by David Hare
Bosie I suppose there is no question of your answering the door.
Wilde As you know, I have always disdained unnecessary motion.
Galileo opens the door, and the visitor takes a step inside. It is Ross. He is paler and thinner than ever, in a light suit and hat. Wilde is taken aback.
(Quietly.) It’s little Robbie.
Neither man moves. Bosie calls from upstairs.
Bosie (off) Who is it?
Wilde (calls) Robbie.
There is a second, then Bosie appears on the stairs. He has pulled on trousers and shirt. He is too angry to speak. After a few moments he goes back upstairs.
We did not know you were coming to Naples.
Ross Nor did I.
He looks upstairs, disturbed by Bosie’s silent disappearance.
Oscar …
Wilde I am temporarily taken aback. We thought you were the witch.
Ross I’m sorry?
Wilde A witch comes to smoke out the rats. We are not much visited.
Ross I see.
Wilde This is a friend of Bosie’s. His name is Galileo.
Galileo goes upstairs, saying nothing.
You did not favour us with a telegram.
Ross No. I was not sure you would see me.
Wilde Come, I will always see you.
He gives Ross an icy smile. The light is becoming paler outside.
We have not eaten for days, except stale sugar buns. But we have three bottles of brandy at least, and they are yours to enjoy.
Ross Thank you. Yes. I would like a glass.
Wilde Help yourself.
Ross moves nervously towards the brandy bottle on the side-table.
Bosie was remarking on my reluctance to move. He’s right. My whole celebrity, you might say, is now based on that reluctance. I mean not fleeing when you begged me to. Sitting still. Staying still.
Wilde lights another cigarette and settles deeper into the chair.
Ross You look well.
Wilde Do not mock me. My appearance is that of a senior pederastic Anglican bishop who has been locked all night in a distillery. Flatter me by all means, I adore it, but not for my appearance.
Ross busies himself at the table.
Do you bring us news of the arts? Does anyone still paint?
Ross Not in the way you would wish.
Wilde I am sure. The dissemination of photography which ought to release the artist from the drudgery of representation instead panics him into a dreary kind of rivalry.
Ross hands him a glass of brandy in a glass like a toothmug.
Thank you. We are living in dismal times.
Ross Hard times to make a living.
Wilde Please!
Ross For I am scarcely solvent myself.
Wilde You will prosper, Robbie. I predict. You have chosen exactly the right trade for the turn of the century. Art dealing holds snobbery, ignorance and greed in a near-miraculous equilibrium. Capitalism is the coming thing. I have seen enough to know.
Ross You mean, since your punishment?
Wilde Prison was not my punishment. This is my punishment. To your health.
Ross To yours.
They drink.
Wilde Where have you come from?
Ross From seeing Constance. From Nervi.
Wilde Ah yes. Now I understand.
Wilde looks at him, now knowing why he is here. The atmosphere toughens.
You see how we are. You see how we are living.
Ross Yes.
Wilde Simply. The loan of a little money would help me. Duse hopes to stage my play Salome but she needs investors.
Ross Again? You asked me before.
Wilde I did?
Ross Some months ago.
Wilde Plainly, my imagination is failing.
He smiles, trying to recover.
A loan is wasted either way, yet for some reason it reassures the giver to believe it is to be used what they call ‘constructively’. Nobody lends five pounds for drugs, whereas everyone lends five pounds for an expedition to take young boys up the Zambezi.
Ross Not to you, Oscar. Not to you.
Wilde No. Nor to you, Robbie, when you were less of a prig.
Ross looks down at this overt hostility.
Never mind, I scramble on somehow, and hope to survive the winter. After that, Tunis, rags and hashish!
Ross It is not my fault. Truly.
But Wilde is not impressed by Ross’s demeanour and remains aggressive.
Wilde Does it please you, this running between us?
Ross No.
Wilde Why do you do it, then?
Ross, pained, does not answer.
The behaviour of all my friends has begun to mystify me.
Ross When you came out of prison, everyone wanted to welcome you. They wanted to see you. We greeted you. We waited with flowers. We found you a house in France to live in!
Wilde So you are saying your friendship came with conditions?
Ross All friendship comes with conditions.
Wilde is dark, dismissive.
Wilde No. Myself, I gave friendship freely. To anyone. When I had it, I gave money away in the streets.
Ross Oscar, I have tried to help you. I have tried at all times only to help you.
Wilde nods as if this confirmed his suspicions.
Wilde I have had indications. I have had letters. I have had threats. My trips to the Post Office reward me not with cheques but with cheap mottoes. My whole correspondence should be sponsored by the Salvation Army. It is relentlessly elevating.
Ross I have spoken to Constance.
Wilde Yes. Well, I imagined. How is she?
Ross Not well.
Wilde I heard.
Ross Her back is worse.
Wilde I am sorry.
Ross Her spine will not mend. She is confined the whole day and the prognosis is that things will not improve.
Wilde takes this in for a moment.
Wilde And the children?
Ross Yes, she says the children are well.
Wilde Good.
