Bunthorne and Oscar Wilde

According to Wikipedia, the suggestion that Bunthorne was intended to satirise Oscar Wilde is "a popular misconception ... . According to some authorities, Bunthorne is inspired partly by the poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who were considerably more famous than Wilde in early 1881 [when the opera was first performed] before Wilde published his first volume of poetry."

Wikipedia does however go on to say that the American literary critic Richard Ellman, in a 1987 biography of Wilde, "suggests that Wilde is a partial model for both Bunthorne and his rival Grosvenor."

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