Oscar Wilde is one such important name in Irish poets who later became famous as an English poet and playwright in London in the early 1890s.
Though, The Picture of Dorian Gray was one of his famous fictions, he is best remembered for his epigrams and plays. His parents were the Anglo- Irish intellectuals in Dublin, and it helped the young Wilde to learn so many things including different languages like French and German. At university Wilde used to read Classics and he became associated with the philosophy of aestheticism, led by his two mentors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After University Wilde got fascinated about social circles, but the latter part of his life was not so easy. He was convicted and for homoerotic acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", later at a very early age of 46, he died of meningitis. In this article we'll discuss only his dramas. So, let's look at them –
Lady Windermere’s Fan
It is a four-act play where a young married woman named Lady Windermere is informed that her husband is giving a large sum to a lady named Mrs. Erlynne with whom it is alleged that he has an affair. Then Windermere seeks support from Lord Darlington but eventually he proposes to her and asks her for elopement. It is revealed to spectators that Mrs. Erlynne is actually Lady Windermere’s mother. On finding the note of her elopement, she hides it and somehow convinces her daughter not to commit the same mistake which she had committed earlier. Finally, she saves Lady Windermere but did not disclose her identity and marries Lord Augustus.
Salome, a single act play
It is all about the Biblical story where Salome or the stepdaughter of tetrarch Herod asked for the head of John Baptist on a silver platter in return for pleasing him with her dance. This dance is also known as the dance of seven veils. It’s very important to know that the play was banned by Lord Chamberlain.
A Woman of No Importance, a satire on upper class society
Based on the upper- class English society, this play presents the double standards of Victorian society in which women were treated badly for being sort of inferior to men.
Lastly, we want to end the discussion with a note of love from Wilde –
"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."
