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The Picture of Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde as Critic of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

KUMIKO SUDA

1. Introduction

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a controversial novel that drew harsh

critical responses when first published in 1890, and still attracts critical

attention. One major point for discussion about the novel is where to locate

its sources. Researchers have been trying to detect sources from which

Oscar Wilde borrowed the idea for his novel about a man who remains

young and beautiful while his portrait grows old and ugly. Their vast

detective investigations range far and wide: from ancient Greek mythology

to Wilde’s contemporary writings, not to mention French literature, with

diverse discussions delivering diverse explanations.1 In his famous trial,

Wilde revealed the novel’s source to the public. Asked about the novel’s

“immoral” content, Wilde answered, “The whole idea was borrowed from

Shakespeare, I regret to say—yes, from Shakespeare’s sonnets” (Hyde

113). Aside from the fact that Wilde also authored “The Portrait of Mr. W.

H.,” in which he presents a theory about the identity of the sonnets’ dedi-

catee, it is puzzling that critics have left these words of his uninvestigated

in spite of the obvious fact that the novel shares many elements with the

sonnets. Breuer is right when he says, “commentators of the novel seem to

have given no attention to Shakespeare’s Sonnets themselves” (60).2 His

study is important because he makes a comparison between the two texts,

specifying several sonnets that must have inspired the novel and constitute

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its theme. As he suggests, reading the sonnets and the novel side by side is

indispensable to discuss the novel. However, his essay is not full-length,

and there should be many more demonstrations and careful examination

to prove the parallelism of the two texts, including the comparison of the

1890 original novel to the 1891 edition. And furthermore, to discuss the

novel’s close connection with “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” would illustrate

that the novel is a derivative of “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” which mani-

fests Wilde’s attitude as a critic of the sonnets, and make it possible to

conclude that the novel was born because the author himself was an inter-

preter of the sonnets. To discuss the novel, it is not enough to limit the

study to detecting its source; focusing on Wilde’s unique achievement as a

critic, which is completely different from the then conventional approaches

to the sonnets, is a possible way to give a new light to the novel. Thus, my

paper aims not merely at confirming that Shakespeare’s Sonnets is an

important source for The Picture of Dorian Gray but also at demonstrating

that the novel was created through Wilde’s critical endeavor to interpret

the sonnets. I focus mainly on Dorian Gray, a young man whom Wilde

revives and recreates from the sonnets, and discuss how it is possible to

argue he is another Willie Hughes, the sonnets’ imaginary dedicatee in

“The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” I present both “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” and

The Picture of Dorian Gray to highlight their statuses as sequent works, to

prove Wilde’s deep involvement with the sonnets and his being a critic of

the sonnets.

2. Dorian Gray and “a summer’s day”

Near the end of the novel, almost twenty years of their friendship

having passed, Lord Henry says to Dorian Gray upon their last meeting: “I

am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and

yellow. . . . You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you

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would tell me your secret. . . . Youth! There is nothing like it. . . . Your days

are your sonnets” (350-52)3. Dorian is supposed to be thirty-eight years

old, while Lord Henry is nearly fifty. Admiring Dorian’s unfading beauty,

Lord Henry epitomizes his favorite boy’s life as “sonnets.” Considering the

fact that Wilde had deep concerns over Shakespeare and published “The

Portrait of Mr. W. H.” in 1889, a year before the first publication of Dorian

Gray, it may be possible to associate the “sonnets” with Shakespeare’s. More

importantly, in 1889, Wilde was engaged in writing about Shakespeare’s

sonnets with a real portrait concerning the sonnets. After publishing “The

Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” he wrote its extended version during the summer of

that same year, and in the following autumn began writing Dorian Gray.4

Around the same time, Wilde took possession of a portrait of Willie Hughes,

his invented dedicatee of the sonnets. Wilde did not conceal his rapture

and excitement to have it at hand, saying “My dear Ricketts, It is not a

forgery at all . . . . I am really most grateful (no! that is a horrid word: I am

never grateful) I am flattered and fascinated . . .” (Letters 412). These facts

concerning Wilde’s condition of writing enable us to imagine Wilde, after

finishing the extended version of “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” writing

Dorian Gray with his portrait of Mr. W. H. hung on the wall next to him.

Thus, in 1889, Wilde was involved in creating the two portraits: Willie

Hughes and Dorian Gray, both of which, as I will discuss, embody the eter-

nal youth described in the sonnets.

