"No doubt, it was around Wilde's time that such stereotyping was beginning - the psycho-analytic movement was in its earliest stages - but it was the Wilde scandal itself that helped crystallise the stereotype. Everything about Wilde himself - his wit, his poise, his love of beauty, poetry, fondness for interior decoration, etc, etc, could now play as evidence of his so-called vice. Such tastes in future lost their innocence and could be freighted with darker implications. Later, during the '20s, that became very fixed in the British public's mind, because many of the Oxbridge generation of the '20s, gay and straight, modelled themselves on Wilde, partly in order to scandalise their parents, but also in reaction against the universally acknowledged heroism of their elders who had fallen in battle, with which it was impossible for them to compete. Thereafter the "Oxford manner", affected by many Oxford men right up to the '50s, had something of Wilde about it.

Nonetheless, the notion of Oscar Wilde as a prominent gay personality of the period is central to the film. Says Gilbert, "I suppose anybody who has any ideas about homosexuality has to confront Oscar Wilde. He represents the great challenge to all preconceptions and prejudice. You can't get round him. I think that's wonderful. He is also rare among artists of genius in that he was also an immensely decent and kindhearted man. I do think though, that, while on the surface we have become much more liberal and progressive, underneath it's still seen as a huge threat to society. We're relatively open-minded and tolerant, but unconventional sexual behaviour can be a problem for even the most well-intentioned and fair-minded people.

"I couldn't say we are simply blaming Victorian hypocrisy and all the rest. In a way that's not the issue. I don't think the Victorians were more hypocritical than we are. Yes, society is to blame in the larger sense. At that time it was profoundly intolerant for other reasons. Historians have debated the influence of the Empire - this great effort that was at its peak during Wilde's time - and we do refer to this in the film. Almost every middle class or upper class family had somebody out in India or in the Colonies somewhere. To the British the harsh facts of colonialism were disguised by the dream of Empire - a tremendous and extraordinary fantasy - and a great deal of the knowledge of what their men got up to when they were away was simply repressed, or benignly re-interpreted. "The British ruling class at that time was for a brief period more homogeneous than it had ever been. For about fifty years they all went to public schools, all went to the major universities, they went to clubs, they married late, they were bachelors for a long time. There was a great deal of homosexual activity at public school, much more than there is now because the boys had much less adult supervision within the boarding houses. To that extent there was quite serious hypocrisy amongst people then about Oscar Wilde, because at school you could not avoid seeing homosexual acts. Many of the men who became eminent participated at school, even if they rejected it later and, because there was no fixed idea of being a homosexual, it was simply one other thing that they felt guilty about."

Very little detail is actually known of Wilde's secret life, as Fry confirms: "Nobody's quite sure of his physical involvement in his affairs. There is strong evidence to suppose he had some element of physical self-disgust. He worshipped the idea of youth - it was not pederastic or anything - but he felt that young people had the right experience to judge his work. The moments of sexual activity in the film are not to sensationalise it at all - it's rather poignant and affectionate."

Julian Mitchell agrees that the physical side of Oscar's relationships should be a part of the film. "It would be dishonest not to show it, the seduction and the physical passion. If you remove the physical passion from the relationship, you're leaving out something essential. People who 'come out' late in life as Oscar did, in his late 30s, often lose all sense of balance and I think that's what happened to him. Oscar was overwhelmed by Lord Alfred Douglas. Bosie is a tragic character really, but unfortunately, he's a terribly destructive one. It is actually one of the great love stories - the destruction of this wonderful man by a tortured youth."

Brian Gilbert does not apportion blame, "although some of the audience will feel really aggrieved that Bosie had such a hold over Wilde. But we do try to be very candid about the relationship. It's like a marriage - there are certain licenses and liberties within a relationship which you cannot judge very easily from the outside. One of the partners might be aggressive, but often has been given permission to be aggressive by the passive one. There are things that are very difficult to judge - it's fascinating dramatic material - but we don't blame Bosie."

Fry agrees: "Bosie, according to his own lights, was behaving that way for all the right reasons. His real tragedy was that he was so like his father - they were very, very similar - and, though he did love Oscar, his bad behaviour came from hatred of his father. In a film you see what you would never have seen in life. There are no hidden cameras in a relationship and we don't know how Oscar behaved on his own. We must believe that when Oscar and Bosie found themselves together, they found something in each other which was really valuable - and that was real love, full of passion and madness."

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