The Ballad of Reading Gaol
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The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a famous poem by Oscar Wilde, written after his release from Reading prison on 19 May 1897. Its main theme is the death penalty. Wilde was found guilty of homosexual offences in 1895 and was sentenced to two years hard labour in prison, being transferred to Reading, Berkshire in November 1895. During his imprisonment, a rare thing occurred: a hanging. Trooper Charles Thomas Wooldridge was someone that Wilde had seen many times during his imprisonment. He had been found guilty of slitting his wife’s throat with a razor. It inspired in Wilde’s mind an illustration of the way we are all malefactors, all in need of forgiveness. According to Wilde the greater crime, the more necessary charity. His final vision of the world is not frivolity, but one of suffering.
Quotations
Several quotes from the poem have become famous in their own right:
- "yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard
- some do it with a bitter look,
- some with a flattering word,
- the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword
- [...]every prison that men build
- Is built with bricks of shame,
- And bound with bars lest Christ should see
- How men their brothers maim.
- For he who live more lives than one
- More deaths than one must die.
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