Thomas Kilroy: Biography but with the Facts Changed

Price, Graham

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_4

Thomas Kilroy: Biography but with the Facts Changed

Graham Price²

Chapter
First Online: 24 October 2018

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Abstract

Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross and the Secret Fall of Constance Wilde are the primary focus of this chapter as a means of demonstrating how Kilroy uses the life and work of Oscar Wilde to create drama in which life and art are fused and identity and subjectivity are revealed as forms of performance art. Kilroy’s use of historical characters for the purposes of fictional theatre reveals him as a Wildean dramatist who rewrites history because he believes that is the only duty he owes to history.

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Notes

1.
Anthony Roche , ‘Thomas Kilroy: an Interview’. Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002). Special Issue on Kilroy, p. 153.
2.
Thomas Kilroy, ‘Synge and Modernism’, in J.M. Synge: Centenary Papers 1971, ed. Maurice Harmon (Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1972), p. 171.
3.
Thomas Kilroy, ‘Synge and Modernism’, p. 174.
4.
Quoted in Martha Ertman, ‘Oscar Wilde: Paradoxical Poster Child for Both Identity and Post-Identity’, Law and Social Inquiry, vol. 25, no. 1 (Winter, 2000), p. 153.
5.
Thomas Kilroy, Tea and Sex and Shakespeare (Meath: Gallery Press, 1976), p. 86.
6.
Anna McMullan , ‘Masculinity and Masquerade in Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde’, Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002). Special Issue on Kilroy, p. 136.
7.
The issue of gender roles in Double Cross and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde shall be discussed in more detail later on in the chapter. This section is solely concerned with a general critical overview of Kilroy’s main themes and issues.
8.
Gerald Dawe, ‘Thomas Kilroy’, Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1, Special Issue on Thomas Kilroy (Spring/Summer 2002), p. 36.
9.
Thomas Kilroy, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (Meath: Gallery Press, 1997), p. 25. All further references are to this edition and will be added parenthetically in the text.
10.
Gerald Dawe, ‘Thomas Kilroy’, p. 36.
11.
Thomas Kilroy, Tea and Sex and Shakespeare (Meath: Gallery Press, 1994), p. 13. All further references are to this edition and will be added parenthetically in the text.
12.
Kilroy’s enthusiasm for Field Day was eventually to wane and he resigned from the company in 1991. A full discussion of Kilroy’s involvement in the organisation can be found in Martine Pelletier’s essay, ‘“Against Mindlessness”: Thomas Kilroy and Field Day’, Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies (2002), pp. 110–126.
13.
This Introduction was written by Kilroy for the 1994 edition of Double Cross (Meath: Gallery Books, 1994), pp. 11–15.
14.
Thomas Kilroy, Double Cross (Meath: Gallery Press, 1994), p. 11. All further references are to this edition and will be added parenthetically in the text.
15.
Chritopher Murray , Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 217.
16.
For a thorough analysis of the importance of Thomas Kilroy’s drama to the artistic and theoretical project that is Field Day, see Aidan O’Malley, Field Day and the Translation of Irish Identities (London: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 143–156.
17.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 1125.
18.
Neil Sammells , ‘Oscar Wilde and the Politics of Style’, in The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, ed. Shaun Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 118.
19.
The law making homosexuality illegal was passed in England in 1885, exactly ten years before Wilde was imprisoned for same-sex practices.
20.
That is the first direct reference to Wilde in Double Cross and it helps to make some of the more speculative Wildean readings in this chapter more feasible because Wilde is explicitly referenced as an influence on the character of Brendan Bracken.
21.
John McGahern’s ‘The Image’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (July 1991), p. 12 might conceivably be a source for Kilroy’s depiction of Bracken’s conception of art. In both Kilroy and McGahern , the concept of “the image” is central to artistic inspiration.
22.
Quoted in Noreen Doody, ‘Wilde, Yeats : Nation and Identity’, in New Voices in Irish Criticism vol. 1, ed. P.J. Matthews (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000), p. 32.
23.
Anthony Roche , Contemporary Irish Drama (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 145.
24.
Quoted in Noreen Doody, ‘Wilde, Yeats : Nation and Identity’, p. 28.
25.
All references to either Brendan Bracken or William Joyce are entirely confined to the characters that Tom Kilroy has created unless otherwise specifically stated.
26.
William Butler Yeats , Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1956), p. 135.
27.
William Butler Yeats , Autobiographies, p. 138.
28.
Curtis Marez, ‘The Other Addict: Reflections on Colonialism and Oscar Wilde’s Opium Smoke Screen’, ELH, vol. 64, no. 1 (1997), p. 264.
29.
Quoted in Roy Foster, W.B Yeats : A Life 1, Apprentice Mage, 1865–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 80.
30.
Mary Kenny, Germany Calling: A Personal Biography of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ (Dublin: New Island, 2003), p. 12.
31.
Mary Kenny, Germany Calling: A Personal Biography of William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, p. 152.
32.
Aidan O’Malley, Field Day and the Translation of Irish Identities, p. 154.
33.
The Importance of Being Earnest, p. 368.
34.
Quoted in Anne Varty, A Preface to Oscar Wilde (London and New York: Longman, 1997), p. 172.
35.
Oscar Wilde, ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 1093.
36.
James Joyce , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 213.
37.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 370.
38.
Ibid., p. 369.
39.
Ibid., p. 370.
40.
Oscar Wilde, ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 1093.
41.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, p. 381.
42.
Ibid., p. 370.
43.
Talia Schaffer has argued that one of Bram Stoker’s models for the character of Dracula was the image of the sinister and threatening Oscar Wilde that emerged during and after his trials. See Schaffer’s ‘“A Wilde Desire Took Me”: The Homoerotic History of Dracula’, ELH, vol 61, no. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 381–425.
44.
The discussion of the final act of doubling between these two characters shall take place at the conclusion of this section of the chapter.
45.
Anthony Roche , Contemporary Irish Drama, p. 208.