It is not difficult to discover that the novel shares many elements

with the sonnets, for the sonnets’ words and themes are abundant and

interwoven in the text. The novel begins: “The studio was filled with the

rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the

trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of

the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn” (169).

“The light summer wind” in the dense fragrance of flowers indicates early

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summer. The word “summer,” so refreshing in the oppressive heat and

floral scent of the first sentence, frequently appears throughout the novel.

Lord Henry, who has yet to know Dorian, sees the portrait his friend Basil

Hallward is drawing and says, “He is a brainless, beautiful thing, who

should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and

always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence”

(170). He characterizes the young man in the portrait as one who recalls

“summer” in winter. Following Lord Henry’s comment, Basil, captivated by

Dorian’s charm, introduces a famous quote from the sonnets:

“Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some

one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of

decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

“Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger,” murmured Lord Henry.

“Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will.” (178)

The painter compares Dorian to “a summer’s day,” while he himself is

humiliated at being merely “an ornament for a summer’s day.” Responding

immediately to Basil’s poetic comparison, Lord Henry tempers his friend’s

excitement for “a summer’s day,” to suggest that Basil’s interest in the boy

will not last. Needless to say, the eighteenth sonnet’s opening phrase,

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”5 heralds Dorian’s advent in the

novel.

The association between Dorian and summer is not an accidental,

temporary reference but a theme that grows more significant as the story

progresses. The novel develops in synchronization with the eighteenth

sonnet; namely, the first two chapters, in which Dorian, with his sum-

mer-like beauty, visits the studio to meet Lord Henry. The revelations and

wishes for eternal youth he receives altogether correspond with the poetry;

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the poet, after praising a young man by comparing to a summer’s day,

warns him of his day’s evanescence. The novel likewise shifts its focus to

the frailty and transitory nature of Dorian’s beauty, which Lord Henry

explains as follows:

Ah! Realize your youth while you have it. . . . For there is such a

little time that your youth will last—such a little time. The

common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The labur-

num will be as golden next June as it is now. . . . But we never get

back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty,

becomes sluggish. (187)

Threatened by Lord Henry’s warning that men are deprived of the flower’s

privilege of blooming again, Dorian painfully realizes that he will never

regain the “next June” of his prime. In the sonnet’s third quatrain, the poet

professes that the youth retains his beauty in “eternal lines” (12), so that

his “summer shall not fade” (9). Dorian’s eternal beauty, too, is supposed to

be preserved—in the form of a painting. Under Lord Henry’s fatal influ-

ence, however, Dorian refuses to be satisfied with the sonnet’s conclusion

and covets eternal youth for his own body, grieving “How sad it is! I shall

grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always

young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . .” (189). His

“summer’s day” more specifically becomes “this particular day of June.”

Dorian feels intolerable agony over losing that very day, and wishes to

keep the day—his body—eternally youthful, instead of letting the portrait

have it all.

Additionally, further examples associating Dorian with summer can

be found throughout the rest of the novel. Halfway through the story,

Dorian, seeing the signs of ugly transformation in his portrait, ponders

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over his unchanged appearance: “when winter came upon it [the picture],

he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer”

(258). He imagines himself standing against winter, identifying himself as

a beautiful season. Reflecting on his unwaning beauty, he is also relieved

to see that his “summer followed summer,” identifying himself once again

as a season in full bloom (284). Furthermore, in his last days, Dorian is

described as “a lad of twenty summers,” maintaining the appearance of

youth while nearing forty (331). Thus, the word “summer” is used repeti-

tively to signify Dorian’s unfading beauty, and presents him as an embod-

iment of the sonnets’ youth of eternal summer.

3. Dorian’s “twenty summers” standing against “forty winters”

Examining the text closely, it is apparent that the novel adopts more

phrases and images from other sonnets, such as sonnets five and six, which

set summer against winter to show contrast between young and old. The

fifth sonnet, with the lines “For never-resting time leads summer on / To

hideous winter, and confounds him there,” shows that the changing of sea-

sons echoes the process of youth growing old and being destroyed, as time

that “will play the tyrants” (3) goes by. And the poet says “summer’s distil-

lation” (9) is left if the essence of flowers is confined in “walls of glass” (10),

“though they with winter meet” (13), to conclude that summer can outface

winter with the help of art. The sequent sonnet presents similar associa-

tions between seasons and advancing age: “Then let not winter’s ragged

hand deface / In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d” (1-2). Dorian Gray

implements these sonnets exactly to describe the ageless hero. Dorian,

devoted to collecting curiosities and antiques to taste every enjoyment in

the world, thinks over his youthful appearance when seeing old

tapestries.

