The poem’s first-person narrator is typically assumed to be Wilde himself, who was imprisoned at Reading Gaol in 1896 and 1897. At the center of the poem is a fellow incarcerated man convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to be hanged. Though this man is never named in the poem, he is almost certainly the real historical figure Charles Thomas Wooldridge, to whom Wilde dedicated the poem as “C.T.W.” Wooldridge murdered his wife in an argument and was sent to Reading Gaol to await execution.

Wilde describes Wooldridge’s crime—taking ample creative license—at the very beginning of the poem. He imagines him with “blood and wine [...] on his hands / When they found him with the dead” (1.3-4), a vivid tableau that heralds the dark gothic realism that saturates the poem. The reference to wine suggests that the man was drunk when he killed his wife and that his crime was thus a crime of passion. This seems to have really been the case, as historical records attest that Wooldridge instantly regretted murdering his wife; indeed, Wooldridge turned himself in soon after committing the crime. However, Wilde also alters the facts to suit his poem, for example when he writes that the man murdered his wife “in her bed” (1.