The Duchess of Padua
1908
This is Oscar Wilde as you've never seen him: not the glittering satirist of society comedies, but a playwright reaching for Shakespearean tragedy in blank verse. Written in 1883 for actress Mary Anderson (who wisely rejected it), The Duchess of Padua finds Wilde attempting something altogether darker and more ambitious. The story follows Guido Ferranti, a young man who discovers his father, the Duke Lorenzo, was murdered and betrayed. Thrust into a web of intrigue in 16th-century Padua, Guido must navigate his thirst for vengeance against the powerful figures who destroyed his family, even as he finds himself drawn into a dangerous love. The play wrestles provocatively with the morality of revenge: what does justice cost when it collides with desire? Who is the true monster when vengeance becomes indistinguishable from the crimes we seek to punish? The verse is often lush, occasionally uneven, but always intent on earning its tragic weight. This is Wilde's outlier, his earnest attempt at the tragic mode, and it fascinaties precisely because it shows a master of wit willing to fail at something grand.
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“I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed Love me so much as now you say you do?Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea, Ask of the roses if they love the rain, Ask of the little lark, that will not sing Till day break, if it loves to see the day:And yet, these are but empty images, Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire So great that all the waters of the main Can not avail to quench it.””
— Oscar Wilde
“Let those who have not walked as we have done,In the red fire of passion, those whose livesAre dull and colourless, in a word let those,If any such there be, who have not loved,Cast stones against you””
— Oscar Wilde
“People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing; the only men I fear are silent men””
— Oscar Wilde
“Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life.””
— Oscar Wilde
“I did not know it was such pain to die; I thought that life had taken all the agonies to itself.””
— Oscar Wilde
“I like no law at all: Were there no law there'd be no law-breakers, So all men would be virtuous””
— Oscar Wilde
“Be not spendthrift of your honesty, But keep it to yourself””
— Oscar Wilde
“GUIDOAy! without loveLife is no better than the unhewn stoneWhich in the quarry lies, before the sculptorHas set the God within it. Without loveLife is as silent as the common reedsThat through the marshes or by rivers grow,And have no music in them.DUCHESSYet out of theseThe singer, who is Love, will make a pipeAnd from them he draws music; so I thinkLove will bring music out of any life.Is that not true?””
— Oscar Wilde
“DukeIf you are poor,Are you not blessed in that? Why, povertyIs one of the Christian virtues,[Turns to the Cardinal.]Is it not?I know, Lord Cardinal, you have great revenues,Rich abbey-lands, and tithes, and large estatesFor preaching voluntary poverty.””
— Oscar Wilde
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Wilde, Oscar. The Duchess of Padua. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-duchess-of-padua-298107a5-0285-4cc0-9147-99b00724aaa1.Wilde, O. (1908). The Duchess of Padua. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-duchess-of-padua-298107a5-0285-4cc0-9147-99b00724aaa1Wilde, Oscar. The Duchess of Padua. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-duchess-of-padua-298107a5-0285-4cc0-9147-99b00724aaa1.
