• A new volume in the Oxford English Texts edition of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
• Provides full critical editions of these three plays
• Includes comprehensive, near-book length introductions, which set a fuller context for reading and understanding the plays
• The first public edition of Duchess of Padua, making this important play available for the first time
• The only edition of Salomé to identify and take into account all three manuscripts
• Resolves long-standing questions of Wilde's hand in Douglas's translation of Salomé

  
This is the first collection of plays in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde series edited by Ian Small. It contains full-dress critical editions, at the high editorial standard of the familiar Oxford English Texts series, encompassing all surviving manuscript material and all other relevant documents, of three of Wilde's plays: The Duchess of Padua, the original French Salomé, and the first English translation, by Lord Alfred Douglas. The edition contains comprehensive introductions and editorial introductions, as well as extensive annotations. The Duchess of Padua is one of two early plays by Wilde (the other being Vera; or, The Nihilists) that signify his youthful interest in making his mark on the contemporary theatre. They are imperfect works, but they show the real talent and definite promise that would be fulfilled, in the early 1890s, first with Lady Windermere's Fan (completed 1891, produced 1892) and then, almost simultaneously, with the next play in this volume, Wilde's French Salomé, written also in 1891, completed in 1892, but not published until 1893: his only work written in French. Douglas's translation, which left the author of the French work disappointed by its 'schoolboy' quality, is also included here since it was issued over Wilde's name (and dedicated to Douglas, 'the translator of my play') and is indisputably part of Wilde's oeuvre.