[ Water trickling ] [ Man groaning ] [ Groaning continues ] Be silent, whoever you are!

[ Groaning continues ] I cannot listen to you a moment more!

[ Footsteps approach ] Be silent less I go mad.

[ Cell door opens ] [ Thuds, man screams ] No!

No, no, no.

No, don't -- Do not beat him.

He's ill, he's lost.

[ Man screams, thuds] Do not beat him!

[ Cell door closes ] [ Keys jingle ] [ Footsteps approach ] Let me empty my latrine.

It has gone unemptied for three days.

The smell will kill me.

Another blanket, then, against the cold?

[ Footsteps depart ] A book?

A candle?

[ Door closes ] A kiss?

[ Sobs ] [ Church bell ringing ] [ Ringing continues ] They beat him senseless.

What of that?

He is free for a time.

I am alone with my thoughts.

My thoughts alone may keep me sane.

Oh, Lord, let me not be mad.

Music.

Let there be music.

For it creates a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's ears.

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine.

Domine exaudi vocem meam.

Fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae.

I can bear anything except losing my mind.

Young Oscar: You are not mad.

In here, I have a fever that never ends.

I never sleep.

I have such pain in my ear, in every part of my body.

The cold has me by the bones, I cannot keep down a scrap of food.

I am forsaken.

Remember who you are and you will be saved.

Who is this?

As if you do not know.

You have a... sly, cunning voice such as the devil may use.

Dear Oscar.

Do not call me so.

I am Prisoner 33.

That is all.

Let them not steal thy name.

The man who went by that name could not live in here.

Prisoner 33 may escape with his life.

I cannot agree.

It is only by remembering who you are that you will find comfort of any kind.

On release, you will be advised to forget you have ever been to prison.

Do not listen.

It would mean being haunted forever by an intolerable sense of disgrace.

And those joys that are meant for you as much as anybody else, the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights.

The rain falling through the leaves, and the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver, would all be tainted for you and lose their healing power.

To regret or deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life.

It is no less than a denial of the soul.

I say, remember yourself for who you are.

A great and exceptional man, and greater than that, an artist of the highest order.

[ Sighs ] I'm beginning to enjoy your company.

An acquaintance that starts with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.

It starts in the right manner.

There is Oscar.

Have I not always said that to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance?

And how happy I am to see him.

[ Laughter ] Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.

My dear friend, the joy you bring is the rising of the sun in the midst of darkness.

I've always loved talk.

Language is the noblest instrument we have, either for the revealing or the concealing of thought.

When one is deprived of intelligent company... [ Both ] One is permitted to converse with oneself.

Talk itself is a sort of spiritualized action and conversation, one of the loveliest of the arts.

I will endeavor to make it so.

Do your utmost.

Ahh!

Ah!

If it was not for my ear.

Did I tell you of my fall during chapel?

I'm sure it bears repeating.

I detect neither interest nor concern.

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

Well, I cannot argue as you steal the words from my own rotting store.

I am interested, however, in your attendance at chapel.

Were you perchance occupied in prayer?

Well, what of it?

Despair does that to a man.

God, in his infinite mercy, had me faint from illness and hunger and strike my head most painfully against his... sturdy pew.

Hewn no doubt from the stoutest English oak.

Well, it was many months ago prior to my transfer here from Wandsworth Penitentiary.

The pain in my ear has never gone away.

If anything, it grows worse.

I've never slept a wink since the moment of my fall.

Hence this waking fever, which I imagine has brought you to my side.

Is there no doctor here?

Mm.

The prison doctor has examined me on several occasions, only to declare me a malingerer who enjoys the best of health.

He notes also that I have lost a great deal of weight, which is apparently of enormous benefit to my wellbeing and further proof of the usefulness of incarceration.

Naturally, I beg to differ on both counts, except to say that I am greatly looking forward to examining my reflection in a new made pair of trousers with a suitably neat jacket to draw attention to the miracle of a waist in a man my age.

Are you really so old?

I am exactly of a certain age.

One must never trust a woman who tells one her real age.

A woman who tells one that would tell one anything.

But you are a man.

In body alone.

In all important aspects, I aspire most diligently to the feminine.

Be serious for a moment.

Oh, I'd much rather not.

But the eardrum is perforated.

I fear so.

Is this not a civilized country?

It would appear that civilization, if such a thing exists, is still a very long way off.

In here, in this... tomb for those who are not yet dead, I am entitled to nothing but pain and sleepless nights... and the reek of my own filth.

