The plays of Oscar Wilde
by Oscar Wilde · 1905
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.8/5
This complete collection of Wilde's plays—from the comedies that made him famous to the fragments that reveal his limits—shows a mind of extraordinary wit constrained by its own refusal of seriousness. Essential for understanding late-Victorian drama, if not necessarily for admiring it.
Wilde's dramatic corpus reveals a mind more interested in surfaces than in the depths beneath them.
This Wordsworth edition collects Wilde's theatrical work—from the early melodrama of Vera through the society comedies that made his fortune to the fragments left unfinished—and it serves the useful purpose of showing us the full arc of his dramatic thinking. Yet reading them as a collected volume exposes what individual productions often obscure: that Wilde's genius was fundamentally local, even claustrophobic, a talent for the perfectly turned phrase that sometimes mistook itself for profundity.
Wilde's four great comedies of the 1890s—Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest—remain the justification for this collection and indeed for Wilde's reputation as a dramatist. In these plays, he perfected a form of social comedy in which the machinery of plot serves almost entirely as scaffolding for epigram; the wit is not incidental to the drama but constitutive of it. When Algernon observes that "the truth is rarely pure and never simple," we are not being given information about character so much as being treated to a miniature philosophical proposition dressed in evening clothes. This is intoxicating when it works, and it works more often than not.
What becomes clear across the full volume, however, is that Wilde's method—the relentless subordination of dramatic action to rhetorical brilliance—was itself a limitation dressed as a virtue. His early tragedy Vera, which the collection wisely includes, shows a playwright reaching for something beyond the drawing room: political intrigue, genuine moral stakes, the weight of historical consequence. But the play collapses under the weight of its own purple prose; Wilde has no language for sincerity, only for its mockery. The problem is not that he failed to write serious drama, but that his entire dramatic vocabulary was constructed to resist seriousness.
Salome presents the most interesting case in this regard. Wilde's one-act tragedy—originally written in French, provocatively erotic, formally severe—suggests what might have happened had he permitted himself to work in a minor key. The play's power derives partly from its refusal to be funny, from its aesthetic commitment to languor and desire as ends in themselves. Yet even here, one feels Wilde straining against his own nature, unable to resist a bon mot even as his heroine contemplates the severed head of the man she loves. The play's greatness exists almost despite Wilde's habitual brilliance rather than because of it.
The fragments—La Sainte Courtisane, A Florentine Tragedy—are included here presumably to give us a complete picture, but they function primarily as reminders of how narrow Wilde's imaginative range truly was. Both concern themselves with seduction, beauty, and the corruption of innocence, yet neither achieves even the minor distinction of his finished works. What troubles me about this collection is that its completeness becomes a kind of liability; seeing everything Wilde wrote for the stage makes it harder to maintain the illusion that he was a major dramatist rather than a major wit who happened to write plays. The edition itself—with Anne Varty's introduction and notes—is serviceable but uninspired, offering context without genuine critical engagement.
Still, there is real pleasure to be found here, particularly for readers encountering these plays on the page rather than in performance. Wilde's ear for dialogue remains extraordinary; his comedies move with the precision of a Swiss watch. For anyone serious about late-Victorian theater, or about the particular kind of intelligence that produces perfect surfaces, this volume deserves a place on the shelf. Yet one closes it with the sense of having been entertained rather than moved, seduced rather than transformed—which may be precisely what Wilde intended, and precisely why his achievement, however real, remains fundamentally minor.
Key Takeaways
- Wit as limitation
- Surface over substance
- Comedy's constraints
Summary
- This Wordsworth edition collects all of Wilde's dramatic work, from the early tragedy Vera through his four great society comedies to lesser-known fragments and unfinished pieces.
- The four comedies—Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest—remain masterpieces of wit and social observation, where plot serves primarily as a vehicle for epigram.
- Wilde's method of subordinating dramatic action to rhetorical brilliance works beautifully in the comedies but reveals itself as a fundamental limitation when examined across his full output.
- Salome, his one-act tragedy written in French, suggests what Wilde might have achieved had he allowed himself to work outside his habitual mode of mockery and brilliance.
- The included fragments and unfinished plays demonstrate how narrow Wilde's imaginative range actually was, all circling obsessively around seduction and the corruption of beauty.
- Anne Varty's introduction and notes are serviceable but lack genuine critical engagement; the edition functions more as a historical archive than as a work of interpretive scholarship.
- Reading Wilde's complete dramatic corpus exposes the tension between his reputation as a major dramatist and his actual achievement as a supremely gifted wit working within severe formal constraints.
- For readers of late-Victorian theater or those interested in how perfect surfaces can sometimes substitute for genuine depth, this collection remains essential—though perhaps not for the reasons Wilde himself would have hoped.
Chapter Guide
- Chapter 1: Lady Windermere's Fan: A Woman of No Importance
- Lady Windermere's rigid moral code is challenged when she discovers her husband's apparent affair with a mysterious woman, leading her to consider abandoning her family. The play explores societal hypocrisy and the destructive power of gossip within Victorian high society.
- Chapter 2: A Woman of No Importance: The Past Revealed
- The arrival of Mrs. Arbuthnot and her son Gerald exposes a past scandal involving Lord Illingworth, forcing characters to confront long-held secrets. Wilde critiques the double standards applied to men and women regarding past transgressions.
- Chapter 3: An Ideal Husband: Blackmail and Public Persona
- Sir Robert Chiltern's seemingly perfect life is threatened by Mrs. Cheveley's blackmail, which exposes a past indiscretion involving state secrets. The play dissects the construction of public image and the fragility of reputation.
- Chapter 4: The Importance of Being Earnest: Farce and Identity
- Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff invent fictitious personas to escape social obligations, leading to a comedic tangle of mistaken identities and romantic misunderstandings. Wilde satirizes Victorian marriage conventions and the triviality of social life.
- Chapter 5: Salomé: Obsession and Decadence
- Salomé's infatuation with John the Baptist leads her to demand his head on a silver platter, culminating in a grotesque dance and a macabre kiss. This one-act tragedy explores themes of desire, power, and the destructive nature of obsession.
Read the full review at https://reviewerinsight.com/book/69ed4f5ef2f1713bdeb2c186/the-plays-of-oscar-wilde