I met New York writer Erik Mitchell at a play reading at 2nd Stages Theatre a couple months ago and he immediately began telling me about new project he was creating, Ganymede, a new New York literary and cultural journal. The idea struck me as interesting and last night, after two months and one viewing of the wretched "The Dutchess" with a group of friends, he handed me a copy, the very first one! The first thing you notice is, well, the half-nekkid mens. Yes, included amongst the pages of smart reviews and writing, which is very well laid out and designed, is... scantily-clad men. He explained why: “Our features reflect the mix of high and low tastes actually pursued by literate gay men.” That makes sense, but frankly, I wish it weren't there. It's odd to me. But, I am illiterate as hell and maybe this is what writers do! Who knows? I don't.
Anyways, what I'd like to focus on is the writing, and one piece in particular he sent me that will appear in the second issue. It's about Oscar Wilde and here it is, in it's entirety. If you enjoy it, go to his website and read more.
DECODING OSCAR WILDE’S MASTERPIECE
By Erik Mitchell
At the 1895 opening of Oscar Wilde's most famous play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the audience was liberally sprinkled with well-dressed young men wearing green carnations, Wilde's approved symbol for his gay followers. These patrons knew the play, an essay in appearances and secrets, was also written in code for gay men, starting with the title itself.
By common consent, then and after, “The Importance of Being Earnest” is Wilde's masterpiece. Its title is meant as a double-entendre. The protagonist, called Jack in the country and Ernest in town, is chasing a young lady who will only marry a man named Ernest because she desires the quality of being earnest above all others in her future husband. The play's second half revolves around attempts by not one but two characters to be christened officially with that same name as part of their frenzied skirt-chasing.
The boys in green carnations knew that "earnest" was also gay code for homosexual. If you were lunching at the Savoy Grill and wanted to nail someone's sexual identity, you quietly asked, "Is he earnest?" This converts a double-entendre to a triple one, and decoding the play further will open up delicious new meanings.
Two books enable us to do this decoding. Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography “Oscar Wilde” (Vintage paperback) is not only definitive; all Wilde studies coming after were based squarely on it. Another book approaches from a sleazier angle: Theo Aronson's “Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld” (Barnes & Noble Books, 1994) chronicles the play culture of London's gay men of that time with its elaborate system of protected spaces and passwords. Chapter Eight of Karl Beckson's “London in the 1890s: A Cultural History” (Norton, 1992) adds still more detail. All of this was dramatized effectively in the 1997 film “Wilde.”
Fortunately, Ernest can be seen, not simply read, in a definitive version that discreetly clarifies the play's text: Anthony Asquith's 1952 British film with Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, and Margaret Rutherford, available on DVD. Here is a your decoding companion to that film.
--The Albany: Asquith departs from the text by starting the story in Jack Worthing's apartment in The Albany, only then moving to his rakish friend Algernon's apartment. This is significant. The Albany was the best known and most prestigious set of bachelor apartments in London, close enough to Piccadilly Circus that management discreetly marketed their willingness to allow well-off male tenants to bring home male prostitutes acquired nearby--until, that is, Wilde's trial exposed vices that caused a panicked scramble to suppress such tolerance. In an early draft of the play, Miss Prism talks about one character who is "as bad as any young man who has chambers in the Albany, or indeed even in the vicinity of Piccadilly, can possibly be." Oscar’s gay friend George Ives threw parties in apartment E4.
--The silver cigarette case: Algernon has come to return Jack's silver cigarette case. This is how well-off gay men paid their male prostitutes to avoid prosecution; favorites even got their names engraved inside. The cases, of course, could be pawned for far more than the cash value of the services. But despite this precaution, the customer could still be blackmailed, and Wilde flirted with blackmailers regularly.
--Bunbury: Whenever his Aunt Augusta required Algernon to perform some dull social service, Algie's imaginary friend Bunbury became ill or disconsolate in ways that required Algie's urgent attention. Bunbury, of course, was the English equivalent of bone-smuggling, and Algie certainly preferred bun-burying to dining with his aunt. Wilde also had a classmate by that name.
--Cecily: the name of Jack Worthing's young ward, cloistered carefully in his country house, protected by her governess Miss Prism from the corrupting influence of guys like Algernon, who of course spends most of the play chasing her. Cecily is also gay slang for a kept boy, especially one kept away from the prying eyes of other gay men.
You will see, watching Asquith's version, that the theme of a double life is played out with all the key characters, just as it played out in Wilde's life right after the play opened. Wilde was bullied by his unstable boyfriend, Lord Alfred Douglas, to sue Douglas' father for libel. In the play, Victorian notions of wickedness are parodied as being trivial, but the vices revealed by Wilde in his court testimony were enough to ruin him. Another Wilde play, “An Ideal Husband,” which also played to packed houses at the same time as “Earnest,” is actually Wilde's essay on blackmail. Both plays closed after Wilde was arrested. His own double life, which everyone earnestly wished him to conceal, finally caught up with him. Hypocrisy had its revenge.
--Forthcoming in Ganymede, a new literary and cultural journal in New York.