Oscar Wilde, Analyzing his Approach to Theatre (Research Paper Sample)

Oscar Wilde, Analyzing his Approach to Theatre
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Oscar Wilde, Analyzing his Approach to Theatre
Introduction
Oscar Wilde is no doubt a personality that is still felt greatly in the film and theatre world. He still remains among the most popular creator and critic of artistic works from the past century. He is well known for his first play The Nihilists or Vera that he wrote in 1880. He also wrote scores of other works of art, and he contributed greatly to the social aspect of life. His social views in writing were contributed by the influences he got from his background having grown up in an Irish family. He also followed his mother’s radical views in the Epoch society that he grew up in, alongside the conflicting class interests and society stratifications back at the time. Thus, his approach to theatre was greatly molded by his personal experiences, and also the society around him. He had an avowal of extreme aestheticism on one hand, and socialism, and this seems kind of uncharacteristic of him. Nonetheless, this goes to show that Wilde had widely spread intellectual tendencies that enabled him to explore all the extremes of the work he wanted to write.
Wilde’s nature was more like a conscientious object as viewed from the social order in the society where he lived. Ho worked to seek evidence of his integrity, and he believed that his works of art should not just imitate life, but come out as art. Thus, Wilde did not use works of art to uplift his own self or that of other people morally. This was contrary to most Victorian writers at the time. His works of art did not express his own self, but rather expressed art itself. His creativity in the different works of art he wrote brought out his beliefs in different aspects of life. He believed that life and nature imitated art, and not the other way round. This is evident from one of his works ‘The Decay of Lying Declares’ where he wrote people see fog because poets and writers made them realize the beauty and mysterious loveliness of such natural effects (Powell & Raby, 2014). Of course there were fogs in London since time immemorial, but the way poets and writers described them made people see them from a different light, rather than just some smoky covering obscuring their views.
Wilde’s approach of social criticism is evident from The Importance of Being Earnest, which is one of his most read plays. The play represents a critique of the Victorian society, and it also represents a satire of various hypo crises of the society. Wilde brings out the damaging effect that hypocrisies can have on the souls of those who lived under the hypocritical rule. He was referring to the elaborate mask that the ruling elites wore at the time, to enable them engage in the opposite modes of their behavior without being noticed. Wilde made use of different literary techniques of reversals and dramatic irony parody to reveal the moral hypocrisy of the Victorian establishment at the time. Nonetheless, his criticism of the society was short lived when he was imprisoned for being homosexual after the performance of his first play. ‘The Silver Cigarette Case also represented homosexuality as it shows the way well-off gay men paid off their male prostitutes to avoid getting persecuted (Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 2013).
Wilde took a rather different approach from the rest of the writers at his time to remind his readers of the visionary component that is present in any socialist consciousness. In his works he stated; "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at" (Raby, 1998). Considering the state of socialism in England at the time; unreceptive, undeveloped, he expressed many truths despite his class background. His thoughts could only be known to those who were acutely accustomed to the broadest questions tied up by the transformation of the society. He insisted that life had to be remade along aesthetic lines, that art did not have to try being popular. This was his reference to the way the world trusted science and Socialism to bring an end to the suffering and poverty that people faced. This was because people believed that if a person managed to accomplish his task in life, he would end up being safer, saner, more civilized and healthier, and achieve more of the person he is (Stokes, 1996).
In addition to socialism, Oscar Wilde also followed various tenets traditional literary criticism. He had the intention of revealing a new way of thinking regarding his scholarly perceptions. Wilde’s traditional tenets do not only follow one theoretical category, but he borrows them from different methods. The most common amongst his works are from the old historicism and new Criticism. The ideas he borrows from New Criticism pay keen attention to details from other literary works, while the ideas he gets from old historicism conceptualize him as a major figure in theatrical works. Wilde’s approach to theatre through creative criticism follows the highest form of criticism through the purest form of his own personal impression. He also treats different works of art as a simple starting view point for the creation of new ideas in life. He declares that the future belongs to criticism, and that creation can only last on the condition that it becomes far more critical than it is at the present, if it is meant to last at all (Knox, 2001).
Oscar Wilde’s approach in theatre also takes strong considerations of his deep roots in his Irish heritage and the classical past. His ideas intersected with a host of aesthetic development and contemporary social developments in politics, religion, law, science, sexuality and gender. He focused on all these areas in different genres such as fiction, poetry, visual arts, theatre and aesthetics (Salamensky, 2012). He took his own different turn in his works, quite contrary to what his precursors chose, though he incorporated their stylistic devices and ideas in his works. He absorbed other scholars’ influence, but he applied them in a way that made rewriting and resistance his defining artistic imperative of the influence. Wilde also had various engagements with ideological forces, living styles and aesthetic movements, and all these also defined his experiences in life. This also gave him the chance to encounter an array of other fields including Darwinism, dandyism, religion, decadence, censorship and decadence (Powell & Raby, 2014).
Wilde’s diverse essays discerned his transformation in individualism at work, and registered the impact of the various influences that enabled him to produce something better than he had done before. He addressed some of the issues that other writers who preceded him wrote and focused on different themes from these works. This can be seen in his review of Shakespeare’s works where he addressed the cultural practice in Shakespeare’s works. He focused on the theoretical perspective and the concept of media studies by studying different media re-inscriptions on Shakespeare’s works. His approach in reviewing Shakespeare’s works represents a genius invention and he critics the refashions using his own creative imagination as the raw material. This makes him a genius as he was both a creator and a critic. He managed to appropriate the plots and conventions in his own plays, and numerous other contemporary dramas reshaping them into an improved state. This included the works of William Shakespeare (Wilde, Shakespeare and Stage Costume, 1885).
Contrary to most other literary works of his time, was the gay code approach that Wilde applied in his works. This led to numerous objections and criticism of his works by other writers and scholars at the time. The gay code in Wilde’s works was evident through the picture of male characters that he painted in his plays. There were also some secret appearances that Wilde wrote in a certain code for gay men. An example if the title of one of his plays ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (Wilde, The Importance of Bein...