A Woman of No Importance had the biggest ever box-office success in 1893. Albeit more serious in tone, An Ideal Husband stood to make a lot of money. Why, then, might this next play have taken almost two years to reach production? Could Queen Victoria have had anything to do with it?

To date, scholars have not identified any contemporaneous incidents underpinning Wilde’s social comedies. Examining the turmoil in Lord Ronald Gower’s family reveals a network of people amongst whom a real-life drama was playing out. His was a family very close to the Queen...

The trigger for this idea is page 516 in the Illustrated London News of April 29, 1893, © Mary Evans Picture Library.