雷丁监狱之歌 (1898)

《雷丁监狱之歌》（The Ballad of Reading Gaol）是奥斯卡·王尔德的一首诗歌，写于1897年5月19日他自英国雷丁监狱释放，到达法国滨海塞纳省大伯尔纳瓦尔（Berneval-le-Grand）之后。王尔德在1895年因被控与其他男子犯有严重猥亵罪，被判处两年劳役，被关押在雷丁。

王尔德在1897年中，与罗伯特·罗斯住在大伯尔纳瓦尔时写下了这首诗。这首诗讲述了皇家骑兵卫队30岁的骑兵伍尔德里奇在温莎 附近的克莱尔，割断妻子劳拉·艾伦的喉咙，而在1896年7月7日星期二处以绞刑的故事。

完成的诗歌于1898年2月13日由史密瑟斯出版， 署名 "C.3.3."是王尔德囚室的代号。当时王尔德臭名昭著，他的名字不宜出现在在封面上。直到1899年6月第7次印刷，人们才知道C.3.3实际上就是王尔德。第一版出版了800本，一周内售罄，史密瑟斯宣布将在一周内发行第二版；第二版于2月24日出版，共1000册，销量也很好。3月4日印刷了第三版，99本由作者签名，同一天印刷了第四版，共1200本。第五版1000册于3月17日出版，第六版于1898年5月21日出版，共1000册。第七版于1899年6月23日出版，将奥斯卡·王尔德的名字放在方括号中，放在C.3.3的下面。 这首诗为他余生带来了微薄的收入。

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from HM Prison Reading (Reading Gaol, RED-ing jail) on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.

During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was aged 30 when executed.

Wilde wrote the poem in 1897, beginning it in Berneval-le-Grand and completing it in Naples. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them, but rather the poem highlights the brutalisation of the punishment that all convicts share. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. He adopted the proletarian ballad form, and suggested it be published in Reynold's Magazine, "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers – a new experience for me".

The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. This ensured that Wilde's name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem's front cover. It was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Wilde. The first edition, of 800 copies, sold out within a week, and Smithers announced that a second edition would be ready within another week; that was printed on 24 February, in 1,000 copies, which also sold well. A third edition, of 99 numbered copies "signed by the author", was printed on 4 March, on the same day a fourth edition of 1,200 ordinary copies was printed. A fifth edition of 1,000 copies was printed on 17 March, and a sixth edition was printed in 1,000 copies on 21 May 1898. So far the book's title page had identified the author only as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3. The poem brought him a small income for the rest of his life.

The poem consists of 109 sestets or six-line stanzas, a variation of the traditional ballad quatrain. The lines are formed of iambic tetrameters and trimeters of 8-6-8-6-8-6 syllables. The rhyme scheme is: ABCBDB. Some stanzas incorporate rhymes within some or all of the 8-syllable lines. The whole poem is grouped into 6 untitled sections of 16, 13, 37, 23, 17 and 3 stanzas. A version with only 63 of the stanzas, divided into 4 sections of 15, 7, 22 and 19 stanzas, and allegedly based on the original draft, was included in the posthumous editions of Wilde's poetry edited by Robert Ross, "for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation".