The Duchess of Padua (e-book) (used book) | Oscar Wilde | bookbook.eu

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The Duchess of Padua - By Oscar Wilde - Classic Oscar Wilde. The Duchess of Padua is a play by Oscar Wilde: it is a five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at The Broadway Theatre in New York under the title Guido Ferranti on 26 January 1891, where it ran for three weeks. It is currently rarely revived or studied. Wilde first mentioned the possibility of writing a five-act blank verse tragedy in the Biograph in 1880, originally to be entitled The Duchess of Florence. He had difficulty, however, negotiating with her business manager and stepfather, Hamilton Griffin, whom Wilde referred to privately as "The Griffin" and "a padded horror." On 23 September 1882, all three met in Boston and agreed to open on 22 January 1883. In October, Wilde learnt they had decided to wait until September. Finally, a contract was signed in December - Wilde received 1,000 upfront, and 4,000 if the completed play was accepted by Anderson in March 1883, which she would then produce. This was far less than the 5,000 advance and royalty that Wilde had initially hoped for, describing the deal he got as "starvation wages." Wilde finished the play at the Hotel Voltaire in Paris by 15 March 1883, 14 days after Griffin's deadline. However, Anderson proved hard to communicate with, and provided a definite refusal in April.