![]() ![]() ![]() Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order. Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.Wilde’s life – his generosity to others, his double life as a family man and someone who engaged with extramarital affairs with other men, and his subsequent downfall when he was put on trial for ‘gross indecency’ – has been movingly written about in Richard Ellmann’s biography of Wilde and in the 1997 biopic Wilde, with Stephen Fry in the title role. They include, ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’, and ‘I have nothing to declare except my genius’ (when travelling through customs in America). Wilde is also often remembered for his witty quips and paradoxes and his conversational one-liners, which are legion. But in a career spanning some twenty years, Wilde created a body of work which continues to be read an enjoyed by people around the world: a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray short stories and fairy tales such as ‘The Happy Prince’ and ‘ The Selfish Giant’ poems including The Ballad of Reading Gaol and essay-dialogues which were witty revivals of the Platonic philosophical dialogue.īut above all, it is Wilde’s plays that he continues to be known for, and these include witty drawing-room comedies such as Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as a Biblical drama, Salome (which was banned from performance in the UK and had to be staged abroad). The life of the Irish novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is as famous as – perhaps even more famous than – his work. It’s heartfelt, honest, moving, and a must-read for anyone interested in Wilde’s life and his downfall. Here’s a question for you: which great work did Oscar Wilde write while imprisoned in Reading Gaol? Not The Ballad of Reading Gaol – that was written while he was in exile in France following his release from prison – but De Profundis, his long letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Curiously, it was Wilde’s play that gave us the phrase ‘dance of the seven veils’ to describe Salome’s suggestive performance! Wilde originally wrote the play in French, in 1891, but it was translated into English three years later. Here, Gilbert and Ernest talk about the role of the critic, with Wilde characteristically turning the usual relationship on its head and arguing that the critic is often more creative than the artist himself.Īlthough Wilde is best-known for his comic plays like The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, he also wrote serious plays about weighty topics: here, in a daring move, he chose the topic of Salome, who asks Herod Antipas for the head of John the Baptist in exchange for dancing the sensuous Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod. However, the character’s determination to prove his theory will end in tragedy, in a fine Wilde story that deserves to be better-known.Īmong the other genres Wilde wrote in, he was a dab-hand at the Socratic dialogue: two men staying up all through the night discussing important issues relating to art and the world. This actor is the ‘Fair Youth’ to whom the majority of the sonnets are addressed. H.’ refers to Willie Hughes, a boy actor with whom Shakespeare was in love. H.’ One of the characters in Wilde’s story believes he has cracked this literary mystery: ‘W. Aptly, it was placed in a handbag.Ī short story (later expanded into a novella) inspired by the mysterious dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets from 1609, ‘Mr W. In 2007, a first edition of the play was donated to a charity shop in Nantwich, Cheshire. It’s known for Lady Bracknell’s famous two-word line: ‘A handbag?’ It’s a very witty play whose plot is in the tradition of old English comedies and farces. Wilde’s best-known play, from 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest – which sees two male friends, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, creating the perfect fictional excuse to explain their double lives to those closest to them – has been read in light of Wilde’s own double life (wife and children in Chelsea, assignations with young men in Soho). ![]()
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