This play seems to be true to Oscar Wilde's real biographical story in terms of its dialogues, but I did not enjoy reading it much. At first, I thought to myself: "Well, it is a PLAY, after all, may be it will seem better on a theater stage, where it belongs". So, I went to see three different versions in three different theaters. I am sorry to say, but I did not feel much better about this play after doing that. Well...if you are REALLY INTERESTED IN OSCAR WILDE, you might as well read it, but if you are only mildly interested, then this play is not for you.

I have been lucky enough to share the initiation of Mr. Kaufman career in theater in Venezuela, have seen Gross Indecency both in New York and London several times, and have read the play, which is masterfully built. This is a unique experience, both read and seen, and believe me, Mr. Kaufman will be remembered in the future as one of the great names of theater of our time. This may sound as an exaggeration, but if you are someone who is looking for trends in theater, great acting, the influence of Brecht in new generations, never forget this author and director.

i decided to read gross indecency after seeing something about it on tv. being a big fan of oscar wilde's work, i thought that it would be informative. but it went so far beyond that... the play is a little hard to get into at first, and if you're not a fan of oscar wilde, i really wouldn't recommend reading it. you can really see the oscar's transformation during the course of the three trials, from an independent artist with his own views on morality who refuses to be ashamed about his sexuality, to someone who has seen the people he was friends with testify against him over and over....i don't know how anyone could survive in such a situation..... anyway, this play gave me a whole new knowledge of the life of oscar wilde and a new respect for him, the choices that he made, and the courage that he had. if you are really interested in the life of oscar wilde, read this.

Orson Welles uses his sonorous, mellifluous, matchlessly expressive voice and his legendary gift for characterization to delineate these oft-told tales in a way that will make you hear them as if for the first time. And if you are indeed hearing any of them for the first time, it will make you want to run to the library to read them and to savor them as they were meant to be experienced.

These priceless tapes have Orson Welles god-like voice telling and retelling several literary classics. I play them over and over again, and hope that they will be transferred to CD.

Mr. Welles has impeccable taste in literiture and an absolutely perfect delivery and diction. I am mesmerized by every breath he takes. Heck, I would pay for Welles reading a lundry list, or the instructions to shaving cream.

When I read A Woman of No Importance, I realized that I have read it before. Though, not by the same author. It is drastically similar to the French Play Le Fils Naturel, by Alexandre Dumas, jr. Though, it was a really nice play, it dragged in many places.

When a woman has made a mistake she is the only one, with her son, to carry the burden. She is tainted forever and can only hide in some anonimity. But the play goes a lot further. The son becomes the target of the father who, unmarried, wants to find love in his son, and give his son the love he has never given to any one. But it is not that simple. The son has to choose between his father who provides him with an important ambitious position, and his mother who has been tainted forever by this man he does not know as his father yet, but not for long. But love will come in the way and will reveal the father as being forever unable to respect women. This man will try to soil the young woman the son is in love with. This will lead to a happy ending for the son and for the mother but a very unhappy ending for the father who will be deprived of his son. Is the punishment proportioned to the crime, because the father is exposed as a criminal, and in a way he is. Philandering is unacceptable in those days. The most intriguing aspect of the play is that this happy ending is brought by a young woman who is both American and a puritan. In a way Oscar Wilde, and we know the drama of his life, is advocating a real puritanism that is based on purity both on the surface and in depth. So he criticizes the hypocrisy of English victorian society because it advocates purity but practices (at least men can, but women cannot) any kind of unethical attitude or behavior. How can Oscar Wilde advocate such a position when he is what he is, hiding something that amounts to a crime in his society? We are also surprised by this salvation coming from an American woman. How can America be better than England? There is no easy answer. Maybe just the fact that in America ethics come first and do not accept any compromise or segregation against women. But is this true at the end of the nineteenth century? This play is very emotional but yet very unreal, surreal.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

I've just started re-reading this play and I think it is one of the most beautiful works Wilde ever wrote. Mrs. Arbuthnot's speech at the end of Act Four, beginning "men don't know what mothers are" is one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever read in Wilde. It's a very ironic speech, considering it was written by a man, but it shows what a wonderful insight into women Wilde had. The play is essentially about morality and the conflict between a person's own, private sense of morality and the moral values imposed on us by society. Ultimately, Mrs. Arbuthnot is the character who most deserves our respect, precisely because she refuses to buy into the moral values of those around her. Reading it, I can just imagine how it would be performed, I even find myself acting the play out in my head, such is the power and force of Wilde's dialogue. This is a truly beautiful work which I highly recommend

