In 1960, Micheál MacLiammóir's one man show, The Importance of Being Oscar, opened at the Gate Theatre in Dublin and triumphed, both as a celebration of Wilde's art and a proud reclamation of a wayward Irishman. P.J. Mathews reviews The Wilde Legacy, edited by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
We might be forgiven for smiling at the delicious irony of an Irish mimic-Englishman being championed by an English would-be Irishman - MacLiammóir, after all, was brought up in London as Alfred Willmore, while Wilde was reared in Dublin and bore the appellation "Fingal O'Flahertie Wills" as his middle name.
Great credit must go to MacLiammóir, however, for engaging in the rehabilitation of Wilde's reputation as an artist and as an Irishman. Since then, much useful critical work has embraced Wilde's achievement as an important part of the Irish cultural inheritance. One thinks especially of scholars like Declan Kiberd, Davis Coakley and Richard Pine, who have redressed the omissions of past critics in relation to Wilde's nationality. The Wilde Legacy, a collection of essays delivered at Trinity College, Dublin to mark the centenary of Oscar's death, continues the Irish embrace.
Interestingly, the focus here reaches beyond Oscar to take in the achievements of his famous parents, Speranza and Sir William, and to celebrate "the multiple Irish traditions to which they had so signally contributed". In fact, the elder Wildes engaged in an eclectic range of intellectual pursuits and debates which included politics, folklore, medicine, literature and archaeology - much to the enrichment of their talented son. In her essay on the nationalist poet, Speranza, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin considers her importance to the genealogy of Irish women poets. The empowering lesson, it would seem, is that it is possible for woman writers to be warm and generous of character and to "remain close to one's children while holding on to the egotism that makes one a writer".
Sir William, perhaps disproportionately, receives a fuller treatment than his wife. As we learn from essays by Davis Coakley, Peter Froggatt and Michael Ryan, he was a man of extraordinary energy and talent who distinguished himself as a surgeon, demographer, folklorist, and antiquary. Robert Dunbar writes with insight and clarity on Oscar's fairy tales, while Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy describes the process involved in dramatising them for children. The least satisfactory part of the book is a transcription of a panel discussion on "Wilde in the Theatre" between Marina Carr, Thomas Kilroy, Patrick Mason and Michael Colgan. "Dinner party" discussions may be interesting to take part in but it is not much fun observing them and hardly worth the bother recording them.
The question of whether Wilde's performance in the dock fits into the Irish republican tradition of court speechifying is taken up by Lucy McDiarmid. In the end, she inclines more towards seeing the writer as an embodiment of "oppositional celebrity" in which the urges to seek public attention and challenge accepted social mores go hand in hand, often with destructive personal consequences. Alan Sinfield brings the collection to a close with a thoughtful consideration of "how the name 'Oscar Wilde' circulated as a cultural icon in the 20th century". Wilde the Irishman may have been repatriated, Sinfield argues provocatively, but in some cases at the expense of keeping his sexuality securely in the closet. Even MacLiammóir, who "exuded queerness in his every gesture", left its "underlying disgrace unspoken".
One could quibble that the premise of The Wilde Legacy is a little limiting in that it confines this Irish appraisal of Wilde to the familiar realms of family and locale, with some degree of repetition. There is no attempt, for example, to deal with Wilde the fin de siècle thinker, nor do we learn anything about his influence on later writers such as Yeats, Behan and McGuinness. An essay on Wilde's contribution to gay writing (Irish or otherwise) might also have found a home in a volume like this. Nonetheless, Wilde enthusiasts will find much to interest them in this book.
P.J. Mathews lectures in the Department of English, St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. His book, Revival: The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, The Gaelic League and the Co-operative Movement, will be published by Field Day/Cork University Press in September
The Wilde Legacy. Edited by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Four Courts Press, 156pp. €45