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Allusion
Explanation and Analysis—Shakespeare:
Wilde makes ample allusions to Shakespeare and his plays in Dorian Gray. This is unsurprising, given the emphasis the book places on the enjoyment of the arts and the titular character's particular enthusiasm for theater. Perhaps the most significant allusion is to Shakespeare's most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, which occurs during Dorian's courtship of the actress Sybil Vane:
Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak [...] were spoken in a thoroughly artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. It was wrong in color. It took away all the life from the verse. It made the passion unreal.
Given that Dorian is wholly consumed by the preservation of beauty, Sybil’s botched performance as Juliet—due to Gray’s presence, no less—is especially horrifying to him. This passage represents the first pronounced negative effect the reader sees of Dorian’s exploration into London's underbelly, and also functions as a brilliant bit of foreshadowing: the play famously ends in the title characters' suicides, and Sybil Vane will take her own life after Dorian loses interest in her art and abandons her.
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