Born this day are two great and influential writers.
Irish-American Eugene O’Neill, born in 1888 in a New York City Broadway hotel. Son of a famous actor, he became arguably America’s greatest playwright. Four Pulitzer Prizes went to his work, including one posthumously for Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Read more about O’Neill at the PBS “American Masters” site
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/oneill_e.html
It is also the birthdate of Dublin-born (1854) Oscar Wilde, one of the most extraordinarily quotable of writers: poet, playwright, novelist and convicted homosexual.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde noted that in his play, Lady Windemere’s Fan (1892). Wilde (1854-1900) believed in aestheticism—“art for art’s sake”—and wrote in order to please, charm and delight readers and audiences. While novels like The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were critical successes, Wilde drew more attention for the sensational 1895 trial in which he was accused, and found guilty, of “committing indecent acts”—a 19th century euphemism for homosexuality. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor, a prison term that left Wilde physically and emotionally devastated, and he died a few years after his release. What do you know about this stargazing author? Take this quiz adapted from Don’t Know Much About Literature.
1. Where does the phrase, “the Love that dare not speak its name,” come from?
2. Why did Wilde publish his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol under the name “C.3.3”?
(Answers below)
There is an “official” Oscar Wilde site operated by the agency CMG at http://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/index.php
Answers
1. The poem “Two Loves,” by Lord Alfred Douglas, who was Wilde’s close friend and lover. During questioning by the prosecution in his trial, Wilde clarified the meaning of the phrase as “a great affection of an elder for a younger man.”
2. It was his cell number in prison.
