During
the course of his cross-examination, Wilde was repeatedly asked to explain his various epigrams. Having to
explain negates the entire epigrammatic position: the discourses are suddenly
claimed unfamiliar, the intervention unrecognizable, the mastery invalid, and
the epigram unrepeatable. The epigrammist is silenced. But each time we see one
of Wilde’s plays, we get to see successful epigrammatology at work. Through
that process, the characters achieve the new, the original, the epigrammatic.
Night after night, the theatre’s Jack is claimed and becomes Wilde’s Ernest.
Francesca
Coppa, in Reading Wilde, Querying Spaces p.19
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