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The Importance of Discovering Wilde
| Article
# : |
10965 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1986 |
2,385 Words |
| Author
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Jeff Church
Jeff Church is a playwright-in-residence at The John F.
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Programs for Children
and Youth. |
There it sits in the New York Public Library, undisturbed by time--but in actuality, until times recent. The item in question has a secretive history of being shipped across the Atlantic, stored, forgotten, hidden, and ultimately saved from destruction by being shelved in a somewhat mislabeled collection. No one knows its disguise.
Upon its discovery, no one is to have the satisfaction of opening the first page and proclaiming, "Here! Here's the missing four-act version of the Importance of Being Earnest everybody's been looking for." Because, as Oscar Wilde says in the very same text, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." No one has made the guess that a final draft is in existence.
Those familiar with Earnest might remember that it is a three-act comedy featuring the exploits of one John Worthing, to be exact (exactness counts in this story), along with his gadfly antagonist, Algeron Moncrieff. Those even more familiar with Wilde's writings know that, while he originally intended it to be four acts, the play's first producer (and first leading man) had the play cut and restructured to be presented in three acts on February 14, 1895. Wilde experts acquaint themselves further with the fact that four-act "versions" of Earnest occasionally do present themselves and know what a seedy bunch they are. A very rough handwritten first draft found its way to a publisher in 1956, and any playwright will tell you an initial draft straight from the pen is a far cry from a final one. Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, then surfaced with four acts he had complied from bits and pieces he had collected, but scholarly acclaim never greeted him. It just wasn't a real Wilde
... (1923 of 13996 Characters)
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