ACT TWO
SCENE 1
Dorian Gray’s London house.
DORIAN GRAY and LORD HENRY WOTTON. Eighteen years have passed. LORD HENRY is visibly older, but DORIAN is
unchanged in appearance. He is leafing through the yellow-covered book that LORD HENRY gave him.
DORIAN: This book still fascinates me, Harry. Even after eighteen years I cannot free myself from its influence.
LORD HENRY: Yes, I thought you would like it.
DORIAN: I didn’t say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.
LORD HENRY: Ah, you have discovered that?
DORIAN: It seems to me to contain the story of my own life, written before I have lived it.
LORD HENRY: Like the book’s wonderful hero, you have lived your life fully and completely, Dorian. You have
given form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream. But in one point you are
more fortunate than the novel’s hero. You have never had any cause to know that grotesque dread of mirrors
occasioned by the decay of beauty.
DORIAN: People say that beauty is only superficial.
LORD HENRY: That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as thought. We live in an age that thinks
too much to be beautiful. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.
DORIAN: This is a poisonous book, Harry. Promise me that you will never lend it to anyone. It does harm.
LORD HENRY: My dear boy, you are beginning to moralise. You will soon be going about warning people against
all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. As for being poisoned by
a book, there is no such thing. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly
sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
DORIAN: As I look back upon man moving through History, I am haunted by a feeling of loss. So much has been surrendered!
And to such little purpose!
LORD HENRY: Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis
of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. A new Hedonism
- that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol, Dorian.
DORIAN: The more I know of life, the more I desire to know. I have mad hungers that grow more ravenous as I feed them.
I search for sensations at once new and delightful. There is no mood of the mind that has not its counterpart in the
senses. The true nature of the senses has never been understood.
LORD HENRY: Men feel a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves.
DORIAN: The senses have remained savage and animal merely because the world has sought to starve them into submission
or kill them by pain, instead of aiming to make them elements in a new spirituality.
LORD HENRY: Yes. A new Hedonism would recreate life, and save it from the harsh puritanism of our age. It would teach
man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is but itself a moment.
DORIAN: And yet the remembrance even of joy has its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain. I long for
experience without its inevitable fruits.
LORD HENRY: Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes. It has no motive power. All that it really
demonstrates is that our future will be the same as our past, and that the sin we have done once, and with loathing,
we will do many times, and with joy.
DORIAN: Sometimes I waken before dawn, after one of those nights haunted by phantoms more terrible than reality
itself, and long to open my eyelids on a world that has been refashioned anew for my pleasure, a world in which
the past would have little or no place, or survive in no conscious form of obligation or regret. Perhaps I should
not tell you such things.
LORD HENRY: You cannot help telling me, Dorian. All through your life you will tell me everything you do.
DORIAN: Yes, Harry, that is true. You have always had a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would
come and confess it to you. You would understand me.
LORD HENRY: People like you don’t commit crimes, Dorian. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. You
are like one of those whom Dante describes as having sought to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.”
DORIAN: Beauty to me is but a means of forgetfulness, a mode by which I can escape from a fear that seems at times
to be almost too great to bear.
LORD HENRY: My dear boy, what have you to fear, with your charming smile and the infinite grace of that wonderful
youth that never seems to leave you? Society is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who
are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners, however insincere, are more important than morals.
DORIAN: But is not insincerity a terrible thing?
LORD HENRY: I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Man is a being with myriad
lives and sensations, whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead: Tiberius, Caligula, Nero -
all those terrible figures that have made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety.
DORIAN: There is a horrible fascination in them. There are times when I feel that I have known them all. I see them at
night, and they trouble my imagination in the day.
LORD HENRY: Evil is simply a mode through which you can realise your conception of the beautiful, Dorian. By the way,
what has happened to that wonderful portrait Basil did of you?
DORIAN: I sent it down to Selby.
LORD HENRY: I don’t recall seeing it there.
DORIAN: It got mislaid - stolen on the way.
LORD HENRY: What a pity. It was really a masterpiece. (He stands.) Now I am afraid I must be going. Will you join me at
the club? It has been a charming evening, and we must end it charmingly. There is someone at White’s who has begged me
to introduce him to you - Young Lord Poole, Bournemouth’s eldest son. He rather reminds me of you.
DORIAN: I hope not. But I am tired tonight, Harry.
LORD HENRY: Do come.
DORIAN: Very well, I may join you later.
LORD HENRY: I shall expect you. Good-bye, Dorian.
(Exit.)
