The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Oscar Wilde
Anyways, this book is one of the ones we read. Unfortunately, I didn't quite find it to be one of those unique works I just spoke of. Let me explain.
This book is essentially Oscar Wilde's way of sharing a theory about Shakespeare's sonnets (though whether or not he believes it is hard to say). The theory, briefly, is that the poems are written to a young Willie Hughes who acted in Shakespeare's company. The flaw with the theory is that there is no evidence of this Willie Highes outside of the sonnets.
The theory is framed by a story of several men discussing the theory, and the rest is written from the narrator's perspective as he finds evidence to support the theory. One man, who dies for his theory (as it is one that he made up) fakes a picture of Willie Hughes in order to provide "external evidence" because he believes that his theory is true and he thinks that this will be enough to help doubters see the truth. The main character goes through all the work to find potential proof, but after a very long-winded section explaining it all, he does not confirm or deny his belief in the truth of the theory.
I could have done without all of thedetailed analysis of the sonnets and old records in order to find proof for the existence of W. H. It was helpful to see where the theory came from, but it was very dry to read. I did, however, find the framing narrative fairly interesting. If Wilde was going for creative non-fiction, he could have done it with a it more continuity concerning the story-telling aspect. Perhaps he was afraid that doing that would make it hard for readers to see the potential validity of the theory itself. Then again, I wasn't there when he wrote it, so I have no idea why he wrote it this way.
If you are interested in the theory, this might be worth looking at.
Comments
Post a Comment