Background The Canadian Robbie Ross was Oscar Wilde's best friend. The fact that Robbie took on the role of literary executor at a time when Oscar's name was anathema meant that he had to be most circumspect whenever he spoke about or wrote of Ocsar, for fear of repercussions to his own reputation and livelihood. Here I try to give voice to what Robbie could not say, and fill in the gaps between the lines of extant historical records. Robbie's association with Oscar, whether as friend or literary executor, spanned the better part of 30 years. This play is one part historical record, two parts imagined. Any faults or anachronisms are mine and mine alone. The list of sources consulted in my research are many and varied, from biographies and first hand accounts, through published letters and diaries. Much of the speech is invented and at other times an original phrase or whole paragraphs are woven into the text. But the arc of this story is solely a path I chose to elucidate, and the opinions of the characters mainly my speculation. Jacob Chaos, October, 2011 Santiago, Chile
Characters Oscar Wilde Robbie Ross
Setting Various locations in London anywhere between 1890 and 1918. Sometimes Oscar and Robbie interact; at other times they speak without a direct awareness of each other. To what degree Oscar is an extension of Robbie's psyche should be determined by the actors and director. The author has made musical suggestions for some scenes mainly because Dvorรกk and Chopin were thought of very highly by Oscar, and may well have formed the background for some of their exchanges
Excerpt 1 . . . Dinner
(Sound of diners, glasses tinkling, violins . . .)
Oscar The problem with actors is not that they try to think, but that they have no moral principles. The only character they possess is the role they are assigned. Agreed. Their intellectual capacity is thus commensurate with that of the current popular playwrights, which explains - excepting my work of course - which explains why so many actors are to be found scratching their way round the London stages like a flock of demented guinea fowl. This country doesn't need a better army, it needs better playwrights, and until that time, I – alone - stand a Jonathan afore the garrison of the Philistines, and our actors will be no better than poor Brookfield. Sit still, Bosie, and listen! You can be such a panicked hummingbird sometimes, one simply doesn't know where to focus. The service here is the same as it has always been; unremarkable. But you must pay attention, my beautiful man, you are noticed. When we walked in here tonight the staff spied you and drew straws, for the privilege of not serving you, so well they know your habits. That's who should be writing for our stages; they know us better than our mothers. We could all do well to remember, and I quote my dear Mama, “A good manservant has ears all over his body and eyes in the back of his head.” At Willis' Monday past, I rose from the table at one saying, “Excuse me, but I must retire if I expect to keep my youth.”
Robbie And the maitr'd whispered:
Oscar “Mr. Wilde, we didn't know you were keeping a youth!” Oh, yes, Brookfield. He has a very small part... in my play! And tonight he went up on his lines. It's an acting term, my dear. Brookfield has a funny little bit, where the line always gets a round of applause. Well, tonight, Brookfield couldn't get the words out; he garbled some, sputtered others and invented the rest. I whispered to Robbie at the interval . . .
Robbie “Sounds like something I'd have written if I understood Burmese.”
Oscar
But I don't. Speranza was with us, and I'd told her to watch for this one line, this one line that was bringing the house down each night. We went up to the bar after the performance, and who has the audacity to not only not hang himself in the dressing room, but to even make an appearance?
Robbie I began preparing the noose.
Oscar And I said: “Brookfield, old man, join us in a glass of champagne. We have toasted all the company tonight except you.” And I handed that boor a glass of Pierre Jouet.
Robbie Pearls before swine . . .
Oscar Pearls before swine . . . “My dear Brookfield,” I said, “Your work continues to astound and delight. Particularly enjoyed the part where you played at forgetting your lines. Very real. Very real. Believed you. And in the second act, most commendable of you not to draw any attention to yourself whatsoever. Riveting. It certainly took enormous courage – I think – to bring the audience to the point of not applauding. He never uttered a word . . . but he drank the champagne. It is as I have said, actors have no moral principals!
Robbie You're the last person I'd expect to be occupied with questions of morality, Oscar.
