The Judas Kiss

St John's Lightfoot Room

'The play is not about Oscar Wilde, but love; not about Bosie, but betrayal.'rn

In 1895, the Marquess Of Queensberry, enraged by rumours of his son Lord Alfred Douglas's relationship with the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, entered Wilde's club and left him a note accusing him of ‘posing as a sodomite’. When Wilde decided that he could not ignore the challenge, and that he must bring a prosecution against Queensberry for criminal libel, the Marquess retaliated by searching London for a list of young men willing to testify against Wilde. Knowing of this list, Wilde nevertheless persisted with his case. After his private suit collapsed in two days, Wilde himself became liable for public prosecution under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886, which had made ‘acts of gross indecency’ between men a criminal offence.rn

On 19 May 1897, Wilde was released after two years in jail. He went abroad at once, and never returned to England before his death in 1900.