+

The Importance of Being Lavender, A Serious Speech for Queer People

+The Importance of Being

Earnest

“If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.”

― Oscar WildeThe Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

+

Eleganza Extravaganza

RuPaul

+Oscar Wilde & Lord Alfred Douglas

Stephen Fry as Wilde and Jude Law as Lord Alfred Douglas (Wilde 1997)

+

I am the Love that dare not speak its name

'Sweet youth,

Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove

These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth

What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'

Then straight the first did turn himself to me

And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,

But I am Love, and I was wont to be

Alone in this fair garden, till he came

Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill

The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'

Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,

I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

“Two Loves”, written by Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, was published in The Chameleon, December 1894.

The fragment to the right is well-known for having been used against Oscar Wilde in his 1895 trials.

+

An exciting time to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer or transsexual in America

+

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Algernon Moncrieff played by Rupert Everett The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

+

The struggle that eventually emerged in the century following Wilde’s conviction for sodomy…

+“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction

means.”

+

What Fiction means…

+“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

+

Ellen, Neil, Ru & Wanda

+“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up”

+

Condragulations!!

+ Now, let th

e

music play!

This is the beginning, the beginning! This is the beginning of the rest of your life!

This is the beginning, the beginning! This is the beginning of the rest of your life!