DORIAN: Dear, charming, poisonous Harry! He knows nothing of the locked room at the top of the house where I have hidden the portrait whose changing features show me the degradation of my life. Once it gave me pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late I have felt no such pleasure, when I think of the ruin I have brought upon my soul.( There is a knock on the door. DORIAN starts.) Who can that be? Harry must have forgotten something.
(He goes to open the door. Enter BASIL HALLWARD.)
BASIL: Dorian! I am glad to find you at home.
DORIAN: Basil! It is very late. The servants are all in bed.
BASIL: I am off to Paris by the midnight train, and I particularly wanted to see you before I left.
DORIAN: I am sorry you are going away, Basil, as I have not seen you for ages. But I suppose you will be back soon?
BASIL: No. I am going to be out of England for six months. I intend to take a studio in Paris, and shut myself up
until I have finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it was about yourself I wanted to talk.
DORIAN: I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.
BASIL: I must say it to you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake that I am speaking. I think it right that
you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London.
DORIAN: I don’t wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t
interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
BASIL: They must interest you, Dorian. You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded. Mind you,
I can’t believe these rumours at all when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot
be concealed. But you, Dorian, with your innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth - I can’t believe anything
against you. And yet, why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it?
DORIAN: It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows anything about mine.
BASIL: Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide.
You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were
inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son, and his career? And the
young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now?
DORIAN: Stop, Basil! You are talking about things of which you know nothing. You ask me about Henry Ashton and Young Perth.
Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? If Kent’s silly son takes his wife from the streets, what
is that to me? If Adrian Singleton writes his friend’s name across a bill, am I his keeper? I know how people chatter
in England. It is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
BASIL: One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour,
of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You
led them there, and yet you can smile. And there is worse. I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason,
if for none other, you should not have made his sister’s name a by-word.
DORIAN: Take care, Basil. You go too far.
BASIL: When you met Lady Gwendoline, not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single decent woman in
London now who would drive with her in the Park? Why, even her children are not allowed to live with her. Then there are
other stories - that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest
dens in London. Can they be true? When I first heard them I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. Don’t
shrug your shoulders like that. Don’t be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil.
They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house,
for shame of some kind to follow after. I don’t know whether it is so or not. How should I know? Know you? I wonder
do I know you? Before I answer that, I should have to see your soul.
DORIAN: To see my soul!
BASIL: Yes. But only God can do that.
DORIAN: You shall see it yourself, tonight! Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn’t you look at it? You can
tell the world about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did, they would like me the
better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, you have chattered
enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see.
BASIL: This is blasphemy, Dorian!
DORIAN: You think so?
BASIL: I know so. You must give me some answer to these charges. Deny them, Dorian! I shall believe you. My God!
Don’t tell me that you are bad and corrupt, and shameful!
DORIAN: Come upstairs, Basil. I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it
is written. I shall show it to you.
BASIL: If you wish it, Dorian. I see I have missed my train. It makes no matter. I can go tomorrow. But don’t ask
me to read anything tonight. All I want is a plain answer to my question.
DORIAN: That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. You will not have to read long.
(He leads BASIL off.)
SCENE 2
The old schoolroom at the top of Dorian Gray’s house.
Enter DORIAN and BASIL. The picture is covered with a shawl.
DORIAN: You insist on knowing, Basil?
BASIL: Yes.
DORIAN: I am delighted. You are the one man in the world who is entitled to know everything about me. You have had
more to do with my life than you think. (He removes the cover from the picture and stands back to watch BASIL’s reaction.)
BASIL: Good heavens! It is your face! But what horror ...?
DORIAN: So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? You are looking at mine. Yes, it is your own picture.
BASIL: I never did that! It is some foul parody!
DORIAN: It is your own. See, your name in the left-hand corner.
BASIL: What does it mean?
DORIAN: Years ago, when I was a boy, you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day
you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished the portrait of
me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, that, even now, I don’t know whether I regret or not,
I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer ...
BASIL: I remember it! Oh, how well I remember it! No, the thing is impossible! The room is damp. Mildew has got into
the canvas. The paints I used had some wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible.
DORIAN: Ah, what is impossible?
BASIL: You told me you had destroyed it.
DORIAN: I was wrong. It has destroyed me.
BASIL: I don’t believe it is my picture.
DORIAN: (Bitterly.) Can’t you see your ideal in it?
BASIL: My ideal, as you call it ...
DORIAN: As you called it.
BASIL: There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again.
This is the face of a satyr.
DORIAN: It is the face of my soul.
BASIL: Christ! What a thing I must have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil.
DORIAN: Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him, Basil.
