“Until the great suffering, it is all guesswork” : David Hare, Oscar Wilde e a história bíblica em The Judas Kiss

Abstract

This study analyzes the drama The Judas Kiss (1998), written by the British David Hare, which contemplates two decisive situations in the life of the writer Oscar Wilde: the moments immediately before his arrest and his abandonment by Lord Alfred Douglas. By connecting stylistic and thematic features of the play with biblical texts, with Wilde’s work and his biographies, it detects similarities and distinctions between the representations encompassed in two centuries of history; it establishes intertextual connections that provide further interpretations of the contemporary play, while pointing out political and social functions that these figures expose of each other. Making use mainly of the work gathered by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode for biblical interpretation within the literary scope, the texts of Ellis Hanson and Richard Ellmann on the life and works of Wilde, and Scott Fraser’s analysis of Hare’s work, as well as Ben Wilson’s volume on the formation of Victorian values, it associates both protagonists of the theater play to the biblical referents and highlights the meanings expressed by this association in the different kinds of literature covered. In this context, the images used in the play, like bread, water, herbs, the fisherman and the dawn, are associated with their representativity in the Bible and in the collection of Wilde’s work. Furthermore, the present study supports Wilde’s referentiality as Christ in his own work and in the recurrent comparison after his death, as well as in aspects of his biography itself.