A Wilde Ordeal

In this podcast episode, the host discusses the life of Oscar Wilde, focusing on his early life, education, relationships, and his trial. The host also touches on Wilde's work, specifically his play "The Importance of Being Earnest." Wilde's trial, in which he was charged with gross indecency, is explored in detail, including the courtroom exchanges between Wilde and Carson, the attorney representing the Marquise of Queensbury. The podcast concludes with Wilde's downfall, his imprisonment, and his eventual death. The summary also mentions the plot of "The Importance of Being Earnest," highlighting the mistaken identities and romantic entanglements of the characters. Hello guys, gals, and my non-binary pals, I'm Hayden, your host twink of The Twinks That Thinks. In today's special episode, our first ever episode, and probably only, Twinks. You either love them, hate them, or are indifferent. There's no other twink to kick off a theater kids podcast other than Oscar Wilde. In today's episode, I will be breaking down Wilde's life by discussing his early life and his writing and education endeavors he pursued at Oxford. Additionally, Wilde's relationships with both women and men will be highlighted in this section. Of course, this leads to his eventful trial. Once we have set the stage of the writer, I want to dive into the work, more specifically The Importance of Being Earnest. This play was written and performed mere months before the trial. And finally, after you bear with my thoughts of the writer and the work, you will get the pleasure or curse to hear a little insight into my adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar lived a wild life. And before we can dive into his work, we have to talk about the twink himself. Wilde was born in Westlane Row in Dublin, Ireland, 1854. Oscar's parents were William Wilde and Jane Wilde. Both were writers. William wrote the first ever otolaryngology clinical textbook, while his wife wrote poetry under the pseudonym Speranza. Being polylingual, she translated many novels and poems. He also had a brother, Willie, who went to be a journalist. Writing is genetic, y'all. Wilde went on to attend Trinity College in Dublin, graduating in 1874, and then attended and graduated from Oxford in 1878. At Oxford, Wilde really began his writing frenzy. He had multiple works published at the university, and a notable end-factor of the trial was The Priest and His Accolade. Post-graduation, he dabbled in playwriting. His first, Vera, was performed in 1883. The next year, he marries Constance Lloyd, another Irish writer, and fathers two sons. Wilde goes on to get his first and only novel, The Picture Dorian Gray, published in 1891. And this is where things get a little, should I say it, yeah, I will. They get a little Wilde. And gay. Very much so gay. Wilde kept his sexuality relatively secret until meeting Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas in 1891, an undergraduate at Oxford and writer for the student journal, The Spirit Lamb, which was also a little gay. Wilde had connections, career, and romantic to three men at the time. The most notable is Lord Douglas. But there was also Robert Ross, Wilde's editor, and Reginald Turner, who also edited Wilde's work post-death and was a novelist in his own career. All three of them have lived interesting lives. I will only be focusing on Lord Douglas' involvement in Wilde's life for time constraints as well as my sanity. Douglas and Wilde's relationship was not quiet when the year 1895 rolled around, and it became lively when a third member entered the relationship. Not in a thropple way or love triangle, but in a helicopter parenting way. Yes, Douglas' father discovered the four-year-long relationship, and after Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest, hit the stages of London, a more eventful play starring Wilde in The Marquise of Queensbury began. It all started when the Marquise left a note at Wilde's home. It all started when the Marquise left a note at Wilde's home. He what? Yes, he did. He left a note at Wilde's home. That note read, For Oscar Wilde, Posing SOMDOMITE. As you cannot see the note in question, I will make it clear, SOMDOMITE was spelled with an M. Ha! Perhaps that is what led Wilde to sue Douglas' father for defamation. When the suit went to the court, the stage was quickly turned on Wilde. A defamation lawsuit became his own trial against the charges of gross indecency. I was able to read the transcript, courtesy of David Schultz's article, redressing Oscar's performance and the trial of Oscar Wilde. And if you would have thought Wilde would have played the role of someone not wanting to go to jail, you would have thought wrong. Oscar's opponent in this case was Queensbury's attorney, Carson, and in the trial, he tried to take Wilde's reputation and image down through the use of his written works. One of those written works was The Priest and the Accolade, a story that was published in an Oxford student press and included a priest who poisoned himself and an altar boy who was found in his bed. I cannot pass up the opportunity to read the transcript, and like Wilde, I'm a little theatrical, so please welcome myself. I was going to have a special guest, but no. You get Hayden times two. Double the Hayden, double the Twinks, still one podcast. I will play Carson, and I will also be the Twink himself. Setting. The courtroom. Ooh. Time. April 26, 1895. Carson speaking. You have