BASIL: My God! If it is true, and this is what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse even than those
who talk against you fancy you to be! (He sits on the chair by the table.) Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! Pray,
Dorian, pray. What is it that one was taught to say in one’s boyhood? “Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our
sins. Wash away our iniquities.” Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayers
of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. We are both punished.
DORIAN: It is too late, Basil.
BASIL: It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse
somewhere, “Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow”?
DORIAN: Those words mean nothing to me now.
BASIL: Hush! Don’t say that. You have done enough evil in your life. My God! Don’t you see that accursed thing
leering at us?
(DORIAN looks at the picture and then at BASIL. His face is suddenly suffused with hate. He seizes a knife and
stabs BASIL several times behind the ear. BASIL groans and chokes as he slumps forward over the table, dead.
DORIAN stands over him for a moment, breathing heavily, then he throws down the knife and goes to cover the
portrait. He looks at it and draws back with a shudder.)
DORIAN: What is that glistening on the hand? A red dew, as though the canvas had sweated blood! How horrible!
(He flings the cover over the picture. Then, averting his head so that he does not have to look at BASIL’s body,
he hurries from the room. Fade.)
SCENE 3
Dorian Gray’s house.
DORIAN is pacing up and down like a caged thing. Enter ALAN CAMPBELL.
DORIAN: Alan! Alan Campbell! This is kind of you. I thank you for coming.
ALAN: (Coldly.) I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But your note said it was a matter of life and death.
DORIAN: Yes: it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person. Sit down. Alan. In a locked room
at the top of this house a dead man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now. Don’t stir, and don’t
look at me like that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not concern you. What you
have to do is this -
ALAN: Stop, Gray. I don’t want to know anything further. Whether what you have told me is true or not doesn’t
concern me. I entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself. They don’t
interest me any more.
DORIAN: Alan, this one will have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can’t help myself.
You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the matter. I have no option. Alan,
you are scientific. You know about chemistry and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you have
got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs - to destroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left.
Nobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in Paris. He will
not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change
him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may scatter in the air.
ALAN: You are mad, Dorian.
DORIAN: Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.
ALAN: You are mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession.
I will have nothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my reputation
for you? What is it to me what devil’s work you are up to?
DORIAN: It was suicide, Alan.
ALAN: I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy.
DORIAN: Do you still refuse to do this for me?
ALAN: Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t care what shame comes to you.
You have deserved it all. I should not be sorry to see you publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of all men
in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. Go to your friends.
Don’t come to me.
DORIAN: Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don’t know what he had made me suffer.
ALAN: Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not inform upon you. It is not my business.
Besides, without my stirring in the matter, you are certain to be arested. Nobody ever commits a crime without doing
something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it.
DORIAN: Alan, I beg you to do this. We were friends once, Alan.
ALAN: Don’t speak of those days, Dorian: they are dead.
DORIAN: The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. Alan! Alan! If you don’t come to my assistance
I am ruined. Why, they will hang me, Alan! Don’t you understand? They will hang me for what I have done.
ALAN: There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do anything in the matter. It is insane of
you to ask me.
DORIAN: You refuse?
ALAN: Yes.
DORIAN: I entreat you, Alan.
ALAN: It is useless.
(DORIAN writes something on a piece of paper, folds it and hands it to ALAN, who looks at it in surprise and opens it.)
DORIAN: I am sorry for you, Alan, but you leave me no alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is.
(He takes an envelope from his pocket.) You see the address. If you don’t help me, I will send it. You know what
the result will be. I tried to spare you. But you are going to help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now.
The thing is quite simple. Come. Face it, and do it. Come, Alan, you must decide at once.
ALAN: (Mechanically.) I cannot do it.
DORIAN: You must. You have no choice. Don’t delay.
ALAN: (After a moment’s hesitation.) Is there a fire in the room upstairs?
DORIAN: Yes, a gas-fire.
ALAN: I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory.
DORIAN: No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write down what you want, and my servant will take a cab and bring the things back to you.
ALAN: (Writing.) You are infamous, absolutely infamous!
DORIAN: Hush, Alan: you have saved my life.
ALAN: Your life? Good heavens! What a life that is! You have gone from corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. In doing what I am going to do, what you force me to do, it is not of your life that I am thinking.
DORIAN: Ah, Alan, I wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you. (ALAN hands him the paper.) Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. I don’t think I can go up with you.
ALAN: It is nothing to me. I don’t require you. When I have done what you asked me to do, let us never see each other again.
DORIAN: You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that.
( ALAN goes off one way, DORIAN another.)
SCENE 4
Lady Narborough’s house.
Enter LADY NARBOROUGH, DORIAN GRAY and LORD HENRY WOTTON.
