play “The Pall Mall Gazette” concludes that “Salome” lacks freshness in both idea and presentation, conceding, however, that it does have “cleverness” – that fatal word which reviewers relied upon in discussing Wilde’s works. “Salome” was first given in Paris in 1896. The play was not produced in England until 1905, when Max Beerbohm, reviewing it, found the staging faulty. Indeed, he was convinced that the play was read better than acted for the “tragic thrill” of the action had to be imaginatively experienced. On the Continent, “Salome” was performed in most of the major cities between 1902 and 1912, where it was widely regarded as Wilde’s masterpiece. But in America its first production in 1905 by an avant-garde group was poorly received.
“A Woman of No Importance”, Wilde’s second play produced in London, attracted a glittering first-night audience. Despite enthusiasm of some critics, the play ran until only 16 August, a month less then that enjoyed by “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. The reviews, as Max Beerbohm ironically indicates, were surprisingly good, considering the fact that the play was weaker than “Lady Windermere’s Fan”.
William Archer, contending that Wilde’s dramatic work “stands alone… on the very highest plane of modern English drama”, praised the play but lamented that Wilde’s “pyrotechnic wit” was one of the defects of his qualities. He added that he looked forward to the day when Wilde would “take himself seriously as a dramatic artist” – which for Archer would presumably mean that Wilde should become a disciple of Ibsen. Archer’s praise of Wilde brought such adverse criticism from various quarters that he had compelled to defend himself in a review of Pinero’s “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray”, in which he reaffirmed his contention that Wilde was a writer of the first rank44 “Oscar Wilde” by R.Keith Miller, New York 1984, p.256
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Walkley’s review praises Wilde’s “true dramatic instinct”, but he confesses that witty paradoxes begin to tire him by their sheer number. But the majority of critics were disappointed by it. Despite the minority opinion, the play was widely regarded as a success.
The purpose of Wilde’s idea is to show the decomposition of English society. It can be really seen in the words of Hester, an American young lady:
“You rich people in England, you do not know how you are living. You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. With all your pomp and wealth and art you do not know how to live – you don’t even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. Oh, your English Society seems to me shallow, selfish and foolish. It has blinded its eyes and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong”55 “Plays” by O.Wilde, Moscow, 1961, p.121.
The American production of “A Woman of No Importance” opened in New-York on 11 December 1893 to audiences that appeared to be amused, but to drama critics who seemed even more grudging in their reactions than before in their response to “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. The play’s audacity – particularly its sympathy for the unmarried mother – seemed particularly repugnant to some. The “New-York Times”, for example, referred to Wilde as one whose mind seemed to be as “impure as the river Thames by London Bridge”.
“A Woman of No Importance” is very interesting and has a great power of Oscar Wilde’s brilliant witticism.
In June 1894 Wilde published his lengthy poem “The Sphinx”, portions of which he had written as early as 1897, while a student at Oxford. Despite Wilde’s reputation as a dramatist it was not widely reviewed. The reviews included in this volume are characteristic of the lack of enthusiasm for the poem. “The Sphinx” did little to advance Wilde’s reputation. Coming after the success of “A Woman of No Importance”, it was perhaps an error of judgement on Wilde’s part to commit to print, at a high point in his career as a dramatist, a poem conceived and partly written in his youth.
B. Shaw defended Wilde; he said that Wilde’s wit and his fine literary workmanship are points of great value. In the year of his trial and imprisonment, Wilde saw his last two plays produced on the London stage.
“An Ideal Husband”, which opened January 3, 1895 at the Theatre Royal, did not draw praise from H.G.Wells and Clement Scott, who were never able to see much value in Wilde as a playwright. But Archer, Shaw, Walkley and William Dean Howells all agreed that it was a work the high order, despite some obvious weaknesses in its characterisation