Prior to the French Revolution, opponents of the French monarchy regularly circulated pornographic propaganda alleging that Marie Antoinette was engaged in a lesbian relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe. Gay playwright Tennessee Williams used the saint's name for the martyred character Sebastian in his 1957 play, Suddenly Last Summer. In the 1890s, Irish poet Oscar Wilde, himself also called a gay icon, was incarcerated and exiled for his sexuality, and adopted the pseudonym 'Sebastian Melmoth' after the saint. Kaye states that 'Contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire (indeed, a homoerotic ideal), and a prototypical portrait of a tortured closet case.' The 3rd century Christian martyr Saint Sebastian is one of the earliest known gay icons, due to his depiction in artwork as a beautiful, agonied young man. Saint Sebastian, history's first recorded male gay icon Saint Sebastian
