Editing Oscar Wilde (section)

=== Shorter fiction ===
[[File:Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) 1889, May 23. Picture by W. and D. Downey.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=A photograph of Oscar Wilde, dated to 23 May 1889.|Wilde by [[W. & D. Downey]] of Ebury Street, London, 1889]]
Wilde had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. He published ''[[The Happy Prince and Other Tales]]'' in 1888. In 1891 he published two more collections, ''[[Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories]]'', and in September ''[[A House of Pomegranates]]'' was dedicated "To Constance Mary Wilde".{{sfn|Mason|1972|pp=360–362}} "[[The Portrait of Mr. W. H.]]", which Wilde had begun in 1887, was first published in ''[[Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine]]'' in July 1889.{{sfn|Mason|1972|p=6}} It is a short story which reports a conversation in which the theory that [[Shakespeare's sonnets]] were written out of the poet's love of the boy actor "[[Willie Hughes]]", is advanced, retracted, and then propounded again. The only evidence for this is two supposed puns within the sonnets themselves.<ref>{{cite news |last=Lezard |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Lezard |date=29 March 2003 |title=Oscar Wilde's other portrait |work=[[The Guardian]] |location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/mar/29/classics.oscarwilde |access-date=14 April 2010 |archive-date=29 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130629202020/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/29/classics.oscarwilde |url-status=live}}</ref>

The anonymous narrator is at first sceptical, then believing, and finally flirtatious with the reader: he concludes that "there is really a great deal to be said of the Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's sonnets."{{sfn|Raby|1997|p=109}} By the end fact and fiction have melded together.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=280}} [[Arthur Ransome]] wrote that Wilde "read something of himself into Shakespeare's sonnets" and became fascinated with the "Willie Hughes theory" despite the lack of biographical evidence for the historical William Hughes' existence.{{sfn|Ransome|1912|p=101}} Instead of writing a short but serious essay on the question, Wilde tossed the theory to the three characters of the story, allowing it to unfold as background to the plot {{snd}} an early masterpiece of Wilde's combining many elements that interested him: conversation, literature and the idea that to shed oneself of an idea one must first convince another of its truth.{{sfn|Ransome|1912|p=102}} Ransome concludes that Wilde succeeds precisely because the literary criticism is unveiled with such a deft touch.

Though containing nothing but "special pleading" – it would not, he says "be possible to build an airier castle in Spain than this of the imaginary William Hughes" – we continue listening nonetheless to be charmed by the telling.{{sfn|Ransome|1912|p={{page needed|date=May 2021}}}} "You must believe in Willie Hughes," Wilde told an acquaintance, "I almost do, myself."{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=280}}