After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City under the title Guido Ferranti on 26 January 1891, where it ran for three weeks.
[1] 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.
[2] Wilde was strongly influenced by Lucrezia Borgia (1833) and Angelo, Tyrant of Padua (1835), two Italian-set historical plays by Victor Hugo.
[3] Wilde originally wanted Mary Anderson for the title role: "I cannot write the scenario until I see you and talk to you.
All good plays are a combination of the dream of a poet and that practical knowledge of the actor which gives concentration to the action...I want you to rank with the great actresses of the earth...having in you a faith which is as flawless as it is fervent I doubt not for a moment that I can and will write for you a play which, created for you and inspired by you, shall give you the glory of a Rachel, and may yield me the fame of a Hugo.
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.
[8] The play was unexpectedly rediscovered by American actor Lawrence Barrett in 1889, who contacted Wilde about producing it.
Wilde agreed to meet him in July to discuss the play, writing he was "very glad to make any alterations in it you can suggest".
[9] Among these changes Barrett suggested was the new title Guido Ferranti, named after the lead hero rather than heroine, under which he claimed it would have greater success.
[10] The play was first produced in January 1891 in New York, with Barrett in the role of Ferranti and Minna K. Gale as the Duchess of Padua.
Wilde sought to produce a second run of the play in London, but was refused by both Henry Irving and George Alexander.
Their kiss is interrupted by a servant, who delivers to Guido his father's dagger - the sign from Moranzone that he should now kill the Duke.
"[13] Mary Anderson, however, was less enthusiastic: "The play in its present form, I fear, would no more please the public of today than would 'Venus Preserved' or 'Lucretia Borgia'.
"[14] William Winter reviewed the first production in The New York Tribune on 27 January 1891: "The new play is deftly constructed in five short acts, and is written in a strain of blank verse that is always melodious, often eloquent, and sometimes freighted with fanciful figures of rare beauty.
Leonée Ormond suggests several reasons for this: it is "quite unlike the plays for which Wilde is most famous, and biographers and critics have been inclined to say that it is unstageable, that it draws too heavily upon Shakespeare, Jacobean tragedy and Shelley’s The Cenci.
"[12] Robert Shore commented on the play itself while reviewing a rare contemporary production: "...his tale of Renaissance realpolitik, revenge and big love is about as far removed from the sophisticated social ironies of The Importance of Being Earnest as you can get.
Shakespearean archetypes stand behind the action - especially Lady Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet - but the smoothness of the verse means Wilde's characters never burn with the knotty tormented passion of their dramatic forebears.