1. Victorian drama & Oscar Wilde

2. Decline of English drama In the first half of the 19 th century English drama undergoes a period of decline. The few valuable dramas – written by poets – are more suitable for reading than staging. There are various reasons for this decline: 1) The audience wants to be amused, rather than reflect on problems. They demand farce, spectacle and, above all, melodrama. Melodrama is very appealing as it exhibits a morality, so it is easy for the spectator to understand it and identify with the hero. 2) It is an age of great actors (Edmund Kean) who ask for high salaries. Staging a play is therefore very expensive.

3. & beginning of the «show business» 3) The large, old theatres, with their cheap gallery seats, are replaced by smaller ones, with large areas of expensive velvet stalls. In order to satisfy the audience’s demand for spectacle, expensive theatrical machinery, rich costumes and scenery are introduced. 4) Staging becomes more realistic. The stage is no longer an empty platform with a few props «suggesting» the setting. There are painted walls and ceiling, furniture. This is expensive.

4. Staging costs rise and the spirit of classic plays is distorted This new staging has negative consequences: Costs rise, and it becomes improfitable to stage several plays during the same theatrical season. Also, the repertoire becomes less flexible, because producers do not want to take the risk of staging new plays. Classics are preferred; they run profitably for months. The relationship between the audience and the play is spoilt, since the spectators’ attention is diverted by the scenic effects. Moreover, great classics such as Shakespeare’s plays are transformed into spectacular shows.

5. First signs of revival In the last quarter of the century, there is a revival, though, which is partly due to influence from abroad, from the French, Russian and Scandinavian theatres. France was the main source of inspiration in the first part of the century. In particular, the entertaining and perfectly constructed plays by Eugène Scribe were often adapted for the English stage and moderately influenced Oscar Wilde. In the 1870s, however, France revolts against this superficial concept of drama and turns to naturalistic theatre. However, it is from Russia (Checov), Sweden (Strindberg) and Norway (Ibsen) that comes the most important contribution to the innovation of European theatre.

6. Wilde revives the melodrama These new playwrights write «problem dramas», explore the psychology of characters and defend women’s independence. They are socially committed. The British playwright G.B. Shaw follows their example. Oscar Wilde, instead, revives the Victorian play through his wit and his mastery of the epigram and paradox. Wilde’s writes four best plays between 1891 and 1895, just before he is tried and sentenced to two years of hard labour for «acts of gross indecency.» They are huge successes, both with critics and audiences. He uses old creaky plots and characters with a free spirit, «to play with a world of surfaces and secrets.» He mocks and amuses, while exposing cynicism and corruption. There are lost children and lost jewels, dark secrets, double lives, overheard conversations, mistaken identitities, and a great deal of aphorisms and epigrams.

7. «Poisoned arrows buried in the feathers» Critics say that Wilde’s plays depend too much on the jokes. The plots are clunky and mechanical like in bad French farse. The best is considered The Importance of Being Earnest, «a play about love and marriage where love is governed by whim and marriage is mercenary. His genius was to make all this seem obvious, so deeply built into the fabric of the play that the audience would not notice it.» (Colm Toibin) «They would not notice the poisoned arrows buried in the feathers».

8. An Ideal Husband (1895) The plot is tradionally melodramatic. Robert Chiltern, a rising politician, is idealized and idolized by his wife Gertrude, a noble character. She thinks her husband is the embodiment of integrity but in fact he has a dark spot in his past: he owes his money and success to an act of dishonesty committed at the start of his career, when he sold a cabinet secret to the financier Arnheim. Mrs Laura Chiveley knows his secret and blackmails him, so that Chiltern risks losing not only his career and reputation, but also the love and esteem of his uncompromising wife. Eventually, with the help of Chiltern’s friend, Lord Goring, and a great deal of luck, things turn out well. Mrs Chiveley is exposed as a thief, the Chilterns are reunited and a new couple in the family celebrates their engagement.

9. Themes, morality, poisoned arrows There are all the ingredients for melodrama: a hero, a heroine and a villainess, two double lives, dark secrets, reversals, complications, melodramatic speeches. Are there any poisoned arrows in this play? Themes: marriage, what makes an ideal husband/wife, if they exist at all, how our past affects our present, compromises that people have to accept if they are ambitious, anyone could be accused of being dishonest. Morality: the ideal husband/wife is the one who can understand the other and forgive. What does the funny dialogue achieve? Does Wilde somehow undermine the institution of marriage? Does the couple Goring- Mabel function as a counterpoint to the perfect couple Gertrude-Robert Chiktern?

10. Wilde as an outsider Wilde was acclaimed by London upper classes but he did not really belong there. He was Irish, from a nationalist family, and also a socialist, though an atypical socialist. Moreover, he had secret himself, and had committed actions that his contemporaries would not forgive him (acts of gross indecency with Lord Alfred Douglas & other lovers). The irony of this play is perhaps that it somehow foreshadows Wilde’s later troubles.

11. Witty language Repartee (in his plays): conversation that is full of clever and funny comments. Aphorism: a short statement that says something wise and true. Epigram: a short poem or sentence that expresses feelings or ideas in a short and clever or funny way. Paradox: a statement consisting of two parts that seem to mean the opposite of each other. Though it initially seems absurd or self- contradictory, yet it turns out to have a valid meaning.

12. Wilde’s paradoxes Wilde creates paradoxes by turning the clichés of common beliefs on their head and revealing new and unconventional perspectives on life. Which clichés are turned on their head in these statements? Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. One should always be in love. This is the reason why one should never marry. Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong. Only the shallows know themselves. Do you agree? In An Ideal Husband: «I love talking about nothing. It’s the only thing I know anything about.»