The Wilde life

In an age that has raised public humiliation to an art form, the downfall of Oscar Wilde is still shocking.

Wilde was one of Britain’s leading playwrights, wits and public figures of the 1890s. But after his homosexuality was exposed in three scandalous public trials, he wound up disgraced, impoverished, imprisoned and, a few years later, dead. A century after Wilde’s death, his saga retains the spellbinding power of a grand tragedy.

A play called Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde chronicled a great man brought low through the cruelty of a repressive social order. That play told the story of Wilde’s trials for allegations of sodomy.

Now, Hedgerow Theatre is staging the world premiere of The Lives of Bosie, another Wilde biography, written by John Wolfson.

In both his life and his work, Wilde established the grandiosity we associate with the word "camp."

His outrageous egotism, his power to deflate the most helium-stuffed social windbags, his horror of practicality and disdain of respectability made him a cultural hero in his own time and, unlike similar icons whose statues are rudely toppled in our century, he frequently has new monuments erected in his honor.

The man who, on his deathbed, could look up with a pained expression and say, "Either that wallpaper goes or I do," was mining a vein of humor in a unique mental universe.

In February 1895, at the height of his success, Wilde elected to sue his lover Lord Alfred Douglas’ father, the Marquees of Queensberry, for slander when Queensberry accused him (in a misspelled note) of "posing as a sodomite." In doing so, the playwright set in motion a chain of events that would not only bring about his artistic downfall but would leave him to die a broken man five years later at the age of 46 after a miserable stint in Reading prison.

In the first of three trials, Wilde was forced to withdraw his suit against Queensberry after inadvertently betraying himself during cross-examination with his too-clever tongue. The promoters of Victorian morality immediately brought criminal charges against him.

A parade of working-class male hustlers, whom Wilde admitted befriending and showering with cash and silver cigarette cases but denied having sex with, were summoned to testify about their "illicit" relations with him. Although the jury at the second trial was unable to reach a verdict, by the end of the third, Wilde had been convicted of "gross indecency with male persons."

He faced not only disgrace and bankruptcy, but the knowledge that he himself contributed to his own demise. Even before he stabbed himself with his own clever tongue, he frittered away his talents by surrounding himself "with the smaller natures and the meaner minds."

As he quotes from De Profundis, "I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy."

The play Gross Indecency clearly defined Douglas’ weasly character. Given the breadth of Wilde’s intellect, the brilliance of his wit and the infallibility of his artistic taste, it is incredible to imagine him going ga-ga for such a vindictive and talentless twit. "Bosie," as Lord Douglas was known, was not only his downfall, but the only aspect of Wilde’s life that seriously leads us to question his genius.

The Lives of Bosie features Tony nominee and film star Austin Pendleton as the aging Douglas and Barrymore winner Tobias Segal as his younger self, Bosie. It is a two-actor, one-character tour de force.

Playwright Wolfson is the curator of rare books at London’s Globe Theatre. "I wrote The Lives of Bosie to fill in one of the major gaps in history — the real reason for the British government’s prosecution of Wilde. I felt it was time the whole story was told."

According to Wolfson’s new play, in 1895, British Prime Minister Lord Rosebury had a clandestine affair with Bosie’s older brother, Francis, who subsequently committed suicide. Once Bosie began his public relationship with Wilde, Bosie’s father threatened to expose Lord Rosebury if the British government refused to prosecute Wilde and convict him. The Liberal Party allowed itself to be blackmailed, and went forward with the prosecution to avoid an enormous scandal just before an election.

Therefore, Wolfson claims, the government was prosecuting Wilde in order to protect itself. The trials had nothing to do with Wilde’s behavior.

These new revelations hold the promise of some intriguing dialogue — or, as we like to say, "Now for the rest of the story."

The Lives of Bosie
Tomorrow-Sept. 5
The Hedgerow Theatre
64 Rose Valley Road, Media
Tickets: $10-$25
www.hedgerowtheatre.org
610-565-4211