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. . . he was almost saddened by the reflection of the ruin that Time

brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had

escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils

bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the

story of their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred

his face or stained his flower-like bloom. (284)

He compares summer to youth and winter to old age, and the tapestries

worn by the lapse of time remind him of its cruel hand. He feels secure in

knowing he escapes his winter, no matter how many times his “summer

followed summer,” unstained by winter’s devastating effect.

To explore further parallels between the sonnets and the novel, we

must consider what Dorian dreads most—seeing himself become old and

ugly. The second sonnet describes the process of aging as follows: “When

forty winters shall besiege thy brow, / And dig deep trenches in thy beau-

ty’s field” (1-2). Adopting the terms of battle, one who passes “forty win-

ters” enters the realm of the old, and “deep trenches,” or wrinkles in the

face, are its symbol. Dorian Gray’s “lad of twenty summers” contrastively

echoes the sonnet’s “forty winters,” but the direct sign of aging is more

frequently and persistently used in the novel. Lord Henry, giving “his

strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity” (189),

makes Dorian dread a day when he is “old and wrinkled and ugly,” with his

“forehead with its lines” (186). Obsession with lines and wrinkles begins to

consume Dorian’s whole life, and he says to himself “Yes, there would be a

day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen” (189). He fiercely

reproaches Basil, “How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle,

I suppose” (190). The references continue throughout the rest of the novel,

with Dorian terrified of becoming “haggard, and gray, and wrinkled” (256).

The portrait’s transformation begins with “the lines of cruelty round the

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mouth,” and, as the picture reveals these horrible changes, Dorian thinks

about “the wrinkled throat” (272) and sees “the hideous lines that seared

the wrinkling forehead” (277). Thus, wrinkles, which the second sonnet

and others represent as a sign of aging, are repeatedly shown as Dorian’s

biggest anxiety. Consequently, in a later chapter, Dorian’s smooth and

unwrinkled face stands in extreme contrast with his almost “forty winters”

of life.

More examples borrowed from the sonnets can be found, including,

for example, Dorian’s death scene, which adopts from the second sonnet

the phrase “youth’s proud livery” (3). He dismisses the value of being young

by asking himself, “Why had he worn its [youth’s] livery?” (355). Thus, he

finally puts an end to his eternal youth. The fifteenth sonnet’s phrase “war

with time” (13) functions as a major turning point in Dorian’s life. When

Lord Henry voices his revelation and encourages Dorian to wish for eter-

nal youth, he urges him to make war with time, saying, “Time is jealous of

you, and wars against your lilies and your roses” (187). The idea of fighting

against time also drives Dorian to decide his course in life after driving

Sybil Vane, a Shakespearean actress, to suicide. Lord Henry advises

Dorian, suffering from the news of Sybil’s death, to simply keep his

“extraordinary good looks” to get over the accident. Dorian is not convinced

that his friend’s suggestion will bring about a solution, and says, “But sup-

pose, Harry, I became haggard, and gray, and wrinkled?” (256). But Lord

Henry reassures Dorian that he “would have to fight” for his victories, and

the idea of triumph over time encourages Dorian to recover himself.

Dorian’s moral agony resulting from Sybil’s suicide is transformed into a

challenge to fight against time. Therefore, the words and themes borrowed

from the sonnets play important roles in the plot’s development.

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4. Two Dorians: the 1890 and 1891 texts

There are two versions of Dorian Gray. Considering them in terms of

their link to Shakespeare’s sonnets, examining the differences between

the two Dorians yields notable findings. Bristow argues that the 1890 and

1891 texts should be treated as separate works6; but the revision, so closely

connected with the original, reveals the marks of deliberate and careful

rewriting. The revised edition is an enhanced replica of the original text,

taking a more in-depth approach to the Shakespeare’s sonnets and forging

stronger connections. The most remarkable difference between the two

texts lies in length. For the 1891 novel, along with the addition of a preface,

the original thirteen chapters are expanded and the last chapter is divided

in two, consequently resulting in twenty chapters. A couple of major

changes include the insertion of Sybil’s brother and his revenge, and a new

chapter concerning Dorian’s birth. Although there are more minor but con-

siderable changes throughout, the words and phrases borrowed from

Shakespeare’s sonnets for the 1890 edition have been carefully revised for

the 1891 edition. The second edition obviously reinforces Dorian’s charac-

terization as a youth of summer beauty, by adding the description “a lad of

twenty summers.” Likewise, while the original version has Dorian dying at

thirty-two years old, in the revised version he dies at thirty-eight, to repre-

sent the second sonnet’s concept of aging—highlighting Dorian’s unfading

beauty against “forty winters.”

