The Daily Inter Ocean - Sunday, April 28, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
Oscar Wilde and His New Play
Only for the recent exposure of the unspeakable vices of the author, Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" would have undoubtedly captured New York by storm. Yet the play is not altogether pleasing. It cloys by its very richness. It should be read at leisure rather than heard.
The play will prove to be Wilde's epitaph, and perhaps it was so intended. "As a man sows so shall he reap" is a phrase that is twice put into the mouths of the actors. It is now the fad to speak of Wilde as a cheap wit, but that is a mistake. Forgetting the horror that his name now brings to view, one must in all fairness admit that he is or was possessed of a power of commenting on every-day events in a quick, keen manner.
Perhaps Wilde was filled with disgust for his own libidinous vices, hidden by his cultured exterior, when he wrote "Modern culture is not exactly a thing to talk of in public." "Truth is rarely pure ; never simple." "Truth is not the thing one tells to a dear, nice, sweet girl." These epigrams certainly prove the Dr. Jekyll as well as the Mr. Hyde side of Wilde's character.
Who cannot appreciate the idea of the suppositious scapegrace younger brother being given the choice of "This world, the next world, or Australia." Or the clergyman's unctuous remark on hearing that the mythical scamp had died in Paris, "I fear that hardly points to any serious state of mind at the last." Or the rapid young lady's remark, "Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about." Perhaps Wilde spoke advisedly when he said of a man advanced in years, "Nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character."
L. L. R.