It is what they wish for me.

You have given up on prayer?

Quite given up.

Except when I'm very low and cannot help it.

[ Sighs ] And in those moments, it's a form of lunacy greater even than you and I. I've come to believe that prayer must never be answered.

If it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

Then write a letter to the newspapers.

Huh!

Oh, it's a dreadful thing to have one's name in the press.

And still more dreadful not to.

In the old days, we had the rack, now we have the press.

The tyranny that it proposes to exert on people's private lives seems to me quite extraordinary.

But the fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.

Public opinion can be roused to the matter.

Public opinion -- Public opinion exists only when there are no ideas.

Tell the people of your pain.

Who would listen?

The English public are only perfectly at ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

Besides, I have neither pen nor paper with which to write.

They have been forbidden me, lest I compose a short poem or something equally dangerous.

To leave you without pen and paper is to leave Michelangelo without chisel and stone.

Stop it, I pray.

There's something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain.

One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life.

The less said of life's sores,the better.

And yet I pity you, truly, I do.

Well, don't!

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing.

A great deal of it is fatal.

You must appeal to the governor of the prison.

[ Chuckles ] I hold very little appeal to the governor of this institution.

Lieutenant Colonel Isaacson is a mulberry faced dictator, not unlike the headmaster of a public school.

He's a typical Englishman.

Always dull and usually violent, and he possesses in abundance the inherited stupidity of the race, sound English common sense.

Let it be known that the governor of Reading Gaol has the eyes of a ferret, the body of an ape and the soul of a rat.

He cannot eat his breakfast until he's punished someone.

And yet every night he goes home to his wife and children and is no doubt regarded far and wide as a good and honorable man.

It would not surprise me to soon hear of his knighthood.

-It's best not to think of it.

-Mm, quite so.

Thinking is one of the most unhealthy things in the world.

People die of it just as they die of any other disease.

Fortunately, in England, at any rate, thought is not catching.

Has there been nothing good in prison?

I have learned some lessons.

None of them of a moral kind.

I now understand that starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.

And I see now with perfect clarity that a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

And as for all this talk of reforming a man, I've never heard such nonsense.

It is the sign of a noble nature to refuse to be broken by force.

Prison has made you see things as they really are.

That's why it turns one to stone.

It is the people on the outside who are deceived by the illusion of life in constant motion.

And yet...

I have prepared my appeal without pen and paper.

I have committed it to memory.

May I hear it?

With pleasure.

[ Clears throat ] My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I entered prison with a heart of stone thinking only of my pleasure.

But now my heart has been broken.

Pity has entered my heart.

Now I understand that pity... is the greatest and the most beautiful thing that there is in the world.

And therefore, I cannot be angry with those that condemn me, nor with anyone.

For then I would not have known all that.

Will they believe you?

Why should they not?

I almost believe myself.

[ Chuckles softly ] I wish you luck.

I have had so much luck in my life.

I fear I may have used up my ration.

Oh!

If it was not for my ear.

Oh, to be young again.

Truly young.

Oh!

To get back to my youth, I would do anything.

Except take exercise, get up early and be respectable.

[ Chuckles ] Oh!

Oh, this damned ear.

Where will it all end?

[ Winces ] Half the world doesn't believe in God, and the other half doesn't believe in me.

[ Sobs ] [ Metal creaks, footsteps approach ] Are you here?

[ Footsteps continue ] [ Door closes ] [ Sighs ] Are you still here?

Young Oscar: I'm here.

Oh.

You'd gone quiet.

Whose turn is it?

I've forgotten who's who.

Hardly matters.

Well, of course it matters.

I'm winning, hands down.

What shall we talk about?

Art.

Oh, f**k art.

[ Chuckles ] If only one could.

[ Chuckles ] You outdo your better self.

We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life.

Well, the secret of life is in art.

Art is an improvement on life.

Good art, perhaps, not bad.

I rarely make the distinction.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Ah, but the moment the artist takes notice of what the public wants, he ceases to be an artist and becomes a dull or amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman.

Art should never try to be popular.

The public should try and make itself artistic.

I never know when you're being serious.

[ Sighs ] But what does it matter?

As I have said, all art is useless.

Nothing that really occurs is of the slightest importance.

Except of being "Earnest."

Spare me thy wit.

All art is useless, you say?

Quite useless.

You are a man who stands in symbolic relations to the arts and culture of our age.

The gods gave me almost everything.

I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring.