LADY NARBOROUGH: I am extremely glad I did not meet you in early life, Mr Gray. I know, my dear, I should
have fallen madly in love with you. As it was, I never had even a flirtation with anybody. It was all Narborough’s
fault. He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything.
Now, you shall sit beside me and amuse me.
(DORIAN smiles abstractedly.)
LORD HENRY: Dorian, what is the matter with you tonight? You are quite out of sorts.
LADY NARBOROUGH: I believe he is in love, and that he is afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite
right. I certainly should.
DORIAN: Dear Lady Narborough, I have not been in love for a whole week - not, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town.
LADY NARBOROUGH: How you men can fall in love with that woman! I really cannot understand it.
LORD HENRY: When she is in a very smart gown she looks like an edition de luxe of a bad French novel. She is really
wonderful, and full of surprises. When her third husband died her hair turned quite gold from grief.
DORIAN: How can you, Harry!
LADY NARBOROUGH It is a most romantic explanation. But her third husband, Lord Henry! You don’t mean to say Ferrol
is the fourth?
LORD HENRY: Certainly, Lady Narborough.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Four husbands! Upon my word! And what is Ferrol like? I don’t know him.
LORD HENRY: The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.
LORD HENRY: But what world is that? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Everybody I know says you are very wicked.
LORD HENRY: It is perfectly monstrous, the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back
that are absolutely and entirely true.
DORIAN: Isn’t he incorrigible?
LADY NARBOROUGH: I hope so. But really if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, I shall have to
marry again so as to be in the fashion.
LORD HENRY: You will never marry again, Lady Narborough. You were far too happy. When a woman marries again it is because
she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their
luck; men risk theirs.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Narborough wasn’t perfect.
LORD HENRY: If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady. Women love us for our defects. If we have
enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
LADY NARBOROUGH: If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever
be married.
DORIAN: Life is a great disappointment.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Ah, my dear, don’t tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that one knows that Life
has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, and I sometimes wish that I had been; but you are made to be good. I
must find you a nice wife. I shall go through Debrett carefully tonight, and draw out a list of all the eligible
young ladies.
DORIAN: With their ages, Lady Narborough?
LADY NARBOROUGH: Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done in a hurry. I want you both to
be happy.
LORD HENRY: What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
LADY NARBOROUGH: Ah! what a cynic you are. You must come and dine with me soon again. You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew prescribes for me. (Standing.) Now, mind you don’t stay too long over your politics and scandal. If you do, we are sure to squabble upstairs.
(Exit.)
LORD HENRY: Are you better, my dear fellow? You seemed rather out of sorts at dinner.
DORIAN: I am quite well, Harry. I am tired, that is all.
LORD HENRY: My cousin, the little Duchess, tells me she is going down to Selby Royal.
DORIAN: She has promised to come on the twentieth.
LORD HENRY: Is Monmouth to be there too?
DORIAN: Oh, yes, Harry.
LORD HENRY: He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman.
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. She has had experiences.
DORIAN: How long has she been married?
LORD HENRY: An eternity, she tells me. I believe it is ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been
like an eternity. By the way, Dorian, you did not join me at the club last night. What did you do after I left you?
DORIAN: I went out. I walked about. I forget what I did .... How inquisitive you are, Harry! You always want to
know what one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. I came in at half-past two, if you
wish to know the exact time. I had left my latch-key at home, and my servant had to let me in. If you want any
corroborative evidence on the subject you can ask him.
LORD HENRY: My dear fellow, as if I cared! Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. You are not
yourself tonight.
DORIAN: Don’t mind me, Harry. I am irritable and out of temper. I shall come round and see you tomorrow or next day.
Make my excuses to Lady Narborough. I shan’t go upstairs. I shall go home. I must go home.
LORD HENRY: All right, Dorian. I daresay I shall see you tomorrow at teatime. The Duchess is coming.
DORIAN: I will try to be there, Harry.
(Exit. LORD HENRY watches him with amused curiosity.)
SCENE 5
An opium den.
JAMES VANE, eighteen years older than when we saw him last, lies sprawled over a table, his head buried in his arms.
Two haggared WOMEN lounge nearby. Enter DORIAN in a common overcoat, with a muffler wrapped round his throat. He glances
round in fascination and disgust.
DORIAN: To cure the soul by means of the senses. My soul is sick to death. Innocent blood has been spilt. There is no
atonement for that. But though forgiveness is impossible, forgetfulness is possible still. I must forget.
FIRST WOMAN: Come and have something to drink.
DORIAN: I don’t want anything. To cure the soul by means of the senses. I can buy oblivion. Opium. The memory of old
sins can be destroyed by the madness of sins that are new. I am going to the other place.
