If he had not been in favor as a poet, he might have even been killed. Because of this unfortunate decision, Wilde was imprisoned. It’s an odd thing to read to a newborn baby, and it is the first thing that was ever read to me.

He and his lover did not meet in “the holy night,” or in the privacy of a secret relationship, but “in the shameful day,” or in the public eye where same sex relationships were frowned upon. The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde The Ballad of Reading Gaol When I came home from the hospital after I was born, the first thing that my dad read to me was The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

However, if applied to Wilde’s personal life, this last stanza could express the regret that he felt for being known as a homosexual. This ballad is supposedly a description of that event. During his time in prison, Wilde witnessed the execution of a man named Charles Thomas Woolridge who was accused of murdering his wife. Wilde was incarcerated from 1895 to 1897 for homosexual acts. If we look at Oscar Wilde’s own life, this is confirmed. The day when they met is “shameful” because it is the day he goes to die in shame. This could be a reference to the speaker of the poem meeting a doomed man on his way to the gallows, and not speaking a word. Like two doomed ships that pass in storm a This change in rhyme scheme draws attention to the content of the final stanza: Five of the six stanzas in this ballad follow the ababab rhyme scheme. This may be attributed to Wilde’s flowery writing style and a desire to elaborate in each stanza, for he still follows the traditional rhyme scheme and meter. Oscar Wilde deviates from this tradition in his “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” which has stanzas of six lines each. However, as described by our textbook, the more modern ballads break this tradition. Ballads traditionally are formed in stanzas of four lines each.

Oscar wilde the ballad of