Comment on the quotation.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. (Oscar Wilde)

Literature Corner

3. Read the biography of O. Wilde and an extract from his famous novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

The work of Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) played a prominent part in the complex and contradictory literary life of Britain at the end of the 19^th century. The son of a well-known surgeon and a talented poetess, Oscar Wilde graduated from Trinity College in Dublin and continued his education at Oxford University. When still a student the writer-to-be mourned the lack of beauty in the world around him. Wilde’s protest against the non-poetic nature of the world accounted for his ideals and artistic search. Of main importance in Wilde’s life and works was the urge to beautify reality. Wilde called for the creation of an imaginary, non-real world, for beautiful inventions which would form the only refuge for an intellectual from the unhappiness of everyday life.

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” was written in 1891. This work of fiction embraces extremely important problems of life – the relations of art and reality and the moral content of human existence. The three protagonists form the very essence of the plot – the honest and sincere artist Basil is in combat with the aristocrat Lord Henry for the soul of handsome young Dorian.

For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, and the fat manager who met them at the door was beaming from ear to ear with an oily, tremulous smile. He escorted them to their box talking at the top of his voice. Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. At least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him by the hand. Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. The heat was terribly oppressive. The youths in the gallery had taken off their coats and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked to each other across the theatre, and shared their oranges with the girls who sat beside them. Some women were laughing in the pit.

“What a place to find one’s divinity in!” said Lord Henry.

“Yes!” answered Dorian Grey. “It was here I found her, and she is divine beyond all living things”.

A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause, Sibyl Vane stepped onto the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at - one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he had ever seen. There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. She stepped back a few paces, and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet and began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring “Charming! charming!”

The scene was the hall of Capulet’s house. The band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Sibyl Vane moved like a creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.

Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious. Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed.

Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene of the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, there was nothing in her.

She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. That would not be denied. But the staginess of her acting was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. Her gestures became absurdly artificial.

She spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely self-contained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.

Even the common, uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to whistle.

When the second act was over there came a storm of hisses, and Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. “She is quite beautiful, Dorian,” he said, “but she can’t act.”

“I am going to see the play through,” answered the lad, in a hard, bitter voice. “I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening, Harry. I apologise to you both.”

“My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vase was ill,” interrupted Hallward. “We will come some other night.”

“I wish she were ill,” he rejoined. “But she seems to me to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a commonplace, mediocre actress.”

A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable. Half of the audience went out, laughing. The whole thing was a fiasco.