FIRST WOMAN: On the wharf?
DORIAN: Yes.
SECOND WOMAN: That mad-cat is sure to be there. They won’t have her in this place now.
DORIAN: I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better.
SECOND WOMAN: Much the same.
DORIAN: I like it better.
FIRST WOMAN: Never mind. (She touches him on the arm. He flings her away.) We are very proud tonight.
DORIAN: For God’s sake don’t talk to me. What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don’t ever talk to me again. (He flings
her some money and turns to go.)
SECOND WOMAN: There goes the devil’s bargain!
DORIAN: Curse you! Don’t call me that!
FIRST WOMAN: Prince Charming is what you like to be called, ain’t it?
(JAMES VANE leaps to his feet, looks wildly round, grabs DORIAN, and points a revolver at his head.)
DORIAN: What do you want?
JAMES: Keep quiet. If you stir, I shoot you.
DORIAN: You are mad. What have I done to you?
JAMES: You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane, and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. Her death is
at your door. I swore I would kill you in return. For years I have sought you. I had no clue, no trace. The two
people who could have described you were dead. I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. Prince
Charming. Make your peace with God, for tonight you are going to die.
DORIAN: I never knew her. I never heard of her. You are mad.
JAMES: You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, you are going to die. Down on your knees!
I give you one minute to make your peace - no more. I go on board tonight for India, and I must do my job first.
One minute. That’s all.
DORIAN: Stop! How long ago is it since your sister died? Quick, tell me?
JAMES: Eighteen years. Why do you ask me? What do years matter?
DORIAN: Eighteen years! Set me in the light and look at my face!
(JAMES hesitates for a moment, not understanding. Then he seizes DORIAN and drags him into the light. )
DORIAN: How old do you think I am?
JAMES: My God! My God! And I would have murdered you!
DORIAN: You have been on the brink of committing a terrible crime, my man. Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands.
JAMES: Forgive me, sir. I was deceived. A chance word set me on the wrong track.
DORIAN: You had better go home, and put that pistol away, or you may get into trouble.
(Exit.)
FIRST WOMAN: Why didn’t you kill him? You fool! You should have killed him. He has lots of money, and he’s as bad as bad.
JAMES: He is not the man I am looking for, and I want no man’s money. I want a man’s life. The man whose life I want must be nearly forty now. That one was little more than a boy. Thank God, I have not got his blood upon my hands.
FIRST WOMAN: Little more than a boy! Why, man, it’s nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me what I am.
JAMES: You lie!
FIRST WOMAN: Before God I am telling the truth.
JAMES: Before God?
FIRST WOMAN: Strike me dumb if it ain’t so. He is the worst one that comes here.
SECOND WOMAN: They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.
FIRST WOMAN: It’s nigh on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn’t changed much since then. I have though.
JAMES : You swear this?
FIRST WOMAN: I swear it. But don’t give me away to him. I am afraid of him. Let me have some money for my night’s lodging.
(JAMES breaks away and rushes out after DORIAN.)
SCENE 6
Dorian Gray’s house at Selby Royal.
Enter DORIAN and GLADYS, the youngDuchess of Monmouth.
GLADYS: It was kind of you to invite us down to Selby Royal, Mr. Gray. Geoffrey says it has the best shooting
in the county.
DORIAN: Your brother is an excellent shot, Duchess.
(Enter LORD HENRY.)
LORD HENRY: Your husband has been describing to me the last Brazilian beetle that he has added to his collection,
Gladys. It has some dreadful name which I have already forgotten. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty
of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words.
That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled
to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
GLADYS: Then what should we call you, Harry?
DORIAN: His name is Prince Paradox.
GLADYS: I recognise him in a flash.
LORD HENRY: I won’t hear of it. From a label there is no escape! I refuse the title.
GLADYS: Royalties may not abdicate.
LORD HENRY: You wish me to defend my throne, then?
GLADYS: Yes.
LORD HENRY: I give the truths of tomorrow.
GLADYS: I prefer the mistakes of today.
LORD HENRY: You disarm me, Gladys. I never tilt at beauty.
GLADYS: That is your error, Harry. You value beauty far too much.
LORD HENRY: How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good.
But on the other hand no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than ugly.
GLADYS: Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?
LORD HENRY: Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them.
Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England what she is.
GLADYS: You don’t like your country, then?
LORD HENRY: I live in it.
GLADYS: That you may censure it the better. Yet we have done great things.
LORD HENRY: Great things have been thrust upon us.
GLADYS: I believe in the race.
LORD HENRY: It represents the survival of the pushing.
GLADYS: It has development.
LORD HENRY: Decay fascinates me more.
