For Love of the King

For Love of the King: A Burmese Masque is a short dramatic fantasy published in 1922 under the name of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), presented as a masque written by Wilde in 1894 for the wife of a friend. The piece is a jewelled Orientalist fantasy of a Burmese king who takes a half-Italian bride in secret, written in elaborate stage directions more than dialogue. Its authenticity was challenged almost immediately: the bibliographer Christopher Millard doubted it, and the typescript’s provenance was attacked in a famous 1925-26 libel case. Scholars today generally treat the attribution as doubtful at best. The text remains in print within the collected Wilde apocrypha and is of interest for the history of literary forgery and the posthumous Wilde market of the 1920s. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.