When the Marquess of Queensbury, Alfred Douglas' father, discovered his and Wilde's relationship, he was displeased to say the least. Following on the heels of several blackmail attempts, the Marquess' attempts to break the pair up became increasingly volatile, escalating from threatening hotel and restaurant staff to turn the men out, to showing up at Wilde's house with the intention of enacting violence. He harrassed his son through letters, even after he had already denounced him and cut him off, and tried to disrupt performances of Wilde's plays. Finally, Wilde had Queensbury arrested and charged with libel for spreading allegations of Wilde's homosexuality, which unfortunately backfired tremendously. Assuring his soliciters and lawyers of his innocence against these baseless rumours, and lying in the court room, the trial did not go Wilde's way. Using his letters to Douglas as well as his own novels (Dorian Gray included), the defense created a solid foundation regarding the expression of Wilde's perverted homosexual tendencies.

Due to the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1895, which criminalized same sex relationships, Wilde did not just lose the libel case; he was prosecuted as a sodomite himself. The trials were widely followed and spoken about, and the first jury could not reach a verdict on most of the charges. This time, the government took an incredibly aggressive position on the case, possibly because the Prime Minister was being bribed by Queensbury after his own affair with Francis Douglas. Wilde's lawyer emphasized his writing abilities when urging the jury (and society) to look upon him favorably and drop the case, which ultimately went ignored; Wilde was found guilty, served jail time, and the public view of homosexuals became horrifically harsh and intolerant. 

Wilde, being an incredibly iconic individual, gave many responses both inside of and outside of court regarding this set of cirsumstances, perhaps none more memorable than when he answered a question about one of Douglas' lines of poetry: "'The love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the 'Love that dare not speak its name,' and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."