Introduction

I. Read the text:

O scar Wilde’s biography

Art … was the great primal note by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world; the real passion of my life; the love to which all other loves were as marsh water to red wine, or the glow- worm of the marsh to the magic mirror of the moon.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on the 16^th of October, 1854. His father was Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon and his mother was widely known as an Irish national poetess and the presiding genius of a famous literary salon.

Oscar graduated from Trinity College in Dublin in 1873 and passed to Magdalen College at Oxford. His academic career at Oxford was remarkable for he obtained the double distinction of a "First" in "Classical Moderations" and "Literae Humaniores" (he could never have been therefore as idle as he pretended). Even at his early age he was a man of exceptional­ly wide culture. The new ideas in particular those of aesthetic cult with its supreme dominance of Art and Beauty over other values of life began to exercise the younger minds. Oscar became the apostle of a new cult, the symbols of which were supposed to be peacock's feathers, sunflowers, blue china, long hair and velveteen knee-breeches.

In 1882 Oscar Wilde went to America to lecture on his aes­thetic philosophy. He had been invited to America as a figure of fun; he came away with the reputation of a man of cultivation, taste, imagination, education and refinement.

In England his Poems were not very successful with the pub­lic. He tried his hand at journalism. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd and they had two children. He visited France many times as he shared the ideas of the French "Decadent" school.

In 1888 he wrote his first collection of short stories "The Happy Prince and Other Tales". Though many of them recalled the work of Flaubert, Рое, Hans Andersen, they have their own individuality, their own flavour.

The success encouraged O.Wilde to attempt something more ambitious, and in 1891 appeared his first and last novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray". The critics pointed out that the theme had been treated before (Balzac, Рое, Stevenson). Nevertheless O. Wilde gave the old story a new twist, and his original treat­ment of it rescued it from any charge of plagiarism.

He established himself as a writer of consequence. His extra­ordinary powers of conversation, his almost irresistible personal charm carried him away even into circles which were prejudiced against him. And yet not only his enemies were beginning to feel uneasy at the spectacle of his triumph. There seemed to be a new insolence in his contempt for current standards and prej­udices.

Oscar Wilde won his fame as a dramatist. His first comedy "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892) had a hailing success with the public. "A Woman of No Importance" (1893), "An Ideal Husband" (1895) and "The importance of Being Earnest" (1895) which followed were also very well received by the public. Oscar Wilde’s sparkling comedies of fashionable life reveal the selfishness, vanity and corruption of English High Society in a playful manner. The plays are notable for their brilliant dialogues, witty paradoxes and entertaining plots. Wilde also wrote poems, essays, reviews, political tracts, letters on every subject he considered worthy of attention – history, drama, painting and others – some of them serious, some satirical.

In 1895 he was accused of male prostitution and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. On the 30^th of November, 1900 O. Wilde died in Paris.

The dark and scandalous side of O.Wilde's life can't shadow his distinguished work as a playwright, a story teller, an essayist which earned him success in his lifetime and continues to delight readers and theatrical audiences all over the globe.