I made art of philosophy and philosophy an art.

I altered the minds of men and the color of things.

There was nothing I did or said that did not make people wonder.

Hmph.

Drama, novel, poem in rhyme, subtle or fantastic dialogue.

Whatever I touched, I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty.

To truth itself, I gave what is false no less than what is true, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence.

You make me dizzy.

Yes, I have that effect.

I'm so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying.

Is there more?

Alas, yes.

I treated art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere form of fiction.

I woke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me.

I summed up all systems in a phrase and all existence in an epigram.

I'm glad to see that prison has taught you humility.

What need I of humility?

It would be like asking a lion not to hunt.

Then I shall sing your praises.

Praise makes me humble.

But when I am abused, I know that I have touched the stars.

Then I am silent.

I'm glad of your silence.

You talk more and say less than anybody I've ever met.

You're born to be a public speaker.

Shall I go?

There are some who bring joy wherever they go, others whenever they go.

Gah!

[ High-pitched ringing ] Ahh!

Oh, if it was not for my ear.

[ Ringing grows louder ] [ Ringing fades ] [ Church bell rings ] [ Gasps ] Perhaps we may talk of lighter things?

Why not?

As I share my fate with Humpty Dumpty.

Think, for instance, "On Earnest."

Why bother?

It must bring joy to your heart to have written such a marvel.

I wrote it in a rush because I needed money.

That's what gives it urgency.

False modesty.

I'm always false and never modest.

I confess -- Sometimes the thought of "Earnest" brings me a moment's peace.

But it is the music under it, not the words themselves that give me joy.

Yet, it is the words that summon the music.

When spoken correctly.

Then, they summon the music of the soul.

It will be performed till the stars go out.

I often regret at how much more "Earnest" is preferred.

It's like having one child more successful than the others.

One wishes them all equal success.

It is preferred only by dint of its brilliance, and that can never be a matter for regret.

Every word of a play has a musical, as well as an intellectual value and must be made expressive of a certain emotion.

I managed that best in "Earnest."

And so I would not be surprised at its pre-eminence among all the plays of the world, and not merely my own.

You meant the word earnest secretly to conjure uraniste.

Did you not?

If you must.

L'homme uraniste.

The man who loves men.

A patriot put in prison for loving his country loves his country.

A poet put in prison for loving boys, loves boys.

To have altered my life would have been to admit that uranian love is ignoble.

I hold it to be noble.

More noble than other forms.

In "Earnest," I told that to the world, if only in code.

In court, I told it to their face.

And they could not bear that.

I have Bunburyed all over Shropshire on two separate occasions.

But it was never Bunbury, was it?

What do you think?

You were laughing up your sleeve at them.

Few of them knew it.

Enough did.

The rest felt it in their blood, even as they laughed.

Another meaning just below the water like a godly shark.

Is that not truly why they're punishing you?

For arrogance.

For the sin of pride, which must precede a fall.

Precisely.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else.

And this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

You brought this on yourself.

Nemesis has caught me in her net.

To struggle is foolish.

Why does one run to one's ruin?

[ Sighs ] The public will again take you to its heart.

The public is wonderfully tolerant.

They forgive everything except genius.

Blind them with your light.

You must resolve to write a new play the moment you are released.

I never write plays for anybody.

I write them to amuse myself.

Write about this.

About yourself.

[ Scoffs ] I think not.

[ Owl hoots ] It's not much of a view, I'm afraid.

Indeed, there is not.

Did I tell you of my travails at Clapham Junction?

Countless times.

[ Chuckles ] One may find solace in self-pity.

On the day of my transfer here from Wandsworth Jail, we missed our train and...

I was left handcuffed in prison clothing for the best part of an hour on the platform at Clapham Junction.

I was soon recognized.

And a crowd of people gathered round me laughing and jeering.

One man... shouted out my name and spat at me.

The others followed his example.

[ Sobs ] [ Sniffles ] Every day I weep at the same hour and for the same space of time.

The angels weep with you.

A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not happy.

And yet... only some days ago, a fellow prisoner spoke to me.

On our daily walk, our fools parade, as I call it.

We are forbidden from speaking on pain of a beating, and yet... he found the courage to whisper to me as I passed by.

What did he say?

"I pity you... as a great and famous man, because you must be suffering more than we.

I pity you."

That was the first day that I no longer wished to kill myself.

What was his name?

[ Sniffles ] I know him only as Prisoner 48.

And yet I love him as my brother.

A moral man at last.

