The picture of John Gray: with accompanying essay

This thesis consists of an original play script and an accompanying essay. The play, entitled The Picture of John Gray, is based loosely on a true story. The play’s protagonist is John Gray and, through the course of the play, the audience observes his journey from idealistic, young poet, to mature, world-wary priest. It also witnesses his relationship with Andre Raffalovich. Thematically, the play explores love and friendship under pressure, the necessity of marriage, the relationship between laws and morality, and the reality of life for homosexuals in a society that does not understand or accept them. The accompanying essay considers the process of writing this play, with particular attention paid to the creation of viable, dramatic characters from historical figures. It is divided into three sections. The first focuses on why I decided to write the story. The second section explores how I decided who the central characters of the play were and which characters the play could do without. The third section then explores the characters in the play, their relationships with each other and the differences between the characters and the historical figures on which they were based. The essay then concludes with an evaluation

Traces of Wilde: Fact and Fiction in Dorian: An Imitation

The life and art of Oscar Wilde are of enduring interest to contemporary readers and audiences who remain fascinated not only by his work, but also by his biography. The dramatic nature of the three trials that took place in 1895, and Wilde's spectacular fall from grace following imprisonment and exile, speak to our own period in which questions of gender and sexuality are topics of continuing tension and concern. This essay examines two examples of contemporary writing that are informed by Wilde's biography and oeuvre: Will Self's novel, Dorian: An Imitation (2002), and Craig Wilmann's drama, The Picture of John Gray (2014), and offers the first academic analysis of Wilmann's play. Exploring these works through the lens of neo-Victorianism, it considers the balance between history and fiction in each text. Drawing on Ricoeur's treatise The Reality of the Historical Past (1984), it proposes that Ricoeur's concept of the Analogue, which encompasses both the imaginative reconstruction of the past through the documentary trace and the adoption of the critical distance required to understand it, provides a new way in which neo-Victorian literature might be understood