Street in Camden, NJ, on January 31, 1882.
Right from the beginning, the
play shows Wilde reflected
through the eyes of Gilbert and
Sullivan, the famous Victorian
writers of comic operas that satirized the aesthetic movement of
the 1870s and ‘80s and all that
went with it: fads, vanity, and
pretentiousness.
Mary, an Irish-Catholic widow,
looks after Whitman. When the
tall and handsome Wilde arrives
at Whitman’s humble and overcrowded home, he is all done
up with his famous fur coat
and pantaloons, looking like a
Victorian male Madonna at a
gala. However, Mary doesn’t
believe in externals. “The
crowd seemed more impressed
with his appearance than his
speech,” she says.
Whistler’s Mary has a fine eye
for different layers of reality:
“You know the paper says he
lives ‘on beauty alone.’ All he
State Of The Arts Looks At Walt Whitman In Camden
March 2015
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