I would not say so.

I never came across anybody in whom the moral sense was dominant, who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity.

Morality is simply a term we use for the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

I would rather have 50 unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue.

No.

I would name him kind, not moral.

For the two do not often coincide.

I give thanks for him in my heart.

Upon my release, I will endeavor to discover his identity and send him a token of my regard.

Anonymously, of course?

To begin with.

The nicest feeling in the world is to do something anonymously and then have somebody find out.

The jailer in charge of this floor, he's a brute of a man with forearms that could uproot trees.

It is clear from his manner that he dislikes me intensely or at least as much as he dislikes himself.

He speaks to me and of me viciously and with a contempt of the foulest kind.

Yet, I've taught myself to take pleasure in his cruelty.

It is twisted joy no doubt, but it harbors defiance, which is always a good thing.

I take delight in the pain they send to crush me.

Let them take that from me if they can.

Young Oscar: Lust makes one love all that one loathes.

And all but lust... is turned to dust in humanity's machine.

[ Voice breaking ] Oh, my poor dear noble wife to whom I have brought such pain.

And my children.

[ Sniffles ] My lovely children.

How will they live their lives in my tainted shadow?

[ Cries ] Oh, God.

[ Sniffles ] Let them live.

"If you want a red rose," said the tree, "you must build it out of music by moonlight.

And stain it in your own heart's-blood."

Gah!

[ Cries ] Oh!

Oh!

If it was not for my ear!

Do not be cast down.

If a god has made this world I would not wish to be that god.

The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.

I will help you if I can.

There is no help for it.

♪ In Dublin's fair... ♪ ♪ She died of a fever ♪ [ Both sing ] ♪ And no-one could save her ♪ ♪ And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone ♪ ♪ Now her ghost wheels her barrow ♪ ♪ Through streets broad and narrow ♪ ♪ Singing, "Cockles and mussels ♪ ♪ "Alive, alive, oh" ♪ ♪ "Alive, alive, oh" ♪ ♪ "Alive, alive, oh" ♪ Are you better?

[ Gasps ] Yes.

Quite revived.

Thank you for asking.

A poet can survive anything except a misprint.

You are very kind.

[ Water trickling ] This is a grim room.

It lacks a woman's touch.

My wife would have it heaven in a moment.

With flowers in every corner.

[ Chuckles ] Constance has a wonderful style and grace.

And she's kept her looks, you know, which is quite an achievement.

20 years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin.

But 20 years of marriage makes her look like a public building.

[ Chuckles ] She's a fine woman, who will not desert you.

Constance is no wilting rose, let it be said.

Though she is seen as such by those who do not know her.

She is my match in intelligence and candor.

And my superior in every other way.

Her childhood was far from easy.

Her mother was wild and often given to violence.

If Constance ever talked back, her mother would take her by the hair and hit her head against the nearest wall.

But what fire does not destroy, it hardens.

[ Chuckles softly ] Such an upbringing, I believe, may have prepared her well for marriage to me.

Not that I ever struck her.

I did her far worse injuries.

She had a lover, too, you know.

Though the world did not know it.

An adventure for which I instantly forgave her.

It would have been most unfair of you not to.

I miss her deeply.

And I have always found her beautiful in everything she does.

If I had been born a woman, I would have wished to be Constance.

You see her as your better self?

Yes.

I believe I do.

Is she well?

[ Sighs ] So far as I know, she is.

But I feel somehow all of this will carry her off before it is finished with me.

I have brought her great sorrow.

And, were she here now...

I would not be able to look her in the eye And what of your friends?

"Poor Oscar," I hear them say, quite beside themselves with joy.

I'm sure you are wrong.

You know I'm right.

And your one true love?

The one who lured me here?

Alfred Douglas.

My sweet Bosie.

My lord of ruin and delight?

Often I think of him... in my heart.

Every love, I tell him, has its tragedy.

And now ours has, too.

But to have known and loved you with such profound devotion, to have had you for a part of my life, the only part I now consider beautiful is enough for me.

My sweet rose, I call him.

My delicate flower.

My lily of lilies.

You feel it too?

I do.

With the force of a hammer and with a weight that crushes me.

I have the soul of a man who weeps in hell and yet carries heaven in his heart.

My sweet rose, when first I was in prison, my love for you remained pure.

In prison, I vowed, "I will test the power of love, make this bitter water sweet by the intensity of my love, I bear you."

But now... Oh, God!