GLADYS: What of Art?
LORD HENRY: It is a malady.
GLADYS: Love?
LORD HENRY: An illusion.
GLADYS: Religion?
LORD HENRY: The fashionable substitute for Belief.
GLADYS: You are a sceptic.
LORD HENRY: Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
GLADYS: What are you?
LORD HENRY: To define is to limit.
GLADYS: Give me a clue.
LORD HENRY: Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth.
GLADYS: You bewilder me. Let us talk of someone else.
LORD HENRY: Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened Prince Charming.
DORIAN: Ah! Don’t remind me of that.
(JAMES VANE appears outside the French windows and stands unobserved watching DORIAN,.)
GLADYS: Our host is rather horrid this evening. I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely scientific principles as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly.
DORIAN: Well, I hope he won’t stick pins in you, Duchess.
GLADYS: Oh, my maid does that already, Mr. Gray.
DORIAN: You should give her warning.
GLADYS: I daren’t.
DORIAN: Why?
GLADYS: She invents hats for me out of nothing. All good hats are made out of nothing.
LORD HENRY: Like all good reputations, Gladys. Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular
one must be a mediocrity.
GLADYS: Not with women; and women rule the world. I assure you we can’t bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says,
love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.
DORIAN: It seems to me that we never do anything else.
GLADYS: Ah! then you never really love, Mr. Gray.
LORD HENRY: My dear Gladys! How can you say that? Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite
into an art. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that
experience as often as possible.
GLADYS: Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?
LORD HENRY: Especially when one has been wounded by it.
GLADYS: What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?
DORIAN: I always agree with Harry, Duchess.
GLADYS: Even when he is wrong?
DORIAN: Harry is never wrong, Duchess.
GLADYS: And does his philosophy make you happy?
DORIAN: I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.
GLADYS: And found it, Mr. Gray?
DORIAN: Often. Too often.
GLADYS: I am searching for peace.
DORIAN: Let me get you some orchids, Duchess.
(He gets up and turns towards the French windows where he sees JAMES VANE staring at him. He lets out a cry of terror.
JAMES disappears.)
LORD HENRY: My dear Dorian, what is the matter?
DORIAN: His face!
GLADYS: Whose face?
DORIAN: Outside the window!
LORD HENRY: Did you recognise him?
DORIAN: Yes!
GLADYS: Who was it?
DORIAN: No! I do not know who he is. Imagination. My conscience. He cannot know who I am. Harry, am I safe here?
LORD HENRY: Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell me what it is? You know I would help you.
DORIAN: I can’t tell you, Harry. And I dare say it is only a fancy of mine. Yet I have a horrible presentiment that something may happen to me.
LORD HENRY: What nonsense!
DORIAN: I hope it is, but I can’t help feeling it.
LORD HENRY: My dear Dorian, you must have overtired yourself. That is all.
GLADYS: You had better not come down to dinner, Mr. Gray.
LORD HENRY: I will take your place.
DORIAN: No, I will come down. I would rather come down. I must not be alone.
(Exeunt.)
SCENE 7
The same. Morning.
There is the sound of guns being fired, then a loud cry. Enter LORD HENRY and DORIAN in hunting clothes.
LORD HENRY: Poor Sir Geoffrey! To hit a beater! What an ass the man was to get in front of the guns. I have told
them that the shooting is stopped for today. It would not look well to go on.
DORIAN: I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry. The whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man ...?
LORD HENRY: I am afraid so. He got the whole charge of shot in the chest. He must have died almost instantaneously.
DORIAN: It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen.
LORD HENRY: My dear fellow, it can’t be helped. It was the man’s own fault.
DORIAN: Why did he get in front of the guns?
LORD HENRY: It’s nothing to do with us. It is rather awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not look good to
pepper beaters. It makes people think that one is a wild shot. And Geoffrey is not. But there is no use talking
about the matter.
DORIAN: It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something horrible were going to happen to us. To myself, perhaps.
LORD HENRY: There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for
that. Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the world that a man can want.
There is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you.
DORIAN: There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don’t laugh like that. I am telling you the
truth. The wretched peasant who has just died is better off than I am. I have no terror of Death. It is the coming
of Death that terrifies me.
LORD HENRY: How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow! You must come and see my doctor when we get back to town.
(Enter GLADYS.)
DORIAN: Ah! Here is the Duchess.
GLADYS: I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray. Poor Geoffrey is terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to
shoot the hare. How curious.
DORIAN: Yes, it was very curious. I don’t know what made me say it. Some whim, I suppose. It looked the loveliest of
little live things. But I am sorry they told you about the man. I wonder if the poor fellow was married or had any
people dependent on him. I should not like them to be left in want.
