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The Duchess of PaduaDownload Now...

by Oscar Wilde (Author)

Text Source:

Text URL:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/875

Language:

Type:

E-book

Description:

Not available

Table of Contents:

Not available

Amazon.com Information:

Sales Rank:

2261636

ISBN:

1420927531

Page Count:

108

Detail Page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1420927531

Download this text: The Duchess of Padua

Product Description

'The Duchess of Padua' is a five-act play by Oscar Wilde which was originally written for actress Mary Anderson in 1883. Due to her rejection of the play, it was not performed. It later appeared in its first publication in German in 1904. Fans of Wilde will delight in this fine play of his.

Customer Review: Padua is no Verona

Oscar Wilde is absolutely obsessed in this play by Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is a ghost that dominates the whole play and particularly the ending : poison for the Duchess and dagger for Guido, in other words the inverted ending of Romeo and Juliet. But we are at the end of the 19th century. So first we do not have Shakespeare's language and never does Oscar Wilde get close to it. Shakespeare's poetical language is definitely dead and unwritable any more. Second he has perfectly integrated the romantic period and Guido is romantic to the utmost. He cannot forgive the death of the Duke, the very killer of his own father, killed by the Duchess just as he could not love the Duchess when his duty to kill the Duke in order to avenge his own father came back to him. For him love has to go along with purity, absolutely purity. Juliet was a lot more tragic when her love made her oversee Tybalt's death. But he has also integrated the good old Doctor Faust. Is it the one by Marlowe or is it the one by Goethe, we do not know. But the last prison scene is just a rewriting of the prison scene in Faust. Inverted again. The Duchess visits Guido and proposes him to escape. But Guido is too much in love to accept. His love makes him want to die for the Duchess and thus forgive her treachery that made her have him condemned for the murder of the Duke that she did herself. Those two endings are entertwined and the whole play loses the tragic power of Shakespeare or Goethe, or Marlowe as for that. We constantly verge onto the melodramatic and that is also an important influence of the 19th century. In fact we find in that melodramatic aspect a trait that is most of the time present in Oscar Wilde's plays.

Book Categories:

Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Drama / General
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Drama / Playwrights, A-Z / ( W ) / Wilde, Oscar
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Authors, A-Z / ( W ) / Wilde, Oscar
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / World Literature / British / Classics / Wilde, Oscar
Books / Subjects / Literature & Fiction / Drama / British & Irish / General
Books / Refinements / Binding (binding) / Paperback
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