First published in 2000 by Oberon Books Ltd
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Copyright © Neil Bartlett, 2000
Neil Bartlett is hereby identified as author of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to The Agency, 24 Pottery Lane, Holland Park, London W11 4LZ (info@theagency.co.uk). No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN: 9781840022056
E ISBN: 9781783197934
Cover design: Humphrey Gudgeon
Front cover photograph of Corin Redgrave rehearsing In Extremis by Mark Douet
Back cover photograph: Oscar Wilde, by Napoleon Sarony, 1882
(courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
Printed in Great Britain by Anthony Rowe Ltd, Reading.
eBook conversion by Lapiz Digital Services, India.
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WRITING WILDE
IN EXTREMIS
My text, commissioned by Corin Redgrave as a companion-piece to his solo rendition of Wilde’s De Profundis, is spun from a single historical fact. According to a telegram sent the next morning to his dear friend Ada Leverson, on the night of March 24, 1895, just one week before the beginning of the trial that was to cost him his reputation, his liberty, his home, his family and quite soon his life, Oscar Wilde went to visit a society palm-reader called Mrs Robinson. She read his palm, and told him that the trial would be a great triumph.
The next day a gathering of his friends made a last-ditch attempt to persuade him to flee London for the safety of France; he refused. The rest is a history we’re still living through.
We can never know what actually happened that night. But the story is too good to let lie; it might possibly hold a vital clue to the fascinating, appalling story of Wilde’s downfall. We want to know why this famous man, with his brilliant mind and no less astonishing address book, turned, on that night of all nights, to a palm-reader. And why, as his letter to Ada Leverson and his behaviour the next day indicate, did he believe her? It seems profoundly irrational. We must not, however, let hindsight blind us to the fact that Wilde was faced with an impossible situation. Was he to leave Lord Alfred Douglas, the man with whom he was so deeply, disastrously in love? Leave his two young sons, whom he adored? Wilde was right in De Profundis to speak of the madness, the near-insanity of what happened to him. What place was there for reason in the city which had so suddenly turned against him? In less than three months an unholy alliance of media hostility, class prejudice and homophobic hatred had transformed Wilde from a darling celebrity into the worst kind of criminal pervert. A palmist might claim to decipher the madness as well as anyone.
De Profundistour de force