Now... ...my words would be the fire and knife of the search, and that makes the delicate flesh burn and bleed.

I would cut you from my life!

Lord Douglas, your soul is hollow to the core.

You care nothing other than for your pride and pleasure.

You thrust me into the abyss and ruined me to gratify your hatred of your father.

You have marred a fine soul for all eternity.

In my bond with you, life became a sham.

What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion I grew careless of the lives of others, I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on.

If you were here now, I would kill you.

Kill you with...kisses.

Poison rose, I want never to see you again, never to have you in my life And yet my heart tumbles over hate, only to find love again!

Love is the victor, and you must exult in its victory.

I cannot!

There is not one thing in nature that affords me the least delight.

I dare not look in the glass for fear of what I may see there.

I dread the dawning, I shudder at the approach of night.

I am become a terror to myself.

Or rather my body and soul have become terrors to each other.

You are a great man.

Reverence thyself.

I wish this life to end!

I can bear it no more!

I will do anything except that.

Give me something, anything.

A knife, a rope, anything!

I will not!

Then you are a devil!

Think not of darkness.

Think only of the light.

There is neither!

Talk with me.

I'm done with talk.

Talk.

Leave me!

[ High-pitched ringing ] [ Ringing grows louder ] [ Ringing fades, church bells ring ] Young Oscar: I am, of a sudden, newly indignant.

For what reason?

As a man who loves both men and women, are you not, to any rational mind, a superior specimen to the man who loves only the female sex?

Instead of being flung into jail, shouldn't he receive instead a decoration from the state, an honor from Her Majesty?

Well, certainly a tax rebate, at the very least.

[ Grunts ] I long to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden.

And yet, I fear women.

I must confess it.

You fear their power?

No.

I fear their...pity.

All men are the same and would do well to admit it.

Men want to be a woman's first love.

Women want to be a man's last romance.

I have always loved my wife.

My children, too.

See the misery it has wrought.

If you love both men and women... do you love your country too?

Which one?

I am Irish.

First and foremost, and through and through.

I love Ireland with the innocence of a child.

But I am married to England.

Is the marriage beyond repair?

Entirely.

For I have come to detest England.

I have given her love, loyalty, fun, poetry, children, and she has given me...this!

But it is the schools of England I detest most of all.

The schools?

Why so?

The English do not believe in education unless it recruits children at a very young age to the view that there are "those," and there are "such as those."

Is there no cure for this disease?

Discontent!

There is your cure.

It is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

And disobedience!

In the eyes of anyone who has read history, disobedience is man's original virtue.

It is through disobedience that progress has been made.

Through disobedience and through rebellion.

In England, we have democracy.

High hopes were once formed of democracy.

But democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

Change must come!

Private property will be abolished.

Then, we will have true, beautiful, healthy individualism.

Nobody will waste their life in accumulating things and the symbols for things.

One will live, and to live is the rarest thing in the world.

Change will come.

Be sure of it.

We cannot keep on living like this -- governed by fools who think only of wealth and of war and the size of their estates.

There is only one class that thinks about money more than the rich, and that is the poor.

The poor can think of nothing else.

That is the misery of being poor.

We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.

Some of them are, no doubt.

But the best among the poor are never grateful.

They are ungrateful, discontented, and disobedient and rebellious, and they are quite right to do so.

Such a thank you will put an end to charity.

Why should the poor be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table?

They should be seated at the board, and they are beginning to know it.

Have a care.

Speaking of such notions is liable to get you locked up.

[ Chuckles ] An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

A socialist, no less.

I had no idea.

Shh!

They keep it secret.

Lest I start a frenzy.

And yet, you belong to the idle classes, do you not?

[ Grunts ] Most assuredly.

I cannot say other than I am fascinated by the rich.

I'm not a scrap ashamed of having been sent to prison, but I am horribly ashamed of the materialism that brought me here.

It was quite unworthy of an artist.

Yet, rebellion is a bloody affair.

I cannot believe in it.

To believe is very dull.

To doubt is intensely engrossing.

Would you... kill for these doubts?

[ Scoffs ] One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

And yet... And yet, I may die for them.

No man dies for what he knows to be true.

Men die for what they want to be true.

For what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

I no longer know what I think or believe.

I know only this -- the works of nature are the true glory of the world, and they do not belong to us.

We should leave them to our children as we have found them.

To Nature.

[ High-pitched ringing ] To Nature.

Ahh!

If it was not for my ear... [ Ringing grows louder ] [ Ringing fades, church bell rings ] [ Sighs ] It's a cold night.

