- Reggie Turner: [Holding up a framed picture of Queen Victoria] No exiled fairy's trousseau is complete without a signed portrait of the great widow herself. You must dance naked before it at the Jubilee next month.
- Reggie Turner: From what you say, Oscar, it would seem that Reading Gaol is an enchanted castle. With the governor as its presiding elf.
- Oscar Wilde: With no warning, I was transferred one afternoon from Wandsworth to Reading Gaol. In broad daylight, by train, shackled to a warder like a performing bear. That journey was the most exquisite of the tortures Her Majesty contrived for me. At Clapham Junction we had to wait for a connection. Half an hour, my dears, on platform two. Sadly, my public had not forgotten me.
- Oscar Wilde: All I'm saying, Reggie, dear, is I have lived in the grip of vice and pleasure. It was wrong and I have paid. Perhaps the slate is wiped clean, perhaps it is not, who knows? At any rate, I am now ready to return to life.
- Oscar Wilde: I met Christ in prison.
- Reggie Turner: And what was she in for?
- Oscar Wilde: Don't joke, Reggie. In the cell, there is only God and man. After three days in hell, Jesus rose from the dead, broke open his tomb, discarded his cerements and took his place forever in the heart of man. After 700 days of hard labour, my tomb is opened. I have tiptoed to the boat train and am born again through him, with him and in France.
- Robbie Ross: Very good, Oscar. We'll make a Catholic of you yet.
- Reggie Turner: Only unlike dear Jesus, you have luggage. And £800 to spend before your ascension into heaven.
- Robbie Ross: Or purgatory.
- Robbie Ross: I must tell you, Father, the dying man has been quite a well-known literary figure.
- Fr Dunne: Oh, well, that's all one and the same to God, Mr Ross. He has very little time to read, what with all us sinners clogging up the road to hell.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
