The Importance of Being Earnest (2 page)

As for
Salomé
, it is best read as what my teachers used to call a “closet” drama; i.e., a play that is best experienced in the study and not performed. The title role was written for the great Sarah Bernhardt,
who deemed it “unplayable.” Dramatic history would seem to have proved her right.

“My name has two ‘O’s’, two ‘F’s’, and two ‘W’s’,” Wilde wrote in 1885. He had been christened Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin in 1854. “A name which is destined to be in everyone’s mouth must not be too long,” he continued. “It comes too expensive in the advertisements … . All but two of my names have already been thrown overboard. Soon I shall discard another and be known as ‘The Wilde’ or ‘The Oscar.’”

It is ironic that Wilde, an Irishman, is generally thought of as some sort of
über
Englishman. Like many Irish writers, Wilde was quick to get the hell out of Ireland and never look back. But if braggadocio is an Irish trait, Wilde was Irish to his fingertips. He never doubted his genius or his success, both of which were considerable. At one point in his relatively short life (he died at forty-six), he was arguably the most famous man of letters in the world and yet he had written relatively little. His greatest play,
Importance
, was thirteen years in the future when he toured America as a personality and lecturer on the Aesthete. Jaded New Yorkers and unwashed gold prospectors turned out in record numbers to see him: Oscar Wilde was famous for being Oscar Wilde. If that isn’t the beginning of the cult of literary personality and the author as celebrity, I don’t know what is. (Truman Capote and Lillian Hellman were latecomers to that particular game.) If there had been a Blackglama Mink “What Becomes A Celebrity Most?” photo-ad campaign in 1895, the year of
Importance
’s sensational premiere—just weeks before his even more sensational downfall at the hands of Lord Alfred Douglas’s enraged father, the Marquess of Queensberry—Wilde would have been the most likely candidate for this tabloid immortalization.

Instead, he was banished to anonymity for the rest of his sad life, and then some. He was reviled, forgotten, and then reviled all over again. Today, his disgrace in the courtroom would have only increased his stature as a celebrity and his drawing power at the box office.

Oscar would have had something to say about all this, of course. Something amusing.

—

T
ERRENCE
M
C
N
ALLY’S
plays include
Love! Valour! Compassion!
and
Master Class
. In addition to four Tony Awards, McNally has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Rockefeller Grant, among many other honors. He lives in New York City.

SCENE
—
Morning-room of Lord Windermere’s house in Carlton House Terrace. Doors C. and R. Bureau with books and papers R. Sofa with small tea-table L. Window opening on to terrace L. Table R
.
(Lady Windermere is at table R., arranging roses in a blue bowl.)

(Enter Parker.)

P
ARKER
. Is your ladyship at home this afternoon?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Yes—who has called?

P
ARKER
. Lord Darlington, my lady.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Hesitates for a moment.)
Show him up—and I’m at home to any one who calls.

P
ARKER
. Yes, my lady.

(Exit C.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. It’s best for me to see him before to-night. I’m glad he’s come.

(Enter Parker C.)

P
ARKER
Lord Darlington.

(Enter Lord Darlington C
.)

(Exit Parker.)

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON.
How do you do, Lady Windermere?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE.
How do you do, Lord Darlington? No, I can’t shake hands with you. My hands are all wet with these roses.

Aren’t they lovely? They came up from Selby this morning.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. They are quite perfect.
(Sees a fan lying on the table.)
And what a wonderful fan! May I look at it?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE.
Do. Pretty, isn’t it! It’s got my name on it, and everything. I have only just seen it myself. It’s my husband’s birthday present to me. You know to-day is my birthday?

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. No? Is it really?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Yes, I’m of age to-day. Quite an important day in my life, isn’t it? That is why I am giving this party to-night. Do sit down.
(Still arranging flowers.)

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(Sitting down.)
I wish I had known it was your birthday, Lady Windermere. I would have covered the whole street in front of your house with flowers for you to walk on.

They are made for you.
(A short pause.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Lord Darlington, you annoyed me last night at the Foreign Office. I am afraid you are going to annoy me again.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. I, Lady Windermere?

(Enter Parker and Footman C., with tray and tea things.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Put it there, Parker. That will do.
(Wipes her hands with her pocket-handkerchief, goes to tea-table L., and sits down.)
Won’t you come over, Lord Darlington?

(Exit Parker C.)

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(Takes chair and goes across L.C.)
I am quite miserable, Lady Windermere. You must tell me what I did.
(Sits down at table L.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Well, you kept paying me elaborate compliments the whole evening.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(Smiling.)
Ah, now-a-days we are all of us so hard up, that the only pleasant things to pay
are
compliments. They’re the only things we
can
pay.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Shaking her head.)
No, I am talking very seriously. You mustn’t laugh, I am quite serious. I don’t like compliments, and I don’t see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn’t mean.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. Ah, but I did mean them.
(Takes tea which she offers him.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Gravely.)
I hope not. I should be sorry to have to quarrel with you, Lord Darlington. I like you very much, you know that. But I shouldn’t like you at all if I thought you were
what most other men are. Believe me, you are better than most other men, and I sometimes think you pretend to be worse.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. We all have our little vanities, Lady Windermere.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Why do you make that your special one?
(Still seated at table L.)

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(Still seated L.C.)
Oh, now-a-days so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good, that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad. Besides, there is this to be said. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Don’t you
want
the world to take you seriously then, Lord Darlington?

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. No, not the world. Who are the people the world takes seriously? All the dull people one can think of, from the Bishops down to the bores. I should like
you
to take me very seriously, Lady Windermere,
you
more than any one else in life.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Why—why me?

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(After a slight hesitation.)
Because I think we might be great friends. Let us be great friends. You may want a friend some day.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Why do you say that?

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. Oh!—we all want friends at times.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. I think we’re very good friends already, Lord Darlington. We can always remain so as long as you don’t——

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. Don’t what?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Don’t spoil it by saying extravagant silly things to me. You think I am a Puritan, I suppose? Well, I have something of the Puritan in me. I was brought up like that. I am glad of it. My mother died when I was a mere child. I lived always with Lady Julia, my father’s elder sister you know. She was stern to me, but she taught me, what the world is forgetting, the difference that there is between what is right and what is wrong.
She
allowed of no compromise.
I
allow of none.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. My dear Lady Windermere!

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Leaning back on the sofa.)
You look on me as being behind the age.—Well, I am! I should be sorry to be on the same level as an age like this.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
. You think the age very bad?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Yes. Now-a-days people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is Love. Its purification is sacrifice.

L
ORD
D
ARLINGTON
.
(Smiling.)
Oh, anything is better than being sacrificed!

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Leaning forward.)
Don’t say that.