Another remarkable revision proving a strong connection to the son-

nets are the new insertions in chapters three and ten, which lend further

description to Dorian’s appearance: his resemblance to his mother, for

example. A youth resembling his mother originally appears in “The

Portrait of Mr. W. H.,”7 which Wilde published in 1889 before starting

Dorian Gray that same year. In “The Portrait,” Cyril Graham, a devotee of

Shakespeare, demonstrates his theory about Mr. W. H.’s identity, the young

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man to whom Shakespeare addresses his sonnets: “he [Lord Southampton]

was not beautiful; he did not resemble his mother, as Mr. W. H. did— Thou

art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee / Calls back the lovely April of her

prime” (306). To deny other critics’ theories about Mr. W. H.’s best candi-

date, Cyril quotes the third sonnet to illustrate the possibility that Mr. W.

H.’s appearance is characterized by its likeness to his mother’s. Dorian

Gray’s hero shares the same features as Mr. W. H. In the 1891 text, chapter

three gives a detailed account of Dorian’s blood-line and birth, where Lord

Henry derives evidence from his uncle that “If he is like his mother he

must be a good-looking chap” (196). Also, in the revised chapter ten, the

passage “his strange likeness to his mother” is inserted to describe Dorian’s

distinctive good appearance. Thus, the two young men, Mr. W. H. of “The

Portrait” and Dorian Gray of the revised novel, share the same physical

characteristics. Clearly, the Dorian of the 1891 edition was made to be

more like Willie Hughes. Willie Hughes, an invented Mr. W. H., whose

existence can never be proved, is finally incarnated in the form of Dorian

Gray, no vain product of wild fancy. Dorian in the original text is a rebirth

of summer-like beauty written of in the sonnets. To more fully embody

Shakespeare’s descriptions of fair youth, Wilde revises Dorian to adopt the

appearance of Willie Hughes, a young man with features extracted from

the third sonnet.

Therefore, in the process of rewriting Dorian Gray, Wilde intention-

ally strengthened its parallelism with the sonnets, including a revision in

the latter half in which Lord Henry summarizes Dorian’s life as his “son-

nets.” The 1890 edition’s original line “Your days have been your sonnets”

(158) is revised in the 1891 edition: “Your days are your sonnets” (352). The

present tense “are” emphasizes Dorian’s very existence as a living embod-

iment of beauty. His presence is crystallized, his beauty of a summer’s day

eternalized beyond time’s unrelenting reach.

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5. Wilde as critic of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Dorian Gray is, as I have discussed, a derivative of “The Portrait,”

both of which take inspiration from the sonnets to reconstitute their sub-

jects’ youth. Here, I focus on Wilde as the sonnets’ critic, to show that his

unique critical approach to interpreting the sonnets was an important

factor in prompting him to write his novel. Wilde’s achievement as a

Shakespearean critic is easily accessible to the sonnets’ readers. “There is

only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not

being talked about,” says Lord Henry in Dorian Gray (170), but Wilde

never had, and never will have, such worries, as long as we see his name

included in the twentieth sonnet’s commentary. His legacy of exploring

and interpreting the sonnets is succeeded by modern critics following in

Wilde’s footsteps, despite his theory nonchalantly being treated as “some

occult reference (now lost)” (Vendler 82).

Wilde’s contemporary writer George Bernard Shaw compares criti-

cism of Shakespeare in the nineteenth century to a competitive sport in

the literary community: “In critical literature there is one prize that is

always open to competition, one blue ribbon that always carries the high-

est critical rank with it. To win, you must write the best book of your

generation on Shakespeare”8 (207). As Shaw indicates, there existed a com-

petitive culture that revolved around penning criticisms of Shakespeare’s

work, and in the background, the rousing and immense Shakespearean

theatre and publication industries loomed, among which permeated

Shakespeare’s immense popularity as a national bard.9 Wilde, too, involved

himself in the national project of popularizing and memorializing the

Bard.10 Throughout the publishing field, scholars read and studied

Shakespeare extensively, writing vast masses of articles and books, from

scholarly research to moral guidelines.