Ross A little bewildered. Cyril is still in Heidelberg, Vyvyan in Monaco. They’ve learnt to play chess.
Wilde They ask after me?
Ross Often.
Wilde It is the hope of one day seeing them which sustains me. That is what sustains me. It is for that I live.
Wilde looks at him suspiciously.
Ross Constance says she has written.
Wilde She has. Often.
Ross She says you do not answer.
Wilde I have not answered, no.
Ross Why not?
Wilde I have nothing to say!
Ross You do not answer her letters!
Wilde What am I to say? That Duse is fine, but not as fine as Bernhardt? Art chat? Art gossip? The vagaries of the weather in Naples …?
Ross She said she feared the worst when she heard you were in Naples. She said nobody goes to Naples at this time of year.
This remark inflames Wilde.
Wilde Plainly, Robbie, you have come to enrage me. You have come to unsettle me.
Ross No.
Wilde You have come to take her part.
Ross Why should I?
Wilde It is not enough to trap me – no, nor to try me – no, nor to send me to prison, to take away my reputation, my position, to take away my London, the London at whose very centre I once stood? This is now not enough. The world, having broken me, now must also come into my house? It will pursue me? It will not let up?
He stares at Ross fiercely, but Ross gives no ground.
Ross The means of it letting up are in your own hands.
Wilde In your view.
Ross No. In Constance’s view.
Wilde And these views are not coincident? They are not the same?
Wilde has raised his voice, pressing Ross, but Ross is already shaking his head.
Ross Oscar, you know what you must do. You know what is asked of you.
Wilde Oh yes!
Ross I do not need to speak it. You know already.
Ross moves across the room, containing his anger, and pours a second brandy.
Wilde What is this sense that I have let you all down in some way?
Ross I have not said that.
Wilde I would like to understand this. Explain to me. No, truly. You feel that somehow I have failed you? Is my offence that I am free? What would you wish? You would prefer me back in prison?
He laughs at the absurdity of it.
I am not just to live, but I must also live in a way of which you approve?
Ross Not I. Constance. I speak to Constance. I do not speak for her.
Wilde No? You mean you do not sit with her in Nervi, consoling her? You do not sit together in darkened rooms, under rococo cornices, drinking mean glasses of sweet wine, your heads bowed together, adopting the same low, regretful tone? Speaking together of ‘Oscar, poor foolish Oscar …’
Ross You made her promises. In prison you made her certain promises.
Wilde Well?
Ross These promises you have not fulfilled!
Wilde shakes his head, disbelieving.
Wilde What is this? Am I to be tried again? In my own living room? Is the universe now become a court of law? Were my three trials not enough? Were proceedings only temporarily suspended during my imprisonment? Are we now to put up the dark wood panelling and pull on our wigs again? What are we saying? Did rain stop play? Are we now to resume?
Ross Oscar, you made an agreement. You signed it.
Wilde So?
Ross She has the right to enforce it.
Wilde The right. What right? The same right she has to rebuke me?
He stubs out his cigarette, furious.
She writes. She charges me that I have not written to her. She sends me pictures of the children. I look at them. I cry. All evening I weep. What am I to say? How am I to write? She writes again. ‘You have said nothing about the photographs. What a brute you are! It is clear you do not love your children.’ She wants me to answer. How can I? It is too cruel. I, who have spent my life holding language up to the light. Making words shimmer in the light. How am I to say to her, ‘I love my children so much I cannot write’?
He is overwhelmed, on the verge of tears.
It is all a bribe. It is all bribery. ‘Behave as I would wish and one day you will see your children …’ I sat with them, I played with them in the nursery. For years – yes, regardless – before the theatre, after the theatre – hurrying home to see my children – yes, even though I left to travel down the darkest East End street, to smear my mouth against men whose names I never knew, men whom I never saw, pressed against walls, in the dark, in the rough dark – yet every night I came home and told my children stories of ghosts, of fairies, of monsters and of enchanted lands … These are my children, Robbie. The nursery was my home, not the bedroom.
He lifts one hand, helpless.
And now she holds my boys like pieces in a game. She will move them forward or she will hold them back. It is not right. I have never seen them from the day I was sent to prison. What are we? Animals? Lower than animals. The animal holds its cub close, lets its cub come near … No, I cannot speak of it.
Wilde is too distraught to go on.
Ross Oscar, it is a war. You know that. She must use what she has. You must lay aside your feelings against her. They lead nowhere. They lead to your exclusion. They will lead to your extinction.
There is silence. The light has changed again, losing colour and warmth, chilly and very clear outside. It is dusk.
I am here today to tell you she will divorce you if you do not leave Bosie.
Wilde Leave him?
There is a pause.
Leave him? And go where?
Ross You promised not to take up with him. You signed a contract.
Wilde No.
Ross You did!
Wilde I have re-read the contract.
Ross Well, it is clear.
Wilde The contract which I signed while I was in prison specifies that I was not, on my release, to take up with a disreputable person.
Ross So? Well?
Wilde So. Lord Alfred Douglas is not a disreputable person.
Ross Oh please!
Wilde He is not. Not legally. Not by legal definition. Because his reputation has not been tried. It has not been tried in a court of law.
