Buy the Play
and related books
Courtesy of

At the height of his popularity, Oscar Wilde has an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry who makes every effort to break up the relationship. When Queensberry leaves a note at Wilde's club accusing him of being a "posing sodomite", Wilde takes some bad legal advice from Douglas and files a charge of liable against Queensberry.

When it becomes clear that Queensberry intends to prove that Wilde is a homosexual in fact, Wilde hastily decides to drop the charge against him but too late to prevent his own arrest for Gross Indecency with a tough new sentence imposed by Queen Victoria.

During Wilde's first trial several young men testify that they had homosexual affairs with Wilde. Wilde attempts to justify himself in aesthetic terms and manages to escape judgment by a hung jury.

In Wilde's third and final trial, political elements are poised against him to ensure his conviction. Wilde makes an attempt to impress the jury that his actions weren't wrong in a historical or aesthetic sense but it isn't enough to prevent a guilty verdict.

Wilde spends two years at hard labor. He leaves prison a ruined and broken man and dies one year after his release.

The court tries to use Wilde's own work to implicate him. Wilde is ineffective to defend his words

At the end of the first trial, Clark withdraws the case before any witnesses can be called testifying to Wilde's sexual behavior

Wilde refuses to leave for France before the second trial

Several young men testify to their experiences with Wilde

The second jury reaches no verdict but we are told that the prime minister demands a verdict of guilty in the third trial

This isn't a play so much as it is a dramaticised dissertation, complete with quotes and proper footnotes. The playwright suggests that his form was inspired by Brecht, but Brecht's plays always had more of a sense of drama than didacticism for its own sake. The text of the play gives the impression of a moderately inspired television documentary rather than a character driven drama. Without this drama, the play seems more about today's version of gay rights politics than the human character of Oscar Wilde.

The play raises several questions about its characters but doesn't answer them. We're not told from the script what is the true nature of the relationship between Wilde and Douglass. Are these two men who love and are devoted to each other or is Wilde simply an older leech blinded by the beauty of youth? And does Douglass really love Wilde or is he using him to strike out at a father he hates? These are important decisions left up to the director and actors without much support from the script.

As written in the dramatic portions of the script, the Marquis of Queensberry comes off as a fairly normal father trying to protect his son from a leech then Kaufman tries to force the audience in a completely different assessment of him using expository methods.

Kaufman assumes that the audience is going to approve and support the hedonism and promiscuity Wilde is accused of. This might be the case in New York art circles or the liberal armies of San Francisco, but in the heartland, audiences might react to the play in a manner different than the author's intent. You could even make a case that the play suggests there is no difference between hedonism and homosexuality.

In the end, this is a play more about gay political issues than it is about gay characters or the nature of art and artists as purported in the dust jacket. This edition comes complete with pages of gushing praise from Tony Kurshner which really didn't surprise me because, in my opinion, his own plays suffer from the same short-comings despite his awards and reputation. Plays about people are much more interesting than plays about politics.