As for Shakespeare’s sonnets, it is no wonder critics found themselves

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in an awkward situation due to their unacceptable content in terms of

morality. This consecrated national hero might have had an affair with a

woman outside of marriage, and, more embarrassingly, might even have

had an affair with a man. Gerald Massey11 is one critic who never allows

Shakespeare to be disgraced.12 He denounces readers who “have so basely

imagined that Shakespeare and his young friend both shared one mis-

tress” (Massey 103), and attributed the Bard’s intimate words to a young

man to the Elizabethan Era’s particular culture. He also warns the read-

ers “who accept the coarsest reading of the 20th sonnet” and tries to sanc-

tify Shakespeare’s “part of the purest, loftiest, most manly kind” (Massey

104). Checking readers inclined toward “base” interpretations to preserve

Shakespeare’s honor, he vehemently rejects the theory of Shakespeare

having been involved in a male-to-male relationship. Critics’ struggles to

defend Shakespeare’s moral character were diversified, from excuses that

the poet was just tempted even though he actually had an affair with a

male, to attempts at rearranging the order of the sonnets to weaken the

tone hinting at a male-to-male relationship,13 to neglecting the problem

entirely. In an era when critics tended to interpret literature autobio-

graphically to understand authors’ personal experiences, discussing Mr. W.

H.’s identity naturally forced them to contend with moral problem.

In “The Portrait,” Wilde, careless of the critics’ embarrassment over

Shakespeare possibly admiring a young man, provides one approach, the

Willie Hughes theory,14 to reading and interpreting the sonnets. Cyril, the

theory’s advocate, presents his method of interpretation: “He[Cyril] told

me that he had at last discovered the true secret of Shakespeare’s Sonnets;

that all the scholars and critics had been entirely on the wrong track; and

that he was the first who, working purely by internal evidence, had found

out who Mr. W. H. really was” (305). To discover Mr. W. H.’s true identity,

Cyril reads the sonnets closely, quotes and interprets them, and claims no

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external evidence is needed to prove his theory. The theory depends purely

on the text itself, which, according to him, works as “internal evidence.” To

read the sonnets means to examine the text itself and simply concentrate

on what one gleans from it, never allowing external elements such as his-

torical facts to affect one’s interpretation.

Cyril’s “internal” approach to the text leads to one possible form of

literary criticism. Considering Fineman’s esteem regarding “The Portrait”

as “the only genuinely literary criticism that Shakespeare’s sonnets have

ever received” (Fineman 28) and Halpern finding in it “introverted literary

formalism” (Halpern 35), Cyril’s theory is no mere arbitrary production. It

stands as a criticism based on the subjectivity of those who appreciate

art—not external, objective facts—to find new meanings in the sonnets

and form new interpretations. Wilde wanted “The Portrait” to be published

together with his critical writings, regarding “The Portrait” as a critical

work.15 “The Portrait” seems to obediently trace the traditional interpreta-

tion method of identifying a text with the author’s own experiences.

However, Wilde’s work does not, in fact, join the discussion exploring Mr.

W. H.’s true identity, a chief theme for critics. Wilde left the mystery

unsolved and played on the existing theories, as the narrator in “The

Portrait” says enjoyably, “I love theories about the Sonnets” (303). Wilde

focuses not on the investigation of Mr. W. H.’s identity, but how Cyril reads

from the sonnets and what he sees in them. Cyril sees the figure of Willie

Hughes in the sonnets. To him, reading the sonnets is equal to being

absorbed into the text and finding new meanings, being independent from

“external” evidence, enabling him to create his own Mr. W. H.

6. Conclusion

Therefore, the creation of Willie Hughes is an achievement of Cyril’s

critical endeavor of interpreting the sonnets, and for this reason, his

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interpretation is an act of creating. His “internal” approach to the text

reflects Wilde’s own attitude toward criticism, which would manifest a

year later as “The True Function and Value of Criticism,” the predecessor

of his critical essay “The Critic as Artist.” In the essay, Wilde asserts that

criticism is “purely subjective” and “deals with art not as expressive but as

impressive purely” (1126).16 It is the testimony of Wilde’s creed that criti-

cism is independent from its object, disconnecting itself from social and

historical context and even from authors’ biographical facts, and depends

on a critic’s subjective and internal view on art. This supports Wilde’s affir-

mation of equalizing criticism with art in “The Critic as Artist,” where

Wilde claims that a critic is an artist, and criticism itself is creative art.