Bitter cold.

I'm glad I'm not captain of this ship.

[ Laughs ] And you say I'm not mad.

You are the sanest man I know.

How many have you known other than me?

Don't complicate matters.

[ Chuckles ] Ohh, I'm beyond mad, it's clear.

You are a great man.

I am Prisoner 33.

Nothing less, nothing more.

I will have you say your true name.

You will not!

If you say so.

I do.

When are you due to be released?

[ Sighs ] Do not ask.

You must know.

I do not keep count of the days.

You must know the number.

Nobody, even in the provinces, should ever be allowed to ask an intelligent question about pure mathematics across a dinner table.

A question of this kind is quite as bad as asking suddenly about the state of a man's soul.

The number.

It is now the third week in March in the year 1896.

In the last week of May, next year, it will be the end of my two-year sentence.

It's not so long.

[ Scoffs ] Ha!

It's an eternity.

Let us think of where you will go when you are free.

Oh, will the day ever come?

It will come.

Perhaps you will remain in England.

Never.

Poor little England must be left to the English, and much good will she find in them.

America, then.

They're fond of you there.

Certainly, they applauded me once in Arkansas.

[ Chuckles ] But America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier than itself.

And not Switzerland, I think, With its ugly big mountains, all black and white like an enormous photograph.

[ Laughs ] Besides...

I have very little money Wherever I go, I fear I will be dying beyond my means.

Italy?

Perhaps Belgium, France, Germany?

All of those are possible, where there exists at least the possibility of a civilized life.

I have a feeling it will be France The great superiority of France over England is that, in France, every bourgeois wants to be an artist, whereas in England, every artist wants to be a bourgeois.

[ Chuckles ] And Paris is the city of light.

An artist may die there, don't you think?

Nonsense!

An artist may live in Paris Live!

Hmm.

Life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations.

There are not nearly enough of them.

I sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one.

It's quite dreadful.

It makes one so nervous... about the future.

Think on this -- On freedom, your very first step must be to the tailor's.

[ Laughs ] A heavenly thought!

Then ascend to it with joy.

I will have an Ulster... Hmm.

...and a blue serge suit from Dore.

A brown derby hat from Heath's at Albert Gate.

A dozen white handkerchiefs and a dozen more with colored borders.

[ Laughs ] Dark blue neckties with white spots.

Half a dozen pairs of socks with all the colors of the summer.

Ankle boots of the softest leather, shirts of the finest linen.

Good French soap from Pritchard's of St James, and a fine scent, [ Laughs ] preferably Canterbury Wood Violet, and hair tonic that goes by the name of Coco-Maricopas, as it hides the grey in my hair... the grey in my soul.

You shall be entirely cleansed of the stain and soil of prison life.

And I shall sail for France... where I will sleep, at last.

[ Yawns ] And wake in the morning in a little apartment, with some books around you and some paper, some pens... so that you may write.

[ Birds chirping ] A new day.

A new day.

One can live for years, sometimes, without living at all.

And then all life comes crowding into a single hour.

Thank you, my friend.

[ Water trickling ] Do me one favor in return.

What is that?

Tell me thy name.

You know it well enough.

I wish you to speak it.

Prisoner 33.

Thy true name.

Prisoner 33.

Thy name.

Prisoner 33.

Thy name.

Oscar.

Again.

Oscar.

And the rest.

Oscar... Fingal O'Flahertie... Wills Wilde.

Husband and father.

Man of Ireland.

Lover of men and lover of women.

Poet and dreamer.

A decent man... ...to the best and last of my strength.

Oscar Wilde.

Music.

Let there be music.

For it creates a past of which one has been ignorant.

And fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's ears.

[ Sings ] ♪ De profundis clamavi ♪ ♪ Ad te, Domine ♪ ♪ Domine exaudi vocem meam ♪ ♪ Fiant aures tuae intendentes ♪ ♪ In vocem deprecationis meae ♪ [ High-pitched ringing ] Oh!

Ahh!

Oh, if it was not for my ear!

[ Ringing grows louder ] ♪ De profundis ♪ [ Crying ] ♪ Clamaaa-a-a-avi-i-i-i ♪ ♪ Ad te-e-e-e-e-e ♪ ♪ Domi-i-i-ine ♪ ♪ Do-o-o-o-omine ♪ ♪ Exaa-a-a-audi-i-i-i ♪ ♪ Voooc-e-em mea-a-a-am ♪