no doubt whatever that this was an improper story. Wilde speaking. From a literary point of view, it was highly improper. It is impossible for a man of literature to judge it otherwise. By literature, meaning treatment, selection of the subject, and the like. I thought the treatment rotten, the subject rotten. Carson speaking. You are of the opinion, I believe, that there is no such thing as an immoral book? Wilde speaking. Yes. Carson speaking. May I take it that you think The Priest and the Accolade not immoral? Wilde speaking. It was worse. It was badly written. Scene break. As you can see, well, hear, Wilde teetered ever so slightly against all of Carson's questions regarding his work. And this did not cease when his notable work and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was brought into question. The passage that Carson will refer to in another dramatic reading, still featuring me, is in which the character Basil Howard declared adoration for Dorian Gray himself. And curtain. Carson speaking. Do you mean to say that that passage describes the natural feeling of one man towards another? Wilde speaking. It would be the influence produced by a beautiful personality. Carson. A beautiful person? Wilde. I said a beautiful personality. You can describe it as you like. Dorian Gray was a remarkable personality. Carson speaking. May I take it that you, as an artist, have never known the feeling described here? Wilde. I have never allowed my personality to dominate my art. Carson. Then you have never known the feeling you described? Wilde. No. It was a work of fiction. Carson. So far as you are concerned, you have no experience as to it being a natural feeling? Wilde. I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost any artist. Carson. But let us go over the phrase by phrase. I quite admit that I adore you madly. What do you say to that? Have you ever adored a young man madly? Wilde speaking. No. Not madly. I prefer love that is higher form. Carson. Never mind about that. Let us keep down to the level we are at now. Wilde. I have never given adoration to anybody except myself. Carson. I suppose you think that is a very smart saying? Wilde. Not at all. Mark. Thank you. Thank you. In the end, Wilde's wit was not charming enough to escape his two-year fate at Reading Goal. His wife, Constance, fled the country with their sons and changed all their names. When he was released, Wilde never reunited with her nor truly wrote again and fled to Paris where he succumbed to meningitis and the turn of the century, 1900. He did reach out to and was visited by Douglas and Ross in his final months. In poverty, no longer writing, and fighting death, Wilde never lost his wit. His famous last words were, this wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do. Wallpapers, man. Our biggest enemy. It is now later in the podcast, and as I promised, we will be diving into Wilde's most famous play from 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest. The play opened on February 14th at St. James' Theatre and the original run had production still going on in April, the month of the trial. But what is the play about? Well, in short, it's about these two guys, though not in the queer way. It would be weird if that was the gays. Jack and Aldernon both mask around as another character, Ernest. Ernest in fiction is Jack's older and immoral acting brother. Now Jack uses a facade while he's in London and is trying to woo Gwendolyn, Aldernon's cousin. Aldernon finds a cigarette case with Jack's name engraved on it and in Act 1 confronts Jack. Jack tells the truth that he's not actually Ernest and he made up the character. Well, Aldernon then goes back to Jack's home, now masking as Ernest, and falls in love with Cicely, who Jack is the legal guardian of. At this time, Jack decides it's time to kill off Ernest as a character and then go back home, stating his brother died in Paris. Only to see that brother, air quotes were used, alive and waiting to marry Cicely. Jack goes on with the facade again, but it gets juicy. Remember Gwendolyn? Yeah. She's back and comes to confront her Ernest. She meets Cicely, who tells her about her Ernest. Yeah, they are smart and both tell the other who their Ernest actually is, though they still believe Ernest is real and that they both are engaged to him. That is when Jack and Aldernon finish the story and tell them the truth. But it gets juicy-er. Gwendolyn's mother, Lady Bracknell, comes into the scene after being tipped off about Gwendolyn fleeing. She doesn't support Gwendolyn and Jack, but does support Aldernon and Cicely. Being Cicely's guardian, Jack refuses to let her marry Aldernon until she is of age, which is 35 years for some reason, unless Gwendolyn's mother lets her marry him. The juice is still coming. Or this is London, so I should say the tea is being poured in the last act. Jack's real identity comes out when Lady Prim enters with a bag that Jack believes to be his real mother's, but Lady Prim is not his mother. So who was Jack really? He was Ernest all along, and Aldernon's older brother, and Gwendolyn's cousin, and he marries her. Okay, maybe not. It's an open ending, but still, that's well the ending. What a wild story, really. What really drew me to this piece was the time it was written and originally performed. In 1895, Wilde was at the peak of his career and in his relationship with Douglas. The reviews of the show were for the most part sincere praise, and