On May 25, 1895, Oscar Wilde was convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and served two years hard labour in jail. After his release from prison, Wilde's spirit seemed to have been broken. He made only a few half-hearted attempts at literary activity and concluded in the end that such endeavors were for "the other self--the man I once was." He spent three years in self-imposed exile from society before dying penniless and alone in a Paris hotel. Oscar Wilde's plays include Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Salomé (1893), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) which is considered by many critics to be the finest modern farce in the English language.