboutMe: The title character in "The Remarkable Rocket."
94	-->"What right have you to be happy? You should be thinking about others. In fact, you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy. It is a beautiful virtue, and I possess it in a high degree."
95	** The water rat in the opening narration of "The Devoted Friend", who expects his devoted friend to be devoted to him.
96	* KarmaHoudini: Hugh Miller, little Hans's neighbor in "The Devoted Friend", promises Hans a wheelbarrow which Hans never receives, because he is sent on numerous errands which leave him physically exhausted. One night, Hugh sends Hans to fetch a doctor, but Hans never makes it, drowning in a ditch. At the story's end, Hugh Miller receives no apparent consequences for withholding the promised wheelbarrow which Hans never received.
97	* KarmicJackpot: "The Young King", having learned via three dreams of the horrible circumstances surrounding the procurement of the materials for his coronation attire, refuses to wear them on his coronation day, and braves the hatred of the people by going to the cathedral in his rough goatherd's attire instead, with his staff and a briar for his "crown". Inside, the old, wise Bishop who is to crown him admonishes him mildly and questions whether there is really any benefit to the stand he is making. But just as the voices of the people outside start to call for the young king's death for shaming them, sunlight streams through the window and clothes him in robes more splendid than the ones he was given to wear, and his briar crown and staff bloom with roses and lilies with gold and silver stems, more beautiful than the jewels in the crown and sceptre he was originally given. The Bishop acknowledges that God himself has crowned the young king.
98	* MasterPoisoner: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, according to ''Pen, Pencil, and Poison''
99	* OldBeggarTest:
100	** In the short story "The Star-Child", a child is found in a forest just after a shooting star is seen in the sky. One of the woodcutters who finds the child takes him home and convinces his wife to help raise him along with their own children. The boy is handsome, but grows to be rude and arrogant. His birth mother appears on the scene in the guise of a beggar, and he rejects her. Then he turns ugly and is rejected by his friends, prompting him to go in search of his mother. Along the way, he is enslaved and aids a man with leprosy three times, though each time his master beats him for it. After the third occasion, he magically recovers his good looks and meets the leper and the beggar woman again. It turns out the leper is his father in disguise, just as his mother appeared to be a beggar woman, and both of them the wealthy rulers of a kingdom (and he of course is their son and heir).
101	** In ''The Model Millionaire'', Hughie Erskine gives some money to a beggar sitting for an artist friend despite having financial problems himself. The beggar turns out to be a wealthy Baron who is a friend of the artist and wanted to pose as a beggar in one of his paintings. Impressed by Hughie's kindness, he sends Hughie an envelope with ten thousand pounds in it.
102	* OpinionChangingDream: The initially naive title character of "The Young King" has three of these on the night before his coronation, opening his eyes to the horrible labour, suffering and death involved in percuring the materials for his coronation attire. This leads him to refuse to wear them, against the pleas of his advisers, opting to dress in his former humble goatherd's attire and a briar for his "crown", which earns him the derision and hatred of the people. But, through the intervention of God himself, the young man is crowned and clothed with attire far more splended than that he was originally given to wear.
103	* OurSoulsAreDifferent: In "The Fisherman and his Soul", a Fisherman gives up his soul in order to be with the mermaid he loves. His soul is shown as being intellectually completely different from himself. In fact, his life only changes for the worse once his soul returns. The spell the Fisherman performs to separate himself from his soul involves cutting his shadow free from his body, whereupon it is animated by the soul and goes about getting into misadventures. The soul, left on its own, is apparently [[TheHeartless Heartless]].
104	* PatrickStewartSpeech: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
105	* PeopleOfHairColor: In "The Star Child", the child stands out among his adopted family and village because he is blond while they all have dark hair and eyes.
106	%%* PrettyBoy: Bosie and Dorian Gray.
107	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: ''De Profundis'', a 50,000-word letter written in prison from Wilde to his onetime lover Lord Alfred Douglas, is the "The Reason You Suck" Speech raised to the level of great art. Simultaneously played straight and inverted, in that for Wilde it's also a "The Reason I Suck" Speech.
108	* SelfFulfillingProphecy: In "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," a palm reader tells the titular character that he will commit a murder in the future. Lord Arthur, who was not previously inclined to murder, decides to get it over with as soon as possible so he doesn't have it hanging over his head. In an extra dose of irony, [[spoiler:he ends up killing the palm reader.]]
109	* SelfPlagiarism: Some of the same bits of dialogue appear in more than one of his plays.
110	* ShakespeareInFiction: "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."
111	* ShapedLikeItself: From ''The Fisherman and his Soul'' -- "They tempt me with temptations".
112	* ShootTheShaggyDog: Several of Wilde's fairy tales.
113	** "The Nightingale and the Rose": Young man is mopey because some girl doesn't like him, wants to give her a red rose, and can't find one. A nightingale feels sorry for him and travels around the world looking for a rose, and can't find one either. The nightingale sacrifices her life, brutally and painfully, to create a red rose from her own blood. The young man finds it and gives it to the girl, but she dumps him anyway, and he throws it in the gutter and decides love is stupid. End of story.
114	** "The Star Child": Through suffering, the arrogant boy learns the error of his ways and is restored to his former handsome self -- and is crowned king. It's mentioned that he was the most benevolent ruler they'd ever had... sadly, he only ruled for three years and was succeeded by a cruel tyrant. The end.
115	* SillyRabbitCynicismIsForLosers: Once called a cynic "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".
116	* TheSoulless: Subverted in "The Fisherman and his Soul". A young fisherman is magically separated from his soul, which takes on human guise and travels around without him -- and the fisherman is largely unaffected, while the ''soul'' becomes a typical "soulless" monster-in-human-form. It's explained that this is because the fisherman still has a loving heart, while the soul is both literally and metaphorically heartless.
117	* TakeThat: To various cultures, places, and people for his satirical works.
118	* TitleDrop: ''A Woman of No Importance'' drops its title fairly crucially in an early scene, then plays with it further at the very end.
119	* TheTragicRose: "The Nightingale and the Rose".
120	* YouAreNumberSix: Originally published "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" under his convict number, C.3.3.
121	----
122	->''"This wallpaper will be the death of me -- one of us will have to go."''

Context Creator / OscarWilde