46.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 107.
47.
Ann McMullan , ‘Masculinity and Masquerade in Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde’, p. 131.
48.
Anthony Roche , Contemporary Irish Drama, p. 147.
49.
This is an obvious reason for the use of a video recorder when the two characters are verbally addressing each other.
50.
Nicholas Grene , ‘Staging the Self: Person and Persona in Kilroy’s Plays’, Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002). Special Issue on Kilroy, p. 75.
51.
Eamonn Jordan . Dissident Dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish Theatre (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), p. 62.
52.
Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1, Special Issue on Thomas Kilroy (Spring/Summer 2002), p. 139.
53.
Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, p. 139.
54.
Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, p. 141.
55.
Quoted in Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, p. 141. Mason is not entirely correct in his assertion that Constance refused Wilde access to his children immediately following his release from prison. It was only after Lord Alfred Douglas re-entered Wilde’s life that Constance adopted this course of action. See Richard Ellmann , Oscar Wilde, p. 532. This inaccuracy in Kilroy’s play can be viewed as an example of biographical fact being altered for dramatic purposes.
56.
Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, pp. 140–141.
57.
Patrick Mason, ‘Acting Out’, p. 144.
58.
This was alluded to earlier in this chapter but shall be elaborated on at this point.
59.
Judith Butler , Undoing Gender (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 25.
60.
Flavia Rando, ‘Reflections on a Name: We’re Here: Gay and Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History’, Art Journal, vol. 55 (Winter 1996), p. 8.
61.
‘Changing the Subject: Judith Butler’s Politics of Radical Resignification: Interview with Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham’, in The Judith Butler Reader, ed. Sara Salih with Judith Butler (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006), p. 353.
62.
This line appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 140.
63.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, p. 399.
64.
Dorian Gray utters almost those exact words in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 111.
65.
Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 85. In Queer Phenomenology, Ahmed is drawing on the phenomenological theories of Husserl and Foucault.
66.
See Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde (London: Penguin Books, 1988), p. 394.
67.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, p. 371.
68.
Ibid., p. 408.
69.
Christopher Craft, ‘Alias Bunbury: Desire and Termination in The Importance of Being Earnest’, Representations, no. 31 (1990), p. 21.
70.
For the most thorough Queer reading of The Importance of Being Earnest, see Christopher Craft’s ‘Alias Bunbury: Desire and Termination in The Importance of Being Earnest’, pp. 19–46.
71.
See H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (New York, 1975), p. 333.
72.
Christopher Craft, ‘Alias Bunbury: Desire and Termination in The Importance of Being Earnest’, p. 41.
73.
This play is comparable to Brenda Maddox’s biography, Nora, which told the story of James Joyce’s partner, Nora Barnacle. In that work, Nora’s life was given priority over Joyce’s.
74.
The relationship between Constance and Wilde in this play bears comparison with Frank and Grace’s in Faith Healer. In both works, the artistic men construct their female companions according to a male concept of femininity.
75.
Rita Felski, ‘The Counterdiscourse of the Feminine in Three Texts by Wilde, Huysmans and Sacher-Masoch’, PMLA, vol. 106, no. 5 (Oct 1991), p. 1094.
76.
Quoted earlier in the chapter.
77.
Lady Windermere’s Fan is actually far more complex in its depiction of ‘good women’. By the play’s conclusion, the concept of goodness as it resides in the female gender is completely problematic and the character that would conventionally be described as a ‘bad woman’, Mr Erlynne, is christened as ‘a good woman’. Wilde, Oscar, Lady Windermere’s Fan (Harper Collins, 1994), p. 464.
78.
Garry Leonard, ‘A Nothing Place: Secrets and Sexual Orientation in Joyce’, in Quare Joyce, ed. Joseph Valente (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 78. Leonard, in making this argument, is drawing on the theories of Lacan, Foucault and Zizek.
79.
Anna McMullan , ‘Masculinity and Masquerade in Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde’, Irish University Review, vol. 32, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002). Special Issue on Kilroy: p. 136.
80.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Sphinx Without a Secret’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 208.
81.
Ibid., p. 208.
82.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 892.
83.
Although My Scandalous Life was never officially performed, a rehearsed reading of the play (commissioned by The Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin) was given at the Peacock Theatre in December 2000. Lord Alfred Douglas: Mark Lambert. Stage directions: Jane Brennan. Voices (offstage): Michael J. Forde. Director: David Parnell. Lighting Design: Mick Doyle. Lighting operator: Kevin McFadden. Sound: David Nolan. Stage director: Catriona Behan. Slides: Sinead O’Hanlon. See Thierry Dubost’s The Plays of Thomas Kilroy: A Critical Study (Jefferson and London: McFarland Publishing), 2007, p. 182.
84.
Thomas Kilroy, My Scandalous Life (Meath: Gallery Press, 2004), p. 9. All subsequent references are to this edition.
85.
My Scandalous Life p. 27.
86.
Most readings of Faith Healer have focused on the value of deconstructive readings of the play as a work where language is de-stabilised and rendered inadequate as a conveyor of truth. See Richard Kearney’s ‘Language Play: Brian Friel and Ireland’s Verbal Theatre’, in Brian Friel: A Casebook, ed. William Kerwin (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), pp. 77–116, and Karen De Vinney’s ‘Monologue as Dramatic Action in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer and Molly Sweeney ’, Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 45, no. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 110–119.

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University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
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Price, G. (2018). Thomas Kilroy: Biography but with the Facts Changed. In: Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_4
Published: 24 October 2018
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