Ross Are you serious? Are you seriously proposing this?
Wilde I am legally disreputable. But he is not. Oh yes, Bosie may not be liked. I have sensed sometimes that some of my friends do not like him. You yourself, Robbie, do not ‘like’ him, am I right? I admit that I myself have used him to good effect in society. He serves as a repellant. He drives all kinds of unwelcome people away. It may be – I admit this also – that he is known throughout Europe as a gilded pillar of infamy. By rumour alone, he is a universal by-word for sin and depravity. However. I have learnt something in my time in the courts. The fact is this: until he is tried he is not disreputable.
Ross You think this will help you? You think this argument will weigh?
Wilde Well, I am hoping it may.
Wilde smiles, skittish, but Ross is angry.
Ross Oscar, you know who he is. You know why people are angry.
Wilde No, tell me. Why are ‘people’ angry?
Ross Because you have returned to the very man who precipitated your downfall!
Wilde Of course. How could I do otherwise? He alone understands. He alone has suffered a comparable disaster to my own.
Ross In prison, you promised …
Wilde Oh …
Ross When you realised what he had done to you, you promised. But now, now you have resumed with this creature …
Wilde Be quieter. He is above. He is in the room above.
Ross No. I have always wanted to know. Since the day you met him, I have wanted to ask: what does this man have?
Wilde Robbie …
Ross What quality does he have? What is it that compels you?
Wilde I have no duty to explain. Even for that. Even for that reason I have returned to him. For the very reason that it is my right. I choose to exercise that right. What is the use of a right you cannot exercise?
Ross And what is the purpose of a love which gives you nothing in return?
Wilde You know nothing of what passes between us.
Wilde is suddenly emphatic.
For this very reason: that no human being on earth may ask of another: what do you see in him?
Then he relents, quieter.
He adored me. In the first days, in the early days, he adored me.
Ross I adored you.
Wilde It was not the same.
There is a pause.
I have the right. It is my right. If I choose to do it, I do.
Ross Even after he has destroyed you!
Wilde just looks at him, not answering.
Constance wrote to you. She asked you to visit her.
Wilde I could not visit her.
Ross Why not?
Wilde I was just out of prison. Be fair, Robbie. It was difficult. I was confused. I was not myself.
Ross Bosie asks, and you are back –
Wilde All right …
Ross – what? Within one week? Within ten days …?
Wilde All right!
Ross Constance asks and you ignore her.
Wilde He offered me a place. Here we are. We would work together. We would write. It is a future.
Ross Do you wonder she is angry? The one thing she asks you not to do!
Wilde She? Not just she! The whole world!
Wilde laughs, bitterly.
You are all spited. You are all rebuked. Every one of you. The world put me in prison in order to prove they could destroy my relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas.
Ross The world?
Wilde Yes. Now you discover you cannot. So the world seeks its revenge.
H
e nods, sure of himself.
I am shunned by you all, and my work goes unperformed, not because of the sin – never because of the sin – but because I refuse to accept the lesson of the sin. To alter my life now would be to admit I was wrong. A patriot put in prison for loving his country goes on loving his country. A poet in prison for loving boys loves boys.
Wilde looks at Ross unforgivingly.
I have taken my punishment. Was that not enough? Was that not what was asked of me? Have I not suffered? Have I not endured? But no, the rules are now to be changed. I have done my term, but now new obligations are to be imposed. No longer is punishment enough. The moral of my punishment must be stuffed down my throat. I must choke on it.
He is so savage that Ross is stopped, hesitant to ask the next question.
Ross Do you really see no difference … Oscar, do you see no difference between those who put you in prison and those who now seek to help you?
Wilde Oh yes. There is a difference. Once I was punished from simple malice. Now I am punished in the interests of moral example.
Ross That is not fair.
Wilde Is it not? How do you see it then?
Ross is deeply shaken by Wilde’s answer.
Please. Tell me. What, in fact, is my allowance? What am I paid? What does she pay me?
Ross Well …
Wilde Three pounds a week? Less. One hundred and fifty pounds a year.
Ross Yes.
Wilde By a signed agreement. Signed by both parties.
Ross Exactly.
Wilde Negotiated by you. My only source of income. By divorcing me she discontinues that allowance. I am left with nothing.
Ross looks down.
Ross Yes.
Wilde The scheme now is that I shall have no food at all. It is proposed to leave me to die of starvation or to blow my brains out in a Naples urinal! And what’s more, the scheme is put forward on moral grounds! What perfection of hypocrisy!
He turns away, definitive now.
Please, kill me because you hate me. But do not kill me because you wish to change me.
Ross Constance does not seek to kill you. You are doing it yourself.
Wilde waves a hand at him. Then, shaking, lights another cigarette.
Wilde Well, so be it. The public loves poets to die in this way. It seems to them poetically right.
Ross That may be the effect. Oscar, that is not the intention. Myself, I owe Constance nothing. She is not my friend. You are my friend. I have sought nothing but to go between you. Only to be the go-between.
Wilde Then get me some brandy.
