Oscar Wilde's 1895 Martyrdom: "When Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest: a trivial comedy for serious people premiered in London on Valentine's Day, 1895, Wilde (aged 40) was widely acknowledged to have decisively conquered the theater world...


Even the New York Times noted 'Wilde may be said to have at last, and by a single stroke, put his enemies under his feet.'


But within 100 days, Earnest had closed, Wilde's plays were universally considered unproduceable, Wilde had been publically humiliated beyond all imagining, and he was facing a two-year prison term... all for being homosexual."




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