De Profundis (letter) Theatre in London. It was revived in 2008. An abridged version was set for speaking pianist by composer Frederic Rzewski. Extracts were set to music for chorus and orchestra in 2012 by the British composer Matthew King. De Profundis (letter) De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie" (Lord Alfred Douglas). In its first half Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency. He indicts both Lord Alfred's vanity and his own weakness in acceding to
Lord Alfred Douglas the Jews, attributing them qualities and methods which are really much more typically English than Jewish", and then indicate the country only had itself to blame if the Jews came in and trampled on it. The historian Colin Holmes indicated that while "Douglas had been to the forefront of anti-semitism in the early 1920s, he was quite unable to come to terms with the vicious racist anti-semitism in Germany" under the Nazis. Douglas started his "litigious and libellous career" by obtaining an apology and fifty guineas each from the Oxford and Cambridge university magazines "Isis" and "Cambridge" for defamatory references