The scene is Oxford University, where Oscar is a student, and he is a candidate for some exam or other. To pass he has to do a live translation of an unseen Greek text. The text he has been given is some well-known passage in the Gospels describing an episode in the final hours of Jesus' life. The arrest? The meditation in the garden? I forget. Anyway...

Oscar recounts the tale in English, fluently translating the Greek original as he goes. And it seems he is doing it very well.

      ``You may stop now, Mr Wilde''

says the examiner... and then again, since Wilde seems to be getting carried away

      `` You may stop now, Mr Wilde!''

But Wilde is not to be denied...

     ``But I want to know what happens to the poor man!''

At the risk of spoiling a good anecdote, I venture the suggestion that this is a very revealing story. What he is doing with this dissembling is suggesting to bystanders that (i) he doesn't know the Bible Story—thereby posing as an atheist cad (posing as a somdomite came later) and that (ii) his command of Greek is better than theirs. It may well be, but the upper-class English have always distrusted cleverness. This is the action of a man bent on making trouble for himself. And we all know how it ends.

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