The Complete Short Fiction (33 page)

24
John Davies of Hereford
(p.
56
) Another identification made earlier in the century by Henry Brown in
The Sonnets of Shakespeare Solved
(1870).

25
philosophical allegory… Catholic Church
(p.
56
) Once again, details of these particular accounts of the Sonnets were available from Dowden's
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare
.

26
Viola and Imogen, Juliet and Rosalind, Portia and Desdemona, and Cleopatra
(p.
57
) I.e., the heroines of
Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Othello
and
Antony and Cleopatra
respectively.

27
Willie Hughes
(p.
57
) The identification of Mr. W. H. with Willie Hughes was neither Wilde's (nor Graham's), but was suggested by the eighteenth-century critic Thomas Tyrwhitt, and recorded by Edmund Malone in his
Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare's Plays… by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens
(1780).

28
eighth line
(p.
57
) An error, for the line is in fact the seventh.

29
Chapman's plays
(p.
58
) I.e., the dramatist George Chapman (?1559–1634), a detail to be found in William Minto,
Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley
(1875) and in Dowden's
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare
.

30
Philistine
(p.
59
) See
note 12
to p.
52
.

31
Alleyn MSS at Dulwich… the papers of the Lord Chamberlain
(p.
59
) The papers of Edward Alleyn, the famous Elizabethan actor, at Dulwich College, which he built and endowed; the Public Record Office; and the Office of the Lord Chamberlain, whose Examiner of Plays was, until 1968, the state censor of theatrical performances.

32
the gaunt Palace
(p.
63
) The description best fits Buckingham Palace, but it could refer to St James's.

33
petit-pain
(p.
64
) I.e., a bread-roll.

34
Rosalind to Juliet… Beatrice to Ophelia
(p.
64
) For Rosalind and Juliet, see
note 26
to p. 57; Beatrice and Ophelia are the heroines of
Much Ado About Nothing
and
Hamlet
.

35
Thomas Thorpe
(p.
66
) See
notes 18
to p. 55.

36
‘slight Must,' as he calls them
(p.
67
) In Sonnet 38.13.

37
Marlowe
(p.
70
) An idea proposed originally by Robert Cartwright in
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare
(1859) and by Gerald Massey in
Shakespeare's Sonnets and his Private Friends
(1866).

38
Mephistopheles of his Doctor Faustus
(p.
70
) In Christopher Marlowe's
Dr Faustus
Mephistopheles seduces Faustus into eternal damnation; this identification was discussed by Massey in
Shakespeare's Sonnets
.

39
Blackfriars' Theatre
(p.
70
) An error of detail, for Shakespeare's company did not appear at the Blackfriars until 1608.

40
Gaveston of his Edward II
(p.
70
) In Marlowe's
Edward II
, the king's (homosexual) partiality for his favourite, Piers Gaveston, in part causes his downfall and the play's tragedy.

41
Red Bull Tavern
(p.
70
) The Red Bull, a playhouse in St John Street in Clerkenwell, thought originally to have been an inn, where plays could have indeed been performed in the ‘open yard'.
Edward II
was performed there.

42
King Edward's delicate minion
(p.
70
) I.e., Gaveston in
Edward II
.

43
The Lover's Complaint
(p.
71
) In fact,
A Lover's Complaint
.

44
a wonderfully graphic account… Thomas Knell
(p.
72
) In his
Annotations
, Horst Schroeder suggests that this passage is taken ‘almost verbatim' from Gerald Massey's
Shakespeare's Sonnets and his Private Friends
, and points out that it is not the work of Thomas Knell, as Wilde and Massey suggest, but of Essex's secretary, Edward Waterhouse. (See Schroeder,
Annotations
, p. 29.)

45
Sidney's Stella
(p.
72
) Penelope Devereux, the daughter of the first Earl of Essex, was later married to Lord Rich. The suggestion that she was the subject of Philip Sidney's sonnet-sequence
Astrophel and Stella
was made by Massey in 1866, and rehearsed by Edmund Dowden later in the century.

46
Hews was an Elizabethan name
(p.
72
) As the scholar Frederick Furnivall had noted as early as 1876 in the academic periodical
Notes and Queries
.

47
Margaret Hews, whom Prince Rupert so madly loved
(p.
72
) I.e., Mrs Margaret Hughes. She was Prince Rupert's mistress, bearing him a
daughter who was christened Ruperta and to whom the Prince left all his estate in trust. Margaret Hughes appeared as Desdemona in December 1660.

48
those English actors who in 1604… Court of that strange Elector of Brandenburg
(p.
73
) The sources available to Wilde describe how a company of English actors travelled to Germany in the early years of the seventeenth century and perhaps performed before Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and how in 1617 English comedians appeared before the Elector of Brandenburg. The other details of the episodes appear to be Wilde's invention.

49
Aujklarung
(p.
73
) The most obvious immediate source of the term
‘Aujklarung'
was Walter Pater's story ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold' in
Imaginary Portraits
(1887), which Wilde had reviewed in
The Pall Mall Gazette
in June 1887. There he drew attention to Pater's use of the term (which Pater translated as ‘the Enlightening') and its use in relation to the work of Leasing, Herder and Goethe.

50
Friedrich Schroeder
(p.
73
) I.e., Friedrich Ulrich Schroder (1744–1816), the first manager to introduce Shakespeare to the German stage.

51
mimae quidem ex Britannia… slain at Nuremberg
(p.
73
) Horst Schroeder points out that ‘although the history of the early English actors at Nuremberg is well documented, an incident like the one related is not recorded' (
Annotations
, p. 60). He goes on to suggest that Wilde's anecdote is fictitious.

