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Oscar Wilde's Vera; or, The Nihilist: The History of a Failed Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Frances Miriam Reed
Frances Miriam Reed
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

Vera; or, The Nihilist was Oscar Wilde's first performed play, a work, as Wilde described it, “not of politics but of passion,” expressing the “cry of the peoples for Liberty.” Liberty as subject — and the rhetoric of republicanism that made liberty a catchword — came naturally to Wilde, as son of the Irish patriot Speranza and as a concerned and compassionate individual. But Wilde was also professionally ambitious. By writing a wordy tragedy of self-sacrifice with Russia and the Nihilist movement as background, Wilde hoped to appeal to popular taste in the theatre and to capitalize on public interest in current affairs. He may well have drawn his dramatic characters and the events of his play directly from a contemporary newspaper, The Era.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , November 1985 , pp. 163 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1985

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References

NOTES

1 Vera, on its first printing in 1880 and in the prompt copy of 1882, was entitled Vera; or, The Nihilists. The playbill accompanying the 1883 production in New York City gives the title as Vera; or. The Nihilist, keeping Nihilist in the singular. In the original draft of the play and in its earlier versions, Wilde gave more emphasis to the Nihilists as a group; in the later version and in the New York production, the focus is on Vera, the one Nihilist. Hence the change in title, which, when we consider the care he devoted to every detail of production, must have been authorized by Wilde.

2 Later critics have tended to agree with this estimate by Ross: the play is marked by “la boursouflure des tirades et l'exagération du langage,” says Hartley, Kelver, Oscar Wilde: L'Influence Francaise dans son Oeuvre (Paris: Librarte du Recueil Sirey, 1935), p. 113Google Scholar; it has “gross, stilted diction” for Epifanio Juan, San Jr, The Art of Oscar Wilde (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), p. 133Google Scholar; “the intrigue is unworthy of Sardou” writes Jullian, Philippe, Oscar Wilde, trans. Wyndham, Violet (Paladin, 1971), pp. 81–82Google Scholar; it is “An excruciatingly bad melodrama” according to Croft-Cooke, Rupert, The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde (London: W. H. Allen, 1972), p. 59Google Scholar; and “a bad play” to Hardwick, Michael, The Osprey Guide to Oscar Wilde (Osprey, 1973), p. 140Google Scholar; with “no intellectual content” for Nassar, Christopher S., Into the Demon Universe (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar. On the other hand, G. Wilson Knight describes Vera as a “strong but unsuccessful drama” and continues, “scene on scene has power; characterization is excellent, rhetoric is adequate, the dialogue often crisp and the romance moving.” He then further praises the characterization. See The Golden Labyrinth (London: Phoenix House Ltd., 1962), pp. 305–06.Google Scholar

Recent criticism is also more favorably disposed toward Vera. “There is a sufficient number of moments of good Theatre… to reveal Wilde's potential gifts. Even his diction, if we ignore the frequent excesses, is often quite effective,” says Ericksen, Donald H., Oscar Wilde (Boston: Twayne, 1977), p. 120Google Scholar; “Vera… does contain some highly effective moments” for Bird, Alan, The Plays of Oscar Wilde (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1977), p. 22Google Scholar; and “These prentice pieces,” states Rodney Shewan, referring to Vera and the later Duchess of Padua, “are by no means so lacking in intellectual content as is generally supposed…. They have also some claim to artistic originality, of conception if not of execution,” Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism (New York: Barnes & Noble. 1977), p. 130.Google Scholar

For Wilde's comments on the play, see The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Hart-Davis, Rupert (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), pp. 148–49.Google Scholar

3 As written to her brother by Constance Wilde (Letters, p. 153).

4 The first edition (1864) was published by James Duffy in Dublin. The second (1870) and third (1875?) editions are dedicated with a two-page poem “To Ireland” and are published by Cameron & Ferguson in Glasgow, the multiple editions being some indication of Speranza's respectable reputation as an author.

5 Compare, for example, the closing verse of “Ave Imperatrix”:

Yet when this fiery web is spun,

Her watchmen shall descry from far

The Young Republic like a sun

Rise from these crimson seas of war.

Poems (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881), p. 10.Google Scholar

6 The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Doubleday, 1923), X, 3–4.Google Scholar

7 Langtry, Lily, The Days I Knew (New York: George H. Doran. 1925), pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

8 The Story of My Life (1908). p. 198.Google Scholar

9 Wills, W. G., Charles I, An Historical Tragedy (Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1873), pp. 26 and 51.Google Scholar

10 Mason, Stuart [Christopher Millard], Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (London: Laurie, 1914), p. 70, n. 2Google Scholar. Wilde banked much of his hopes for his personal success as a playwright on the sale and performance of Vera, as he wrote to Norman Forbes-Robertson in October, 1880: “I have not yet finished furnishing my room, and have spent all my money over it already, so if no manager gives me gold for The Nihilists I don't know what I shall do; but then I couldn't really have anything but Chippendale and satinwood. I shouldn't have been able to write” (Letters, p. 71).

11 Harris, Alan, “Oscar Wilde as Playwright: A Centenary Review,” The Adelphi, ed. Evans, B. Ifor, Second Quarter (London: Staples Press, 1954), p. 219.Google Scholar

12 The New York Times critic, writing about the 1883 Prescott production on 21 August, was not entirely enthusiastic about the first four acts of Vera, but felt that the concluding scene in Act V in which Vera is dying “is without doubt, the one pathetic and dramatic scene of the play. The fine poetic charm and the strength of this final situation redeem… the other four acts of ’Vera.’” Other papers printed kinder appraisals of the entire production. The New York Dramatic Mirror critic stated (25 August) that “Vera is a work that takes rank among the highest order of plays”; and the Pilot suggested that “if well acted, it would be a great success” (Mason, p. 273); Mr. Perzel (husband and manager of Marie Prescott) pointed out in the New York Times that “Thirty Western papers had noticed [Kera] enthusiastically, and seven managers who were present at the first production on Monday night and praised it returned to the Theatre the following Thursday evening and expressed the same opinion as to its merits” (27 August 1883). The New York Dramatic Mirror (25 August 1883) asserted that “a clique was organized to crush Vera”: “Reliable information has reached us that previous to the production of Vera at the Union Square Theatre [the critics of the New York daily press] agreed among themselves to denounce [the play] as a failure and abuse its author whether the work justified adverse treatment or not.” That Wilde had a mixed, if not notorious reputation with the American press seems indicated by an article entitled “A Changed Man” appearing on 27 August 1883 in the New York Daily Tribune, which might well have been in answer to the Mirror. Wilde, says the Tribune, has been

on exhibition… usually for money, and it cannot be said that his position was intellectually much better than that of the Tattoed Man or the Hirsute Lady. But now all this is changed. Mr. Wilde… is no longer to be regarded as a mere curiosity, but has resolved to work for a living, like other men…. Mr. Wilde can have recognition as a serious literary workman, if he really wants it, and can show that he deserves it. If he succeeds, he will probably find his royalties liberal, and will be mentioned frequently in the newspapers in a respectful manner, and will… have the satisfaction of reflecting that his position in the world has improved greatly since the time when he consciously and deliberately exhibited himself as a laughing-stock for a cash consideration.

13 It is also interesting in this regard to read “Libertatis Sacra Fames” from Wilde's Poems (1881), p. 15.Google Scholar