Oscar My point exactly. Take Dorian Gray for example. The public is always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious to the fact they if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of beauty is always distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two expressions – one that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The modern mania for morality is as tedious as it is dangerous. Everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues – and the
result? We all go over like ninepins, one after the other. End of Excerpt 1
Playwright Jacob Chaos presenting “Words . . . Words . . . Words . . . Using Shakespeare in the ESL Classroom�, Santiago, Chile, July 2010
Excerpt 2 . . . Salome (reading) Robbie: - THE CULT OF THE CLITORIS That'll send the middle classes scurrying to their dictionaries. - Salome is a play by Oscar Wilde, a moral pervert. There exists in the cabinet of a certain German Prince a book compiled by the Secret Service from reports of German agents who have infected the country for the past twenty years, agents so vile and spreading such debauchery and lasciviousness as only German minds can concieve, and only German bodies can execute. The black book contains the names of 47,000 perverts who could undermine the war effort. To view the performance of Salome, one must apply to become a private member. If Scotland yard were to sieze this list, I have no doubt they would secure the names of several of the first 47,000. When Maud Allen, the exotic dancer, asked for permission to produce Salome I warned her, just as I warned her not to pursue a case for libel, just as I'd warned Oscar. We are losing the war, so now they just roll out Oscar's hoary ghost yet again, this time for destroying the moral fiber of the English soldier. And who's the star witness for the defense? The Lord Alfred Douglas. He's named me, Reggie, all of us, as being members of the 'Cult of Oscar Wilde.' I tried to stay away from the whole sordid affair - if we speak the truth, we are silenced. If we are silent, we are guilty – but I cannot resist a good performance. I hardly recognized the man but the voice was unmistakable. His once Adonis-like features had quite degenerated; rather owlish now. Oscar: I watched the performance from backstage. I watched it from the wings because word had reached the producer that Bosie's father, the Mad Marquess, was intending to make an appearance. I was advised to watch from the wings . . . one of the most spectacular comic debuts in English theatre history, at least since Sheridan or Congreve, and I watched it from the wings. We did go to Algiers, Bosie and I, only he hadn't yet returned. He was too busy chasing some 14 year old across the desert. Robbie: Bosie stood erect in the witness box with absolutely God given calm. This was, after all, the moment he had been denied all his adult life, an audience willing and wanting to hear what he had to say; the one for which he as a Douglas was fore-ordained, and was he ready. Oh, he was so ready. He whispered the words he needed to say and they loved him for it.
The mob loved him before he began to speak, because all mobs adore a Judas. Oscar: Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always the Judas who writes the biography. Bosie's father? You know the story. Queensberry did show up with a lot of rotten carrots and turnips, was refused entrance, and stomped round the theatre in the snow, clutching the bouquet he was prevented from throwing onto the stage at my premiere. Robbie: “Wilde . . . had a diabolical influence on everyone he met. Oscar Wilde is the greatest force of evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years.” No . . . no . . . no, he paused after “greatest” - ahhhh, the art of the paradox and the pause . . . “Oscar Wilde is the greatest . . . force of evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years. (The sounds of laughter, which builds through the rest of the scene) Oscar: I, standing in the wings, heard the laughter that as one critic said, 'Echoed round the theatre like a pistol shot;' laughter that reverberated in the seats, in the floor, the walls and ceiling, through every mounting drift of snow the laughter was heard. Robbie: (with a voice gaining in strength and confidence) “He was the agent of the devil in every possible way . . . a man whose whole object in life was to attack and sneer at virtue . . . and to undermine it in every possible manner . . . by every possible means, sexually and otherwise!” The mob loved him. And they rewarded him with cheers. (Cheers, bravo, brass band, etc.) Oscar: They heard the laughter and the subsequent ovation at the Gaiety, the Lyceum, the Tivoli, at Her Majesty's, and all the theatres and music halls in the Strand . . . They heard it and wondered what in God's name was taking place and why weren't they there! Robbie: Better than Irving, better than Keane, than Tree . . . One brazen vibrating thought sparkled in that fetid courtroom and I too was seized by the sweeping clarity of it; the sick and twisted soul of Oscar Wilde must be excised from the British body politic like the virulent cancer that it is, or England will lose this Holy War and be destroyed. (More cheers, bravos . . .) And as stood his father, the Marquess of Queensberry, in that very courtroom . . . Oscar: I was there!
Robbie: . . . so stood Bosie Douglas, proudly flourishing an aristocratic hand in the air, receiving the accolades of a grateful populace . . . Oscar: I was there! Robbie: . . . who – yet again – had been saved by a Douglas from the evil clutches of Oscar Wilde! Robbie and Oscar: I was there!!! End of Excerpt 2 Playwright Jacob Chaos presenting
“Words . . . Words . . . Words . . . Using Shakespeare in the ESL Classroom”, Santiago, Chile