Though it's rather slow to get going in the initial chapters, Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" builds up into a splendidly effective piece, written in highly polished prose. Dorian Gray, who is suggestively described as "charming" and "beautiful" ... is painted by his friend and admirer, Basil Hallward. Dorian, a self-centered social luminary whose character is reminiscent of Narcissus, makes a bizarre sub-Faustian wish which tragically comes true: that his beautiful portrait may age, while he retains his youthful looks. The conclusion is disastrous, the culmination of a narrative containing elements of murder, suicide, blackmail, a confrontation in a grimy alley and an episode in an opium den. The characters are very well sketched out, particularly the triad of Dorian, Basil and the intellectual cynic, Lord Henry, Dorian's mentor and the mouthpiece of some of Wilde's most cutting amoral opinions. The style is, typically, marvellous, characterised by brilliant exchanges and aphoristic gaiety. Wilde lacerates English bourgeois culture, the conceptions of sin and virtue and the attitudes towards art of his time with tremendous aplomb. Some of his quips are patently snide, sometimes mysogynistic, as in: "Woman represents the triumph of matter over mind, while man represents the triumph of mind over morals." Oh, isn't that just despicable?! I love it!

This sophisticated but crude novel is the story of man's eternal desire for perennial youth, of our vanity and frivolity, of the dangers of messing with the laws of life. Just like "Faust" and "The immortal" by Borges.

Dorian Gray is beautiful and irresistible. He is a socialité with a high ego and superficial thinking. When his friend Basil Hallward paints his portrait, Gray expresses his wish that he could stay forever as young and charming as the portrait. The wish comes true.

Allured by his depraved friend Henry Wotton, perhaps the best character of the book, Gray jumps into a life of utter pervertion and sin. But, every time he sins, the portrait gets older, while Gray stays young and healthy. His life turns into a maelstrom of sex, lies, murder and crime. Some day he will want to cancel the deal and be normal again. But Fate has other plans.

Wilde, a man of the world who vaguely resembles Gray, wrote this masterpiece with a great but dark sense of humor, saying every thing he has to say. It is an ironic view of vanity, of superflous desires. Gray is a man destroyed by his very beauty, to whom an unknown magical power gave the chance to contemplate in his own portrait all the vices that his looks and the world put in his hands. Love becomes carnal lust; passion becomes crime. The characters and the scenes are perfect. Wilde's wit and sarcasm come in full splendor to tell us that the world is dangerous for the soul, when its rules are not followed. But, and it's a big but, it is not a moralizing story. Wilde was not the man to do that. It is a fierce and unrepressed exposition of all the ugly side of us humans, when unchecked by nature. To be rich, beautiful and eternally young is a sure way to hell. And the writing makes it a classical novel. Come go with Wotton and Wilde to the theater, and then to an orgy. You'll wish you age peacefully.

_The Picture of Dorian Gray_, a story of morals, psychology and poetic justice, has furnished Oscar Wilde with the status of a great writer. It takes place in 19th-century England, and tells of a man in the bloom of his youth who will remain forever young.

Basil Hallward is a merely average painter until he meets Dorian Gray and becomes his friend. But Dorian, who is blessed with an angelic beauty, inspires Hallward to create his ultimate masterpiece. Awed by the perfection of this rendering, he utters the wish to be able to retain the good looks of his youth while the picture were the one to deteriorate with age. But when Dorian discovers the painting cruelly altered and realizes that his wish has been fulfilled, he ponders changing his hedonistic approach.

_Dorian Gray_'s sharp social criticism has provoked audible controversy and protest upon the book's 1890 publication, and only years later was it to rise to classic status. Reminiscent of a Greek tragedy, it is popularly interpreted as an analogy to Wilde's own tragic life. Despite this, the book is laced with the right amounts of the author's perpetual jaunty wit.

This is the book that helped resurrect the reputation of one of the most tragic figures in English literature. When this book was originally published, Wilde was nowhere near the iconic figure he is now accepted as. Dying in poverty and disgrace in 1900 in Paris, (where all "bad" Englishmen went in the 19th century!) Wilde was still anathema to the "Establishment" for close to a half century afterward. Today, a bust stands in Westminster Abbey, and Hesketh Pearson's biography can claim a good measure of the credit for it. Comprehensive, detailed and sympathetic without being hagiographic, this book is essential to understanding the enigmatic genius of Oscar Wilde.

