Oscar Wilde and the Late-Victorian Spectacular Theatre

Yang Yu

doi:10.11648/j.ijla.20200801.14

Abstract

The present paper mainly focuses on the stage of archaeological authenticity in the late-Victorian spectacular theatre and Oscar Wilde’s special response to this unprecedented theatrical style. The late-Victorian theatre was a place where spectacle was combined with archaeology. The spectacular effect on stage was achieved with the assistance of archaeological research. Paradoxically enough, theatre artists took great pains to find archaeological evidence for every stage scene, yet at the same time they felt entirely free to revise the text of the playwright and to replace words with images. Oscar Wilde did not understand the spectacular nature of his age until the early 1890s. His early journalistic essay “Shakespeare on Scenery” and its extended version “Shakespeare and Stage Costume” stressed the realistic effect created by the archaeological stage, while in “Truth of Masks”, the final version of “Shakespeare on Scenery”, Wilde radically reversed his original argument and turned to assert the importance of illusion by changing certain expressions of the text. The controversial views contained in the several versions of the text hinted at Wilde’s own ambiguous attitude towards the historical spectacles on stage. Yet the novel <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, published in 1891, reflected Wilde’s growing understanding of the visual spectacles on stage. For Wilde, as represented by Dorian Gray in the novel, the spectacular stage provided the only proper site for visual concentration of his age. Dorian’s excessive love of stage image also accounted partially for Wilde’s advocacy of the predominance of appearance in his aesthetics.

Highlights

Oscar Wilde is one of the important dramatists in the late-Victorian period
That is, from around 1884 to 1891, Wilde did not engage himself directly in dramatic writing, but he was always keeping a keen eye on the West End theatricals
The third phase lasted only three years. It started from 1892 when Wilde achieved his first theatrical success with social comedy Lady Windermere’s Fan and ended in 1895 when the performance of his last finished play The Importance of Being Earnest was interrupted by sudden imprisonment

Summary

Introduction

Oscar Wilde is one of the important dramatists in the late-Victorian period. On the whole, Wilde’s dramatic career can be divided into three phases. “The Truth of Masks” was initially published in The Nineteenth Century in May 1885 with the title “Shakespeare and Stage Costume,” and the earlier form of “Shakespeare and Stage Costume” was a short essay named “Shakespeare on Scenery” appearing in the Dramatic Review on March 14th, 1885 In these two early versions, Wilde paid tribute to the archaeological employment of costume and scenery in the theatre as a mode of intensifying dramatic situation. From 1885 when the short essay “Shakespeare on Scenery” first appeared on The Dramatic Review to 1891 when “The Truth of Masks” was included in Intentions, Wilde underwent a subtle transformation In the beginning, he was conforming himself to the archaeological fashion on stage, which celebrated the realistic effect it produced, and later, he was trying to give this archaeological presentation a new meaning by changing certain expressions of the text when he found it in contradiction with his aesthetic thoughts. In his letter to the French translator Jules Cantel, as cited at the very beginning of this section, Wilde expressed his reluctance to publish “The Truth of Masks” together with the other three essays

The “Spectacularization” of the Stage

Dorian Gray and the Visual Concentration in the Spectacular Theatre

Conclusion