Known as a playwright, essayist, poet, and conversationalist, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Willis Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854 and died in Paris, France in 1900. His father was a doctor who opened a hospital for the poor with his own money, and his mother was a well-know revolutionary poet. Wilde would sit in on his mother’s social gatherings in the salon and this would spark his artistic sensibilities.

“It is, so to speak, a play that is pure play” stated Wilde about The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde build upon the formula of the well-made play by including mistaken identities, romantic conflicts, a final revelation, and a happy ending. Although he had written more serious plays, he perfected his dramatic style using the genre known as the Comedy of Manners. In the tradition of Richard Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, Comedy of Manners is described as making fun of well-bred, polite his society. The genre is considered high comedy since it primarily uses language rather than physical actions to evoke laughter from the audience. The genre complemented Wilde’s life as an artist who lived among the Victorian elite but due to his Irish ancestry would always remain an outsider. The audience essentially paid to laugh at themselves. Wilde’s brilliant use of wordplay would later influence other British playwrights, such as Noel Coward and Tom Stoppard.

Steampunk is an inspired movement of creativity and imagination. With a backdrop of either Victorian England or America’s Wild West at hand, modern technologies are re-imagined and realized as elaborate works of art, fashion, and mechanics. Steampunk, at least the way we see it, gets its “punk” not in its dystopian view of the world or even in its gritty edge. The “punk” in “Steampunk” comes from going against convention that, through creativity and declaration of one’s individuality be it through style, gadgets, or attitude, sets a person apart.