I reached for this volume for a refreshing change of pace from this dreary, political and social state of things. Alas, there was no such lift to be had in this volume. The story was all there, the good times and the bad but the tone was too dark. I'll wager that most people who reach for his biography are less intrigued by the history as they are by the precision bite of his words. Indeed, this seems more of a latter life work. We are given a front row seat to the repressive consequences for his flaunting conservative standards about sexuality. The details were complete and appropriately credited. But the theatrics were missing. That novel charge so often haughty and sharp lost that rippling propulsion that has succeeded over time. As a unashamed Victorian homosexual, Wilde was well ahead of his time. The question is, was he ahead of our time as well? there can be no doubt that Wilde's tongue can wag and delight contemporary readers and theater goers. However that voice and pen, used with sizzling, frenetic arrogance is sadly, not at home in this bio.

Barbara Belford's biography is well-illustrated and quotes its subject profusely, yet I came away with the feeling it tried to hard to prove a theory of Wilde rather than to explore him. The author discusses her reservations about Ellmann's biography of Wilde, and complains in her foreword that recent biographies have "take[n] specialist views: ... the Irish Wilde, the gay Wilde..." Yet she does exactly that, and seems to want to make up for Ellman's "reticence" in discussing Wilde's sexuality by placing it at instead the center of this work. As if Ellmann's Wilde was perhaps not gay enough for some, Belford's is overwhelmingly so; this has the (unintended?) effect of minimizing the importance of Wilde's wife Constance and his children. Wilde's homosexual passions are cast as the sole source of his inspiration, and it is suggested that he wanted to assert his right to live as he chose. In fact, the opposite appears true. By prosecuting Queensberry, Wilde was in essence asserting his right to stay legally and publicly in the closet. Once he had been forced in court to accept that Queensberry was "entitled to call him a posing sodomite", Wilde hardly seems to have accepted the title with enthusiasm or pride, as he himself makes clear in the opening of De Profundis.

Overall I'd say it was a pleasant enough read for those already familiar with its subject, but I would hesitate to recommend it to Wilde novices: the man was more complex than he is ultimately portrayed here, and one almost gets the impression the writer dislikes her subject. It leaves the taste of an exposé.

Ms. Bedford made no pretention to focusing upon a particular aspect of Oscar Wilde's life. Rather, she intended to offer a truly unbiased volume of carefully researched biographical information regarding Wilde and his societal surroundings. Many other readers have criticized the work for its seeming lack of spirit and depth. Ms. Bedford did not wish to offer such things, however. It is the duty of the reader to take the work and make one's own opinions regarding Wilde's life. Such a practice is rarely performed in modern times since the reading public are so very used to being told what to like - an attitude Wilde fought so much against. The volume meets the standard set by the author in the introduction, as well as the standards of biographies of its kind. It is, on the whole, a very good work.

... fraught with utterly stiff, pretentious, unnatural dialogue, even for the 19th Century. A disappointment.

I was very skeptical about this book, but the first few chapters pleasantly surprised me. The author seemed to perfectly capture Wilde's unmistakable and eloquent wit, something I thought would be impossible. I thought the concept was wonderful as well. However, the book quickly loses steam as it focuses more on the valet, who's far less interesting than Wilde. But then again, who isn't?

This book is a step back in history narrated in the language of the times, which is quite realistic. It is told from a quite different viewpoint, not of Oscar Wilde, but beautifully described by his black valet who accompanied Oscar on his nationwide American tour. The book starts out in January 1882, as Oscar arrives in New York to begin his tour. At the time no mention was made in the press of his black valet named William Traquair, who accompanied him. As Wilde entertains the New World with his lectures and humor, Traquair enjoys what he will always remember as the best year in his life.

This is an engrossing and intriguing story that certainly gives us a much clearer perspective on what it must have been like in America at the turn of the century and especially what impact this time period had on black men.

A story that's both fact and fiction, and one that will make you fantasize that you are right there on tour with Wilde and Traquair traveling across America at a time when life on this continent was so young and open to suggestion. I enjoyed this story and I feel the author has accomplished what he intended to do by taking us clearly back in time!

Joe Hanssen

This rewriting of Romeo and Juliet is not convincing at all because the Nihilists are reduced to sectarian fanatics, the Czar to a manipulated tyrant, the courtiers to bloodthirsty powerhungry wolves, the Czarevitch to a romantic puppy suddenly grown adult. Vera, the most popular and feared Nihilist, will kill herself out of love to save the Czarevitch who is on a trail of reforms after the assassination of his father. This caricature has nothing to compare with Gorki's The Mother, nor Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. It is yet interesting to see how Oscar Wilde is far from understanding what simple suffering people can be in Russia at that time and what the psychology of the Nihilists was. He uses quite many clichés and does not get into any depth. So the superimposing of a pale Romeo and Juliet ending does not give depth to something that is shallow.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan