ABSTRACT
A dead man’s voice has been heard again, and as we listened to it the artist himself once more stood before us. Forgotten was the history of the man, forgotten the past. The hands of the clock had moved for seven years, but the situation remained unchanged. Oscar Wilde has come to life again, and on the night of December 2, when literary and social London foregathered at the reproduction of The Importance of Being Earnest, there was celebrated a feast of absolution, and, to a certainextent, of rehabilitation. In the midst of our intellectual joy there sounded but two discordant notes-the one of anger, the other of sadness. It made some of us angry to read on the programme The Importance of Being Earnest, by the author of Lady Windermere’s Fan, whereby was indicated that, though it was good to use the artist’s work, his name was not sufficiently honourable to be given out to the public. I know full well that the publisher has erred in this direction, as well as the manager, but there is no excuse for either. The note of sadness was that so great a mind as Oscar Wilde’s had prematurely come to a stand-still; that matters independent of art had bereft us of the most brilliant wit of the period, and that subsequent events, instead of leading to regeneration, brought a broken career to an untimely termination.
