Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Moises Kaufman
Original price was: $14.00.$6.99Current price is: $6.99.
Moises Kaufman’s award-winning Gross Indecency powerfully reimagines Oscar Wilde’s three infamous trials, blending courtroom transcripts, letters, and Wilde’s own writings into a compelling portrait of brilliance under siege. As Wilde’s libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry spirals into criminal prosecution for “gross indecency,” the play reveals the cultural anxieties and moral hypocrisies that led to his downfall. Intimate, incisive, and theatrically bold, this modern classic captures both Wilde’s genius and the brutal repression of his era.
1 in stock
Description
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Lambda Literary Award)
Paperback – January 27, 1998
by Moises Kaufman (Author)
Remainder – offered at half the cover price
Winner of the 1998 Lambda Literary Award, Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde transforms one of history’s most infamous legal battles into a vivid, deeply human portrait of genius, persecution, and the devastating power of public morality. With extraordinary theatrical craftsmanship, Kaufman reconstructs the legal proceedings that brought down Oscar Wilde—an artist who dared to live and love beyond the confines of Victorian England.
The play begins in April 1895, when Wilde sues the Marquess of Queensberry for libel after being accused of “posing as a sodomite.” What follows is a rapid and tragic unraveling. Through courtroom testimony, newspaper accounts, private correspondence, and Wilde’s own dazzling words, Kaufman reveals how the initial trial quickly turns against Wilde himself—leading to his arrest, prosecution, and eventual imprisonment for “gross indecency.”
Layering historical documents with dramatic interpretation, Gross Indecency exposes the hypocrisies and anxieties of a society determined to police sexuality and punish difference. It captures Wilde in all his brilliance and vulnerability: a literary giant whose wit could not shield him from the social forces bent on his destruction. At once intellectually rigorous and emotionally gripping, the play illuminates not only Wilde’s fall but the cultural tensions that continue to echo in modern conversations about art, queerness, and justice.
A landmark work of documentary theater, Gross Indecency remains essential reading—provocative, elegant, and unflinching in its portrayal of one man’s courage and the society that condemned him.
May contain a remainder mark
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.