GLADYS: The gamekeeper told Geoffrey that they don’t know who he is.
DORIAN: Don’t know who he is?
LORD HENRY: What do you mean?
GLADYS: No one had ever seen him before. It seems he was a sailor.
DORIAN: A sailor?
LORD HENRY: Did you say a sailor?
GLADYS: Yes.
DORIAN: Was anything found on him? Anything that would tell his name?
GLADYS: There was no name of any kind. Just some money - not much, and a pistol.
DORIAN: James Vane!
LORD HENRY: Who?
DORIAN: I am safe! (He begins to sob with relief.)
LORD HENRY: My dear Dorian, whatever is the matter?
DORIAN: This unfortunate accident has upset me. Let us not mention it again. It is a hideous subject.
LORD HENRY: It is an annoying subject. It has no psychological value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on purpose, how interesting he would be! I should like to know someone who had committed a real murder.
GLADYS: How horrid of you, Harry! Isn’t it, Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint.
DORIAN: It is nothing, Duchess; my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is all. I didn’t hear what Harry said. Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must go and lie down. You will excuse me, won’t you?
(Exit.)
LORD HENRY: Are you very much in love with him?
GLADYS: I wish I knew.
LORD HENRY: Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
GLADYS: One may lose one’s way.
LORD HENRY: All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.
GLADYS: What is that?
LORD HENRY: Disillusion.
GLADYS: It was my dJbut in life.
LORD HENRY: It came to you crowned.
GLADYS: I am tired of strawberry leaves.
LORD HENRY: They become you.
GLADYS: Only in public.
LORD HENRY: You would miss them.
GLADYS: I will not part with a petal.
LORD HENRY: Monmouth has ears.
GLADYS: Old age is dull of hearing.
LORD HENRY: Has he not been jealous?
GLADYS: I wish he had been. (LORD HENRY glances round.) What are you looking for?
LORD HENRY: The button from your foil. You have dropped it.
GLADYS: I have still the mask.
LORD HENRY: It makes your eyes lovelier.
(They laugh and exeunt together.)
SCENE 8
Dorian Gray’s London house.
Enter DORIAN and LORD HENRY.
LORD HENRY: There is no use telling me that you are going to be good. You are quite perfect. Pray, don’t change.
DORIAN: No, Harry, I have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. I began my good
actions yesterday.
LORD HENRY: Where were you yesterday?
DORIAN: In the country. I was staying at a little inn by myself.
LORD HENRY: My dear boy, anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why
people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilised. Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain
to. There are only two ways by which a man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.
Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.
DORIAN: Culture and corruption. I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever
be found together. For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I have altered.
LORD HENRY: You have not yet told me what your good action was. Or did you say you had done more than one?
DORIAN: I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to anyone else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain,
but you understand what I mean. She was quite beautiful, and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was that which
first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don’t you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not one of our
own class, of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her.
All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week.
We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her as I had found her.
LORD HENRY: I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian. But
I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation.
DORIAN: Harry, you are horrible! Hetty’s heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is
no disgrace upon her.
LORD HENRY: My dear Dorian, you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really
contented now with anyone of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning
ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will
be wretched. From a moral point of view, I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. Even as a
beginning, it is poor.
DORIAN: I am sorry I told you now, Harry. I don’t care what you say to me. I know I was right in acting as I did.
Don’t let us talk about it any more, and don’t try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years,
the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever really known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I am
going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for days.
LORD HENRY: People are still discussing poor Basil’s disappearance.
DORIAN: I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time.
LORD HENRY: My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the British public are really not
equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately,
however. They have had my own divorce case, and Alan Campbell’s suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance
of an artist. Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris on the midnight train on
the ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all.
I suppose that in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing,
but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the
attractions of the next world.
DORIAN: What do you think has happened to Basil?
LORD HENRY: I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is
dead, I don’t want to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.
DORIAN: Why?
LORD HENRY: Because one can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in
the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
DORIAN: I was very fond of Basil. But don’t people say that he was murdered?
LORD HENRY: Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful
places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.
DORIAN: What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?
LORD HENRY: I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. It is not in
you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime
belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was
to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.
DORIAN: A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man who has once committed a murder could
possibly do the same crime again? Don’t tell me that.
LORD HENRY: Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often. That is one of the most important secrets
of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot
talk about after dinner. But let us pass on from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a
really romantic end as you suggest; but I can’t. I dare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus, and that the
conductor hushed up the scandal. Yes: I see him lying now on his back under those dull-green waters with the
heavy barges floating over him, and long weeds catching in his hair. Do you know, I don’t think he would have
done much more good work. During the last ten years his painting had gone off very much. It had lost an ideal.
