Melbourne Punch - Thursday, June 13, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
PEOPLE WE KNOW
OSCAR WILDE works a treadmill in an English prison, varying the monotony with a little oakum picking, whilst Melbourne audiences display rapturous enthusiasm over his recently written drama, "An Ideal Husband," a play that is extraordinarily clever in every way, the strength of the situations equalling the smartness of the dialogue. The playgoing public is inclined to be more resentful towards the author after seeing this production, feeling as they do that in wrecking himself Wilde has robbed them of the delight of witnessing many similar plays of keen intellectual interest. A man who can write such stuff owes it to the public not to monkey with his reputation.
THE practice that has been adopted in London with regard to Oscar Wilde's plays has been followed here, in omitting the name of the author from the playbills and programmes. Is not this really a piece of cant? If the man's plays are playable (and nobody has, so far as we know, discovered anything wrong in them), why resort to the policy of ignoring the name of the author? Mr. Sydney Grundy has given his opinion on this matter, as a brother dramatist. "I wonder," says he, "on what principle of law, or justice, or common sense, or good manners, or Christian charity, an author's name is blotted from his work. If a man is not to be credited with what he has done well, by what right is he punished for what he has done ill?" Surely this is a sensible as well as a fair play argument. Bacon was a corrupt and dishonest man, yet we do not omit his name from his essays and works of philosophy. Byron was a libertine, yet we do not leave his name off the title page of "Childe Harold." Voltaire accused Frederick the Great of precisely the same practices as Wilde is in prison for, yet Frederick is one of the world's heroes. If a play is good enough to produce, it is something to the credit of the man who wrote it, and he is entitled, however black his moral character may be, to get the full credit of his workmanship. Even devils have their rights.