![]() The prison became a magnet for Britain's LGBT community, just as New York's Stonewall Inn draws crowds commemorating its key role in the U.S. The prison closed in 2014 but has since hosted arts events, including a readings of his work by actors and musicians such as Patti Smith and Rupert Everett. Reading jail housed the Irish poet and author - whose homoerotic writing shocked Victorian Britain - for most of the two-year sentence he served for gross indecency.ĭuring the sensational trial he was questioned over his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, a poet who penned the immortal line: "I am the love that dare not speak its name". "We are losing heritage and cultural spaces to commercial redevelopment which will never be recovered." "It's a hugely significant space," said Joseph Galliano, CEO and co-founder of Queer Britain, the national LGBTQ+ museum. LONDON, Oct 3 (Openly) - Reading Prison - a forbidding Victorian jail turned LGBT landmark - is for sale, Britain said on Thursday, offloading a deserted site best known for housing playwright Oscar Wilde for the "gross indecency" of gay sex.Ĭampaigners had hoped to turn the austere brick prison, which lies just west of London, into an arts centre to preserve a site of gay pilgrimage and honour Wilde's literary legacy. Call 41 or visit jail housed the Irish poet and author for most of the two-year sentence he served for gross indecency “The Importance of Being Earnest” runs through Dec. When Lane is confronted by the empty plate of sandwiches that he had brought into the room a short time earlier, he pivots instantly with a fib that covers up his master’s bad behavior - exactly as the insatiable Algernon would have desired him to do. He eats one after another until they’re gone. But cucumbers have a phallic shape and their association with “ready money” makes the double entendre even more suggestive.īarr notes that though the cucumber sandwiches are prepared for the female characters (Lady Bracknell has specifically requested them), they are consumed exclusively by Algernon. A mainstream Victorian audience wouldn’t have blinked at the reference. Then and now, cucumber sandwiches are a traditional staple of fancy teas. The eating of cucumber sandwiches, for example, becomes a visual joke running through much of the play’s first act. Significance: Wilde doesn’t merely drop coded references about ordinary household objects into “Earnest” he makes them the basis for extended comic riffs. Regardless, it’s hard to deny that the word evokes sexually tinged images. Several different and wholly innocent origins of that phrase have been suggested by Wilde scholars. Algernon deduces that Jack has adopted the same ruse, telling him: “I may mention that I have always suspected you of being a confirmed and secret Bunburyist and I am quite sure of it now.” Significance: In the play, Algernon invents a chronic invalid friend named “Bunbury” whom he “visits” in the country when he wants to skip out of social responsibilities. You don't seem to realize that in married life three is company and two is none. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.ĪLGERNON. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it. Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very glad to know Bunbury. ![]() “In Victorian England, ‘Cecily’ was slang for a young male prostitute,” Ritsch said.ĪLGERNON. Significance: Cecily, the ingenue in “Earnest,” is the object of desire for Algernon, the character thought to be Wilde’s stand-in. She is excessively pretty and she is just eighteen. She has got a capital appetite, goes on long walks, and pays no attention at all to her lessons.ĪLGERNON. Cecily is not a silly, romantic girl, I am glad to say. The neighborhood was anchored by the Half Moon Public House, a popular hangout for many of Wilde’s acquaintances. In addition, the stage directions locate Algernon’s flat on the happily named “Half Moon Street,” which in the late 1880s was a haven for confirmed bachelors, Barr said. Wilde apparently became nervous that the reference was a little too obvious and in later versions of the script, changed it to “B4, The Albany,” according to Ritsch, who reverted to the original address for Everyman’s production. Significance: Jack’s card lists the actual address at the time of George Ives, a gay activist who later founded the secret homosexual society The Order of Chaeronea. ![]()
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