Wilde's character was not viewed in a tainted light that it had been when he originally published the picture Dorian Gray. One review from the original production by Bernard Shaw, another playwright at the time, stated, In a sense, Mr. Wilde is our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything, with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theater. However, when April hit and Wilde's liberal case turned into a public trial of his character, that show changed. Well, the marketing changed, at least. The show itself went on, but Wilde's name was removed. The decision to remove Wilde's name eventually didn't save the show, and without drawing huge audiences anymore, it closed on May 8th. What I found really interesting was the trial and the performances of The Importance of Being Earnest and other three major plays by Wilde were going on at the same time. Even though Wilde was sentenced to jail for two years, performances all over England and even Ireland went on until 1908, according to Michael Cini's record of Wilde's work. Thank you all for sticking with me on this adventure. We are now at our final stop, the adaptation phase. As a twink myself, and a writer, and an Oscar Wilde fanatic, I wanted to, in a sense, adapt The Importance of Being Earnest under a queer lens. My vision, We Are All Earnest, follows a similar group of noble class and those of the country. However, my adaptation begins in the same manner of Algernon, his servant Lane, and Jack revealing Jack's identity, and then takes the twist. Algernon is gay. The original stage directions and dialogue of Algernon is very flamboyant. I re-image Algernon to be a close brother type with Jack, and have had been opened about his sexuality, and that is why he feels betrayed that Jack did not tell him the truth about his own facade as Earnest. The scene once again goes back to the original plot line, and has Algernon reveal the cigarette case. Cicely is no longer Jack's niece, he's Jack's queer prostitute nephew. This is a great time to take a pause and break down the adjusted time of this new production. My adaptation is set only one year after the original, 1896, which if you recall from earlier would be after Wilde was sent to prison for crimes in relation to his sexual orientation. I chose 1896 to up the stakes of the queer characters. Wilde isn't in my play, yet the historical disapproval of queerness that was true in his life is present. This is why Algernon then goes to chase down and fall in love with Cicely, a twin prostitute. I discovered that in the Victorian era, Cicely was a slang term for a young male prostitute, and with Algernon being in love with Cicely and her being a younger character, I made the choice to queer her, now him. A place out in the country, away from his real life, would be the reason in which Algernon would act on the knowledge of a queer character and make the risky choice to look for them. He can change his identity and live the double life a lot of queer people did or still do today. Ernest, in a sense, is masking, which is a queer practice in which someone hides their true identity in a performance of sorts, whether it's by changing their clothing, lowering their voice, or even going as far to have a different name than what they identify with. Jack is Ernest as a heterosexual man wanting to leave his old life. Algernon is Ernest as a queer man wanting to live his true life. My adaptation will showcase Ernest as a way that both the queer and non-queer men have to hide themselves to be happy with the lives they have. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-boom, the twink that thinks. Well, that's all this twink wrote. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-boom. I'm kidding, I'm still here. Though, we are now in the goodbye section, or what I'm going to call why Oscar Wilde and why now section. If you haven't gotten from the title alone, I am a twink, but I would label myself as a writer before that. I fell in love with Wilde's work through the picture Dorian Gray and then his life story. In our time, queerness is more acceptable, yet there are still those who are like the men in importance of being Ernest and mask themselves. I find knowing the twink behind the work to showcase how much queerness matters in literature today. Oscar was by far not a perfect man, but he is an important person for both theater and queer history. His wit gives his work a layer of humanity and sincerity that I want to see return to the world now. Queer voices are still oppressed in writing today, and queer-focused stories are still second place to heteronormative pieces. Although Wilde never wrote open queer pieces, queer readings and stories can be taken and adapted from his works today. With the world being a little bit more accepting, my goal as a writer is to write as many queer pieces as I can and hope the stories bring some joy, hope, and representation to my community. Now I invite you to read the opening excerpt of my adaptation as well as challenge you to pick up a copy of The Importance of Being Ernest and engage with Wilde's work firsthand. I would love to talk and talk and talk about this twink, but theater is supposed to be engaging, and who am I to hog all the fun? Finally, I want to give an audible shout out to Miss Maya Weldy for creating this twink's very own theme music and soundboard, and if you liked it, it also doubles as my exit music. Thank you all for listening to this twink think.