So saying, he struck up a thundering
De profundis clamavi, under cover of which he removed the apparatus of their banquet: while the knight, laughing heartily, and arming himself all the while, assisted his host with his voice from time to time as his mirth permitted.
The priest whose duty it was to read the opening formula opened his book by chance at the
De Profundis. Thus the marriage was accompanied by circumstances so fateful, so alarming, so annihilating that no one dared to augur well of it.
(
DE PROFUNDIS!) The grandfathers of these scions ruined themselves at the gaming-tables; their fathers were forced to serve as officers or subalterns; some have died just as they were about to be tried for innocent thoughtlessness in the handling of public funds.
Indeed, Wilde may have had Keats's ode in mind when he wrote in a seemingly religious vein that "All that Christ says to us by way of a little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the coming of the Bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the Lover" (
De Profundis 117).
De Profundis occupies a precarious place in Oscar Wilde's canon and for several reasons is often skirted by wary interpreters: it does not fit neatly into any single genre; it does not resemble any of the other works that made Wilde famous; it is full of irritating inconsistencies and contradictions; and it seems ambiguously aimed at a wider audience than its inscription to Alfred Douglas suggests.
There is a 135-1 double at the latter for Peter Bailey as
De Profundis (David Skyrme) wins the conditional jockeys' hurdle and Under Offer (Mark Richards) takes the novice handicap chase.
Of most interest in Section Two, "Continuities," are Frank McGuinness' "The Spirit of Play in
De Profundis" and Alan Stanford's "Acting Wilde." McGuinness reconstructs
De Profundis as a drama that involves Wilde's rejection of Lord Alfred Douglas for Christ as the prerequisite for his closing invitation of a mutually redemptive written response from Douglas.
The laughter is heavy and
de profundis deep and the tears are wreathed in dense beautiful layers from the abyss.
Just, Not Fair is running in repertoire with
De Profundis, a monologue about Oscar Wilde, dealing with his stretch in Reading Gaol where he was sent for the crime of being homosexual.