Having fallen for “a beguiling young man named Lord Alfred Douglas,” known as “Bosie,” Wilde found himself on the receiving end of threats from Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury. This de Botton described as “the swift fall of a great man due to a small but fateful slip,” a result of the social and legal conditions that obtained in the time and place in which Wilde lived. Wilde was imprisoned, as even those who’ve never read a word he wrote know, for his homosexuality. His reputation was in tatters and his life was ruined beyond repair.” This is how Alain de Botton tells it in “The Downfall of Oscar Wilde,” the animated School of Life video above. “Universally heralded as a genius” when his play The Importance of Being Earnest premiered in London in 1895, he was just a few months later “bankrupt and about to be imprisoned. Its latest retelling, Oscar Wilde: A Life by Matthew Sturgis, came out in the United States just this past week. A few years later, Wilde died, alone and flat broke.Oscar Wilde left a body of literature that continues to entertain generation after generation of readers, but for many of his fans his life leads to his work, not the other way around. But when Douglas' family threatened to cut off his allowance if he remained with Wilde, he left. The letter is both the story of Wilde and Douglas' relationship and a merciless takedown of Douglas' character and behavior.īosie didn't see that letter for decades, however, and in an incredible twist, The Guardian reports the two men reunited after Wilde's release, living together in Naples. As the encyclopedia Britannica reports, Wilde composed his last major literary work, the searing love letter-cum-revenge note "De Profundis" ("Out of the Depths") during his imprisonment. Famous Trials notes that testimony from Douglas very likely would not have saved Wilde, but the way Douglas abandoned him cut Wilde deeply. As The Guardian notes, Lord Alfred failed to make an appearance at Wilde's trial to defend him, and generally kept his distance. In short, Bosie got Wilde into his mess, made it worse, and then did nothing to help.īut what might have been the worst part of it for Wilde was the fact that his lover had betrayed him. That was a huge mistake, as it forced the Marquess to publicly prove his accusations - which was pretty easy because, as The Guardian relates, Bosie had left incriminating letters in the pockets of suits he'd given Wilde, and because Bosie refused to testify in Wilde's defense. He could have fled and waited for the storm to blow over, but Bosie urged him to go on the offensive, and so Wilde sued the Marquess for libel. When Bosie's powerful and deeply conservative father the Marquess of Queensberry, lost patience, he went to Wilde's club and left a card for him that read, "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite ," essentially outing Wilde for all to see at a time when being gay was very dangerous. ![]() Besides introducing Wilde to the underground world of gay prostitutes, the two engaged in a loud and impossible-to-ignore gay relationship that soon had tongues wagging. Wilde's affair with Bosie changed everything.
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