Critics are both art interpreters and excellent creators. In Dorian Gray’s

preface, Wilde declares, “The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To

reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can trans-

late into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful

things” (167). A critic is an artist who appreciates beauty and gives it a

new form. In “The Portrait,” Wilde proves the potentiality of a creative

critic, who succeeds in translating literary art to produce a new form. Cyril

is a Shakespearean critic, for he appreciates the legitimate beauty of liter-

ary art and translates it to recreate afresh a young male found in the

sonnets. Likewise, with Dorian Gray, Wilde’s interpretation of the sonnets

creates another form for the youth of summer-like beauty. Being a critic of

the sonnets, he used his inspiration to produce Willie Hughes, and, not

long after this imaginary boy of an unprovable theory, created Dorian Gray

in his novel. Thus, Oscar Wilde’s critical attempt at interpreting the son-

nets brought forth these two sequent works.

7. Postscript—Love for reading the sonnets

Later, at Wilde’s trial, Dorian Gray and “The Portrait” were vilified in

47

the witness box. Wilde’s statement that his novel borrowed its idea from

the sonnets invited another immediate blow to “The Portrait”; the barris-

ter inquired, accusing Wilde of humiliating Shakespeare, “I believe you

have written an article to show that Shakespeare’s sonnets were sugges-

tive of unnatural vice?” (Hyde 113). To this, Wilde answered: “On the con-

trary, I have written an article to show that they are not. I objected to such

a perversion being put upon Shakespeare.” Wilde mentioning the Bard by

name worked only to accelerate his disadvantageous situation, in which he

was forced to battle against morality, separated from the realm of art. Both

Wilde’s works concerning Shakespeare were exposed as writings that

would prove his “unnatural vice.” Later in life, in a foreign land, Wilde

recalled how much he loved the sonnets when he wrote to a friend, recom-

mending that he read “The Portrait”: “So you love Shakespeare’s Sonnets:

I have loved them, as one should love all things, not wisely but too well”

(Letters 1133). One Shakespearean critic claimed that conjectures on the

sonnets were bred in commentators’ “seething brain,” suggesting that

reading the sonnets brings such aberrant inducement and excitement to

readers (Simpson 77). “The Portrait” draws in men with “seething brains,”

so devoted to reading the sonnets that they are driven to crazy conduct.

Their struggle culminated in bringing forth criticism, and led them to

believe it worthy to “die for a literary theory” (348). Wilde, too, identifying

himself with Othello, reflected on how he loved the sonnets so devotedly

that he was forced to tread a difficult path. His words speak of his dedica-

tion to reading, interpreting, and appreciating the sonnets.

Notes

1 While studies to identify the novel’s sources with Wilde’s contemporary writ-

ings, as Shaffer (2003) does in comparing the novel to popular aesthetic novels,

are valuable, it is of great significance to search for an inspirational source in

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the remote past, as Wilde states “All beautiful things belong to the same age”

(Complete Works 1096). Recent study by Bristow and Mitchell deals with

Wilde’s involvement in literary forgery, bringing a new light to the study of his

works and addressing Wilde’s interest in notorious Shakespearean forgers,

Ireland and Collier. This study offers a new path linking Wilde to Shakespeare,

successfully bringing together these two writers belonging to vastly different

ages as though they were contemporaries.

2 Wilde’s confession at the court is a well-known fact for critics, but close exam-

ination of the two works is scarce as Breuer in 2004 shows. He also points out

Wilde’s self-plagiarism, suggesting the connection between “The Portrait of Mr.

W. H.” and the novel, although he does not give a fully detailed discussion about

the topic.

3 Quotations are based on the 1891 text in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde:

The Picture of Dorian Gray: The 1890 and 1891 Texts edited by Bristow. Hereafter

cited as Dorian Gray with page numbers in parentheses.

4 Schroeder closely examines the publishing condition of “The Portrait of Mr. W.

H.” As to Dorian Gray, see “Introduction” in The Complete Works edited by

Bristow.

