Written in 1883 but not performed in Wilde’s lifetime, The Duchess of Padua is a five-act blank-verse tragedy set in Renaissance Italy. A young man seeks to avenge his father’s murder and becomes entangled with the Duchess in a plot that ends in betrayal and death. The play shows Wilde experimenting with Jacobean tragedy before finding his distinctive comic voice.
Less well known than Wilde’s comedies, The Duchess of Padua is a rewarding early work for admirers of his writing. This free EPUB is cleanly formatted for any e-reader.