Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray

To be forever young? Who would surrender that chance, what ever the consequences might be? I would give everything for that. I would give my very soul. Oscar Wilde, wrote only one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is a work of exquisite beauty. Few writers of any era can match Wilde for his marvelous manipulation of the English language. And yet, there is something more, something almost autobiographical about this curious retelling of the Faust myth. In the end Oscar Wilde, along with his creation, Dorian Gray, discovers that beauty is a gift, but only for a season. "The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish at forty," Lord Henry asserts. "Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets." Playwright Mike Parker's version posed the intriguing question, What would you give in exchange for your soul?