Reading Gaol

Reading Gaol (op. 1)

 

For mezzo-soprano and cello quartet  – duration: 9’00” – Written for Judith Weusten.

Oscar Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1897, drawing from his experience in Reading Gaol, where he was imprisoned from 1895 to 1897. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor after being convicted of “gross indecency” due to his homosexual relationships, which were illegal in Victorian England. The poem reflects on the brutal conditions of prison life and the execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a fellow inmate who killed his wife. Wilde published it under the pseudonym “C.3.3.,” his prison number, to avoid further public scrutiny. The work is a poignant critique of the justice system and a departure from his earlier, more flamboyant writings.

Set to music are the last three stanzas of this dramatic poem. The text is as follows:

 

In Reading gaol by Reading town
  There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
  Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
  And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
  In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
  Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
  And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love,
  By all 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!

 

The Ballad of Reading Gaol was published on the 13th of February 1898 by Leonard Smithers.