A Florentine Tragedy | Page 3

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Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous

Contents:
Preface by Robert Ross A Florentine Tragedy--A Fragment La Sainte
Courtisane--A Fragment

PREFACE BY ROBERT ROSS

'As to my personal attitude towards criticism, I confess in brief the
following:- "If my works are good and of any importance whatever for
the further development of art, they will maintain their place in spite of
all adverse criticism and in spite of all hateful suspicions attached to
my artistic intentions. If my works are of no account, the most
gratifying success of the moment and the most enthusiastic approval of
as augurs cannot make them endure. The waste-paper press can devour
them as it has devoured many others, and I will not shed a tear . . . and
the world will move on just the same."'--RICHARD STRAUSS.
The contents of this volume require some explanation of an historical
nature. It is scarcely realised by the present generation that Wilde's
works on their first appearance, with the exception of De Profundis,
were met with almost general condemnation and ridicule. The plays on
their first production were grudgingly praised because their obvious
success could not be ignored; but on their subsequent publication in
book form they were violently assailed. That nearly all of them have
held the stage is still a source of irritation among certain journalists.
Salome however enjoys a singular career. As every one knows, it was
prohibited by the Censor when in rehearsal by Madame Bernhardt at
the Palace Theatre in 1892. On its publication in 1893 it was greeted
with greater abuse than any other of Wilde's works, and was consigned
to the usual irrevocable oblivion. The accuracy of the French was freely
canvassed, and of course it is obvious that the French is not that of a
Frenchman. The play was passed for press, however, by no less a writer
than Marcel Schwob whose letter to the Paris publisher, returning the
proofs and mentioning two or three slight alterations, is still in my
possession. Marcel Schwob told me some years afterwards that he
thought it would have spoiled the spontaneity and character of Wilde's
style if he had tried to harmonise it with the diction demanded by the
French Academy. It was never composed with any idea of presentation.
Madame Bernhardt happened to say she wished Wilde would write a
play for her; he replied in jest that he had done so. She insisted on
seeing the manuscript, and decided on its immediate production,
ignorant or forgetful of the English law which prohibits the
introduction of Scriptural characters on the stage. With his keen sense

of the theatre Wilde would never have contrived the long speech of
Salome at the end in a drama intended for the stage, even in the days of
long speeches. His threat to change his nationality shortly after the
Censor's interference called forth a most delightful and good- natured
caricature of him by Mr. Bernard Partridge in Punch.
Wilde was still in prison in 1896 when Salome was produced by Lugne
Poe at the Theatre de L'OEuvre in Paris, but except for an account in
the Daily Telegraph the incident was hardly mentioned in England. I
gather that the performance was only a qualified success, though Lugne
Poe's triumph as Herod was generally acknowledged. In 1901, within a
year of the author's death, it was produced in Berlin; from that moment
it has held the European stage. It has run for a longer consecutive
period in Germany than any play by any Englishman, not excepting
Shakespeare. Its popularity has extended