The Invention of Love
He may keep that will and can;
And how am I to face the odds
Ask most people to name a homosexual British poet of the late Victorian era and they’ll almost certainly say Oscar Wilde: actually an Irishman, Wilde has come to epitomize the perils and pleasures of gay English life in the late 1800s, especially to Americans. Many are familiar with the sexual subtexts of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as with De Profundis, the heart-wrenching missive Wilde wrote to his beloved Alfred Douglas in Reading Gaol, where he was imprisoned for “gross indecency” after his homosexuality was exposed.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Wilde and Housman make a fascinating study in contrasts–two sides of the same three-dollar bill, as it were. They studied classical literature at Oxford at the same time, but where Wilde was a stellar student–and a prizewinning poet by his mid-20s–Housman failed his exams and didn’t even start writing poetry until his 30s. Being a late bloomer eventually worked to his advantage, however. His books of verse, A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922), affirmed him as one of England’s finest poets, as did two posthumously published collections. And his humiliation at school prompted a postcollegiate course of self-education in the reading room of the British Museum; eventually he became one of the most learned and controversial literary critics of all time, defying traditional interpretations of Latin poetry by exposing errors of transcription that had crept into the texts over centuries.
Despite magnificent performances by Broadway veteran Paxton Whitehead and Chicago actor Guy Adkins as the old and young Housman, Stoppard’s attempts to steep his audience in the political and cultural context of Housman’s time ultimately undermine the play’s dramatic potential. Certainly in Charles Newell’s staging The Invention of Love often comes off as a lecture despite its occasional music-hall comic tone; too much information is spoken at us, not shown to us.
The half-moon westers low, my love,
