“The Nightingale and the Rose” is a much more disturbing, bleak fairy tale, and one that seems ultimately irreducible. Wilde himself wrote, “I like to fancy that there may be many meanings in the tale, for in writing it I did not start with an idea and clothe it in form, but began with a form and strove to make it beautiful enough to have many secrets and many answers.”
In the tale, the Nightingale sacrifices herself for Love but it is all for naught, and even worse, there is no real acknowledgment for what she did. The Student does not know what she is doing and, ironically, finds her silly and superficial as he listens to her song he cannot understand, and never gets to dance with his lady, who also turns out to be completely unworthy of the bird’s sacrifice. As critic Matthew Schultz writes, the tale “carries a message of sacrifice that is misunderstood, unappreciated, and ultimately forgotten.” Schultz sees a parallel between the Nightingale’s sacrifice and the Crucifixion, also a sacrifice of life for the unworthy.
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