The Vane Sisters Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word. Sybil Vane is also a character in Oscar Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. She is an actress who commits suicide when Dorian rejects her, first causing the portrait to change and Dorian to notice the connection between him and the portrait. The apparent uniqueness of this narrative approach has created fame for this story, and Nabokov himself described this device as something that 'can only be tried once in a thousand years of fiction'. The trick
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) night, as Sibyl is dressing for the performance, she and Dorian sing of their love. After Dorian leaves, Sibyl's brother James, a sailor, says goodbye as he is about to depart for Australia. Having heard that a gentleman visits her backstage every night, he asks his name, to which Sibyl replies 'Romeo'. James tells her that if this man does her any wrong, he will 'kill him like a dog'. "Scene 4" Sibyl's performance was unexpectedly poor, with the audience expressing its disapproval. Dorian, Basil, and Lord Henry go backstage, where an embarrassed Dorian sends his friends away before Sibyl