52
the sorrows of Dionysos that Tragedy sprang
(p.
74
) A theme that Wilde probably found in ‘A Study of Dionysus', an essay by Walter Pater, who had been a formative influence at Oxford. Pater's essay was published in 1876 in the
Fortnightly Review
and posthumously in
Greek Studies
(1895). At one point Wilde seems to echo Pater directly: ‘It is out of the sorrows of Dionysus, then; – of Dionysus in winter – that all Greek tragedy grows' (
Greek Studies
(1895; 1901), p. 40).

53
Bithynian slave… yellow hills of Cerameicus… Antinous… Charmides in philosophy
(p.
74
) The Bithynian slave was Antinöus, the beautiful page of the Roman emperor Hadrian and a favourite subject of sculptors; Cerameicus is a quarter of Athens; Charmides was a beautiful Athenian youth who appears in Plato's dialogue of that name. Wilde's theme is the age-old one of the permanence of beauty in art; but it is significant that the examples he gives are of classical male beauty.

54
Globe Theatre
(p.
76
) Erected in 1599 in Southwark for the Burbages. Shakespeare acted there, but Wilde seems to have forgotten that the
narrator has made the same point about the Blackfriars and assumes his readers were aware of the relationship between the two playhouses.

55
Cannes
(p.
77
) The popularity of Cannes as a resort dates from its virtual colonization by British visitors from the midnineteenth century onwards.

56
night-mail from Charing Cross
(p.
77
) Charing Cross was the station serving, cross-Channel traffic until the 1920s.

57
not a Clouet, but an Ouvry
(p.
78
) As Horst Schroeder suggests in
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.'
–
Its Composition, Publication and Reception
, the reference to Ouvry is in all likelihood an error for Oudry, the French painter in the school of Jean Clouet; an exhibition of Oudry's work in 1888 in London had attracted considerable interest.

1
Dedication
(p.
81
) Constance Wilde (née Lloyd) was Wilde's wife.

1
Dedication
(p.
83
) Margaret de Windt (1849–1936) married in 1869 Sir Charles Johnson Brooke, the second Rajah of Sarawak. Wilde probably met her in Paris in 1891.

2
Faun
(p.
83
) In Greek mythology a rural demigod, represented as a man with horns and the tail of a goat.

3
Joyeuse
(p.
84
) ‘Joyeuse' was the epithet used to describe (and denigrate) members of Henri Ill's court. Wilde used it again in
DG
.

4
Adonis
(p.
85
) In Greek legend a beautiful youth favoured by Aphrodite, whose name became a bye-word for male beauty.

5
Bithynian slave of Hadrian
(p.
85
) I.e., Antinous, the beautiful page of the Roman emperor Hadrian; see
note 53
to p. 74.

6
Endymion
(p.
85
) Once more male beauty is being alluded to, for in Greek legend Endymion was a beautiful young shepherd whom Selene (the moon) visited each night as he slept in an eternal sleep. Endymion was familiar to nineteenth-century readers through the poem by John Keats.

7
Narcissus
(p.
86
) A favourite classical reference used by Wilde to denote vain male beauty; see
note 20
to p.113 and
note 1
to p. 246.

8
lateen sail
(p.
88
) ‘A triangular sail suspended by a long yard at an angle of about 45º to the mast' (
OED
).

9
Ormuz
(p.
89
) A famously wealthy city in the Persian Gulf, mentioned by Milton in
Paradise Lost
(11, 2).

10
Tartary
(p.
90
) In the Middle Ages, the land of the Mongols and Tartars of Central Asia, who under Genghis Khan overran much of Europe; Wilde's emphasis is upon the Tartars' legendary violence.

11
Isis and Osiris
(p.
91
) Isis was the Egyptian goddess of the sky and wife of Osiris, the god of fertility and the underworld.

12
Death leaped upon his red horse and galloped away
(p.
91
) Wilde's treatment of Death, Avarice and Plague draws heavily on the description of the Apocalypse in the Revelation of St John the Divine.

13
pleasaunce
(p.
92
) A pleasure-ground, usually attached to a mansion.

14
dreamer of dreams
(p.
95
) A quotation from William Morris's verse-romance
The Earthly Paradise
, where the poet calls himself a ‘Dreamer of dreams'.

15
the dead staff blossomed
(p.
95
) An allusion to the Tannhäuser story, given its most popular expression in the nineteenth century by Richard Wagner in his opera
Tannhäuser
(1861). In it Tannhäuser confesses to the Pope his love for Venus, but is refused absolution until the Pope's staff blossoms. Tannhäuser goes back to Venusberg, and the Pope's ‘dead staff does indeed blossom. In
De Prqfundis
, his long prison-letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde explicitly associated Tannhàuser with Christ.

16
monstrance
(p.
96
) Gold or jewelled vessel containing the consecrated Host.

1
Infanta
(p.
97
) Technically the eldest daughter of the king and queen of Spain who is not heir to the throne.

2
Dedication
(p.
97
) Mrs William H. Grenville and her husband (Lord and Lady Desborough), of Taplow Court in Buckinghamshire, were members of a group calling themselves ‘The Souls'. Wilde was a frequent visitor to Taplow Court.

3
Mi reina!
(p.
99
) I.e., My queen!

4
Papal Nuncio
(p.
99
) A permanent official representative of the Roman see at a foreign court.

5
Escurial
(p.
99
) The chief palace of the Spanish kings, about thirty miles from Madrid.

6
auto-da-fé
(p.
99
) The ceremonial delivery of heretics condemned by the Spanish Inquisition to the secular arm to be burned at the stake.

7
urai sourire de France
(p.
100
) I.e., ‘the true smile of France'.

8
moue
(p.
100
) I.e., A pout.

9
hidalgo and grandee
(p.
101
) An inaccurate conjunction of terms: hidalgo refers to the lower ranks of the nobility and grandee to the highest.