- A Woman of No Importance
"A Woman of No Importance" is a play by Irish
playwright Oscar Wilde . The play premièred on19 April 1893 atLondon 'sHaymarket Theatre . It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of darkcomedy . It looks in particular at Englishupper class society and has been reproduced on stages inEurope andNorth America since his death in 1900. A film based on this play is in production and is due to be released in [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808544/ 2009] .Original Production
Herbert Beerbohm Tree , actor-manager ofLondon 'sHaymarket Theatre , askedOscar Wilde to write him a play following the success of Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan " at theSt. James Theatre . Wilde was initially quite reluctant since the character Tree would take was not the sort of part he associated with the actor: "You must forget that you ever playedHamlet ; you must forget that you ever playedFalstaff ; above all, you must forget that you ever played a duke in a melodrama byHenry Arthur Jones ." Wilde went so far as to describe Lord Illingworth as himself.This appears to have made Tree all the more determined and thus Wilde wrote the play while staying at a farmhouse near
Felbrigg inNorfolk — withLord Alfred Douglas — while his wife and sons stayed at Babbacombe Cliff nearTorquay . Rehearsals started in March 1893. Tree enjoyed the part of Lord Illingworth and continued to play it outside the theatre, leading Wilde to comment "every day Herbert becomes "de plus en plus oscarisé" ("more and more Oscarised").The play opened on 19 April 1893. The first performance was a great success, though Wilde, while taking his bow as the author, was booed, apparently because of a line stating "England lies like a leper in purple" — which was later removed. The Prince of Wales attended the second performance and told Wilde not to alter a single line."Oscar Wilde" by Richard Ellman, published in 1987]
The play was also performed in
New York and was due to go on tour when Wilde was arrested and charged with indecency andsodomy following his feud with the Marquess of Queensberry over the Marquess' son,Lord Alfred Douglas . The tour was cancelled.Criticisms
"A Woman of No Importance" has been described as the "weakest of the plays Wilde wrote in the Nineties". ] Much of the first act-and-a-half surrounds the witty conversations of members of the upper-classes, the drama only beginning in the second half of the second act with Lord Illingworth and Mrs Arbuthnot finding their pasts catching up with them.
Lytton Strachey gave a curious interpretation of the relationship between Lord Illingworth and his new-found son Gerald when Tree put on another production of the play in 1907. In a letter toDuncan Grant he described Lord Illingworth (again played by Tree) as havingincest uoushomosexual designs on his son. ] Strachey's interpretation of Tree's performance was probably influenced by Wilde's exposure as a homosexual himself.Themes
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