5 Quotations from the sonnets are based on A Supplement to the Edition of

Shakespeare, Published in 1778 by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. Vol. 1.

6 The Complete Works edited by Bristow, xxx-xxxi.

7 Quotations are based on Collins’ Complete Works. Hereafter cited as “The

Portrait” with page numbers in parentheses.

8 Shaw, “Preface to The Dark Lady of The Sonnets.”

9 See Gail Marshall’s Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century. As to the publica-

tion in the nineteenth century, see also Murphy, Andrew’s Shakespeare in Print:

A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing.

10 In 1881, Wilde made a speech for a memorial of the building of the statue

at Stratford. See John Stokes’ “‘Shopping in Byzantium’: Oscar Wilde as

Shakespeare Critic.”

11 According to Schroeder, Massey’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets Never Before

Interpreted: His Private Friends is a source of “The Portrait.”

12 Another Victorian scholar Richard Simpson writes that Massey’s interpretation

49

saves “Shakespeare’s dignity” and “reputation,” making a safe interpretation to

a shocking story (Simpson 57, 58). It may be worth noting that Simpson’s An

Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is probably a source to

which Wilde referred when dismissing the Southampton theory in “The

Portrait.”

13 Charles Knight claimed that the sonnets’ order is “arbitrary” (189) and

attempted to rearrange their order. His edition, for example, starts with son-

nets 135-136 followed by 143, and then places the 127th sonnet, suggesting

that the dark woman might be Ann Hathaway. Sympathizing with Henry

Hallam’s opinion that “it is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never

written them” (228), Knight admits that the original order diminishes the

pleasure of reading.

14 In publishing “The Portrait,” Wilde was proud of giving “an entirely new

view” to the sonnets (Letters 398). The idea was suggested by the eighteenth

century scholar Tyrwhitt and published in the work edited by Malone in 1780.

Although the theory itself is not Wilde’s invention, it was Wilde to explore and

expand it into a critical work.

15 Wilde requested his publisher to include “The Portrait,” “too literary” to be

republished with other stories, in a volume of “essays and studies” with a fron-

tispiece portrait of Mr. W. H. (Letters 405).

16 “The Critic as Artist” in Complete Works.

Works Cited

Breuer, Horst. “Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”

English Language Notes. Vol. 42. 2004.

Bristow, Joseph and Rebecca N. Mitchell. Oscar Wilde’s Chatterton:

Literary History, Romanticism, and the Art of Forgery. New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2015.

Fineman, Joel. Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: the Invention of Poetic

Subjectivity in the Sonnets. Berkeley: University of California Press,

50

1986.

Halpern, Richard. Shakespeare’s Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in

the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud, and Lacan. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Hyde, Montgomery. The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Harmondsworth, Middlesex:

Penguin, 1962.

Knight, Charles, ed. The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of

William Shakespeare. 1844. Vol. 12. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Malone, Edmond, ed. A Supplement to the Edition of Shakespeare,

Published in 1778 by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. Vol. 1. C.

Bathurst, 1780. Google Books. 10 July 2007 <https://books.google.

co.jp/books?id=-iEJAAAAQAAJ&hl=ja&source=gbs_navlinks_s>.

Marshall, Gail, ed. Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Massey, Gerald. Shakespeare’s Sonnets Never Before Interpreted. 1866.

New Delhi: Isha Books, 2013.

Murphy, Andrew. Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of

Shakespeare Publishing. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University

Press, 2003.

Schroeder, Horst. “Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W. H.–Its Composition,

Publication and Reception.” Braunschweig: Privately printed, 1984.

Shaffer, Talia. “The Origin of the Aesthetic Novel: Ouida, Wilde and the

Popular Romance.” Wilde Writing: Contextual Conditions. Ed. Joseph

Bristow. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Shaw, George Bernard. Misalliance; The Dark Lady of the Sonnets; &,

Fanny’s First Play. London: Constable, 1932.

Simpson, Richard. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare’s

Sonnets. 1868. New York: AMS Press, 1973.

Stokes, John. “‘Shopping in Byzantium’: Oscar Wilde as Shakespeare

51

Critic.” Victorian Shakespeare. Ed. Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole.

Vol. 1. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1997.

Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. ed. Merlin Holland and

Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Fourth Estate, 2000.

---. The Picture of Dorian Gray: The 1890 and 1891 Texts. Ed. Joseph

Bristow. Vol. 3. of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2005.

---. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. London: Harper Collins, 2003.