When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a great artist. By the way, did you never get back
that portrait he painted of you?
DORIAN: No.
LORD HENRY: I remember I wanted to buy it. I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil’s best period.
DORIAN: I never really liked it. I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. Why do you talk
of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines in some play - “Hamlet” I think - how do they run? -
“Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart.”
LORD HENRY: If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
DORIAN: “Like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart.”
LORD HENRY: By the way, Dorian, “what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose” - how does the
quotation run - “his own soul”?
DORIAN: (Startled.) Why do you ask me that, Harry?
LORD HENRY: My dear fellow, I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer. That is all.
I was going through the Park last Sunday, and close by the Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabby-looking
people listening to some vulgar street-preacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling out that question to his
audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic. I thought of telling the prophet that Art had a soul, but that man
had not. I am afraid, however, that he would not have understood me.
DORIAN: Don’t, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away. It can be poisoned
and made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.
LORD HENRY: Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?
DORIAN: Quite sure.
LORD HENRY: Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things that one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That
is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance. How grave you are! Don’t be so serious. What have you or I to do
with the superstitions of our age? No: we have given up our belief in the soul. Tell me how you have kept your youth.
You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled and worn and yellow. You are
really wonderful, Dorian, you have never looked more charming than you do tonight. You remind me of the day I saw
you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in
appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take
exercise, get up early, or be respectable. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am
amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. Ah. Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have
drunk deeply of everything. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has not marred you. You are still the same.
DORIAN: I am not the same, Harry.
LORD HENRY: Yes: you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be. Don’t spoil it by renunciations.
I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you.
DORIAN: Yes, life has been exquisite, but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. You don’t know everything
about me. I think that if you did, even you would turn against me. Don’t laugh. I am going to be good. I am a little
changed already.
LORD HENRY: You cannot change to me, Dorian. You and I will always be friends. Come round tomorrow. I am going to ride
at eleven. We might go together, and I will take you to lunch afterwards with our little Duchess. She says she never
sees you now. Perhaps you are tired of her? I thought you would be. Her clever tongue gets on one’s nerves. Well,
in any case, be there at eleven.
DORIAN: Must I really come, Harry?
LORD HENRY: Certainly. The Park is quite lovely now. I don’t think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you.
DORIAN: Very well, I shall be there at eleven. Good night, Harry.
(Exit LORD HENRY.)
Is it really true that one can never change? I long for the unstained purity of my boyhood. I know I have
tarnished myself, filled my mind with corruption, been an evil influence on others, and I have experienced
a terrible joy in being so. Is there no hope for me? Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion I
prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of my days, and I keep the unsullied splendour of eternal
youth! All my failure has been due to that. Better for me that each sin of my life had brought its sure,
swift penalty along with it. There is purification in punishment.
(He picks up the hand mirror and looks at himself in it.)
It is my beauty that has ruined me, my beauty and the youth that I prayed for. But for those two things, my life
might have been free from stain. My beauty has been but a mask, my youth a mockery.
(He flings the mirror aside.)
Better not to think of the past. Nothing can alter that. A new life! That is what I want. That is what I am waiting
for. Surely I have begun it already. I have spared one innocent thing, at any rate. I will never again tempt innocence.
I will be good. Perhaps if my life becomes pure, I will be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the portrait.
Perhaps the signs of evil have already gone away. I must see.
(He goes up to the old schoolroom.)
SCENE 9
The old schoolroom at the top of Dorian Gray’s house.
(Enter DORIAN. He uncovers the picture. A cry of pain and indignation breaks from him.)
DORIAN: No change, save that in the eyes there is a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the
hypocrite. The thing is more loathsome than before. Was it merely vanity that made me do my one good deed? Or
the desire for a new sensation? And why is the red stain larger than it was? There is blood even on the hand
that did not hold the knife. What does it mean? Confess the murder? Give myself up, and be put to death? Never!
This is the only evidence against me. Destroy it! Why have I kept it so long? It has marred my whole life. It
has been like conscience to me. I will destroy it.
(He looks round and sees the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He seizes it.)
I will kill the past, I will be at peace!
(He stabs at the picture with the knife. He gives an agonised cry, and falls to the ground, curled up with his
face away from the audience.)
(Enter LORD HENRY.)
LORD HENRY: When the servants entered the room they found a splendid portrait of their master as they had last
seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man with a knife in
his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not until they examined the rings that they
recognised who it was. (He looks down at DORIAN’s body. A smile - a hint of triumph, perhaps? - flickers round his mouth.)
CURTAIN.
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