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"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life."
—Oscar Wilde
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"[He] is still occasionally mistaken for actor Gene Wilder, probably because he’s as close to Willy Wonka as any living human’s ever been."
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An Irish playwright of the Victorian Era; he lived in Victorian London. A huge celebrity of his day, known for his wit and social commentary. He habitually made perverse and snarky quips, and often immortalized them in his work. His most celebrated play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is still often performed today. He also wrote poetry, most famously The Ballad of Reading Gaol, one novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and several beautiful tales, including The Happy Prince.
His fun was interrupted when he sued for libel over being called homosexual. He was, in fact, homosexual (or maybe bisexual), but British law would still have found for him if that had been considered irrelevant. Instead, he lost, and since homosexuality was illegal... yeah. Real Life Downer Ending, there.
Famous for producing an enormous body of quotable wit- enormous enough that of the hundreds of quotes attributed to him, as many as half may resemble things he actually said. This tendency to gather misattributions is the root of his status as Uncyclopedia's Memetic Badass / Memetic Molester / Memetic Sex God in chief.
Works with their own pages:[]
Other works provide examples of:[]
- Alas, Poor Yorick or A Love to Dismember: Salome
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: An aversion drives the plot of An Ideal Husband.
- Author Avatar: The character with all the good lines generally; Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere's Fan and Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband specifically)
- Authors of Quote: Even within his own lifetime
- Author Tract: Nearly everything he wrote, to some extent.
- Badass
- Bedsheet Ghost: The Canterville Ghost.
- Blackmail: Mrs. Cheveley, twice, in An Ideal Husband. She fails both times. Mrs. Erlynne in Lady Windermere's Fan.
- Bomb Throwing Anarchist: Real life aversion. Wilde was an anarchist, but he was certainly no bomb-thrower.
- Break the Haughty: His incarceration after his trial.
- Camp Gay: or Camp Bi. It's thought that many of the modern Camp Gay stereotypes originated with Wilde's flamboyant public persona. If not the Trope Maker, he was certainly a Trope Codifier.
- Deadpan Snarker: Everyone in his plays. Everyone. The man himself as well.
- Double Standard: Several of his plays at least touch upon the unfairness of women's reputations being ruined by activities that men are allowed to get away with.
- Downer Ending: Various works, to say nothing of the last few years of his own life, which border on Diabolus Ex Machina territory.
- False Widow: Mrs. Arbuthnot from A Woman of No Importance.
- Famous Last Words: One of the last sentences he was believed to have said while dying of cerebral meningitis; "The wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do."
- Gallows Humor the aforementioned last words being an example on The Other Wiki.
- Hidden Depths: Lord Goring in An ideal husband.
- Humiliation Conga: Again, his imprisonment.
- Insane Troll Logic: "The Devoted Friend", "The Remarkable Rocket".
- Lover and Beloved: Bosie and him.
- Master Poisoner: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, according to Pen, Pencil, and Poison
- Narcissist: How he liked to act. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a book about this.
- Our Souls Are Different: "The Fisherman and his Soul"
- Pretty Boy: Bosie.
- Self-Plagiarism Some of the same bits of dialogue appear in more than one of his plays.
- Shakespeare in Fiction: "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."
- Smug Snake: Mrs. Cheveley in An Ideal Husband.
- Take That: To various cultures, places, and people for his satirical works.
- Title Drop: The Importance of Being Earnest; An Ideal Husband; A Woman of No Importance
- Upper Class Wit: Lots, including Wilde himself.