It is said that Wilde’s play was insanely popular in his day (it was Murray Rothbard’s favorite!), and I can see why: it was a send up of the elites that wanted to freeze or rollback history – an affectionate one but it was still cutting and devastating. The message seems to be: we should live in a world in which we can all be what we want to be, with nothing standing in the way of the realization of our highest and best ideals. We are all artists, and our lives are the canvas.
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