About halfway through the second act of The Judas Kiss, Oscar
Wilde observes that he has put his genius into his life but only his
talent into his work. It’s the sort of glib throwaway a clever man
might toss to a talk-show host or magazine interviewer. But he would
be astonished to be held to it a century later. In 1998, there are
no revivals of Lady Windermere’s Fan or The Importance of Being
Earnest, no films of Salomé or An Ideal Husband. Yet Oscar
Wilde is more famous than ever: barely a week passes without a new
play or film or book about Oscar the celebrity, Oscar the “gay”
“Irish” martyr.
On reflection, make that “gay” “Irish” “martyr.”
To be sure, we are not the only generation to let our fascination
with his life obliterate his art. The first, fatal eclipse began in
1895: the opening night of his most successful play, The Importance
of Being Earnest, “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” was also
the night that the Marquess of Queensberry left a note at the
playwright’s club inscribed “For Oscar Wilde posing as a Somdomite
[sic].” Thereafter, as every play, film, scholarly treatise, and gay
activist is only too happy to tell us, Wilde’s career was destroyed
by a morally hypocritical society’s obsession with his sexuality.
Er, pardon me for asking, but isn’t history repeating itself? The
tragedy of the 1890s is reduced to farce in the
