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{{short description|Tragedy by Oscar Wilde}}{{About|the play by Oscar Wilde|other uses|Salome (disambiguation)}}{{EngvarB|date=April 2021}}{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}}

factoids

Salome (French: Salomé, {{IPA-fr|salɔme|pron}}) is a one-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original version of the play was first published in French in 1893; an English translation was published a year later. The play depicts the attempted seduction of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) by Salome, stepdaughter of Herod Antipas; her dance of the seven veils; the execution of Jokanaan at Salome's instigation; and her death on Herod's orders.The first production was in Paris in 1896. Because the play depicted biblical characters it was banned in Britain and was not performed publicly there until 1931. The play became popular in Germany, and Wilde's text was taken by the composer Richard Strauss as the basis of his 1905 opera Salome, the international success of which has tended to overshadow Wilde's original play. Film and other adaptations have been made of the play.

Background and first production

When Wilde began writing Salome in late 1891 he was known as an author and critic, but was not yet established as a playwright. Lady Windermere's Fan was completed but not yet staged, and his other West End successes, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, were yet to come.Edwards, Owen Dudley. "Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854–1900), writer", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. Retrieved 6 April 2021 {{ODNBsub}}{{refn|Wilde had written one earlier play, Vera, Or The Nihilists, which had not been staged.Raby, p. vii|group=n}} He had been considering the subject of Salome since his undergraduate days at Oxford when Walter Pater introduced him to Flaubert's story Hérodias in 1877. The biographer Peter Raby comments that Wilde's interest had been further stimulated by descriptions of Gustave Moreau's paintings of Salome in Joris-Karl Huysmans's À rebours and by Heinrich Heine's Atta Troll, Jules Laforgue's "Salomé" in Moralités Légendaires and Stéphane Mallarmé's Hérodiade.Raby, p. xiWilde wrote the play while staying in Paris and explained to an interviewer the following year why he had written it in French:File:A-Wilde-Idea-Punch-1892.png|Punch's view of Wilde as a thumb|upright| alt=caricature of plumpish white man in the uniform of a private in the French armyHe submitted the play to the leading French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who accepted it for production in her 1892 season at the Royal English Opera House, in London.Ross, p. vii The play went into rehearsals in June, but at that time all plays presented in Britain had to be approved by the official censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Approval was withheld because of a rule prohibiting the depiction of biblical characters on stage. Wilde expressed outrage and said he would leave England and take French citizenship. Bernhardt too condemned the ban and said she would present the play in Paris at some time, although she could not say when."The Censorship and 'Salome'", The Pall Mall Gazette, 6 July 1892, p. 1{{refn|The opportunity did not arise, and Bernhardt, who was by this time over 50, never played Salome.Dierkes-Thrun, p. 5|group=n}}The play was published in French in 1893 in Paris by the Librairie de l'Art Independent and in London by Elkin Mathews and John Lane. It is dedicated "À mon ami Pierre Louÿs".Wilde (1908), pp. 2–3 The author was pleased by the favourable reception given to the published play by leading Francophone writers, in particular Pierre Loti, Maurice Maeterlinck and Mallarmé.Raby, p. xiiiWilde never saw the play produced. The only performances given in his lifetime were in 1896, by which time he was serving a prison sentence for illegal homosexual activity. The play was first given, in the original French, in a one-off performanceDonohue, p. 119 on 11 February 1896 by the Théâtre de l'Œuvre company at the Théâtre de la Comédie-Parisienne, as the second part of a double bill with Romain Coolus's comedy Raphaël."Les Théâtres", Le Figaro, 12 February 1896, p. 3{{refn|The company later had its own theatre, the Théâtre de l'Œuvre (rue de Clichy),"Un lieu, une histoire", Théâtre de l'Œuvre 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2021 but in 1896 it was based at the Comédie-Parisienne (rue Boudreau) and the Nouveau-Théâtre (rue Blanche).Stoullig, p. 410|group=n}} The main roles were played as follows:

• Iokanaan – Max Barbier
• Hérode – Lugné-Poe
• Young Syrian{{refn|group=n|name=syrian}} – M. Nerey
• A Jew – M. Labruyère
• First Soldier – M. Lévêque
• Salomé – Lina Munte
• Hérodias – Mlle Barbieri
• Page to Hérodias – Suzanne Auclaire

The play was given again in October 1896 in a Wilde double bill at the Nouveau-Théâtre, with a French adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan. Charles Daumerie played Herod and Munte again played Salome.{{refn|In Lady Windermere's Fan, adapted into French as La Passante ("The Passer-by") Munte played Mrs Erlynne, rechristened "Madame Vernon" in this version, and Daumerie was Lord Windermere."Paris Theatrical Gossip", The Era, 17 October 1896, p. 12; and "Les Théâtres", Le Figaro, 28 October 1896, p. 3|group=n}}

English and other translations

File:Salome by Manuel Orazi.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=painting of nearly-naked your woman posing in elaborate headdress|Illustration for Salome, by Manuel OraziManuel OraziA biographer of Wilde, Owen Dudley Edwards, comments that the play "is apparently untranslatable into English", citing attempts made by Lord Alfred Douglas, Aubrey Beardsley, Wilde himself revising Douglas's botched effort, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland, Jon Pope, Steven Berkoff and others, and concluding "it demands reading and performance in French to make its impact". The most familiar English version is by Douglas, extensively revised by Wilde, originally published in 1894. Wilde dedicated the first edition "To my friend Lord Alfred Douglas, the translator of my play".Wilde (1918), p. 97 It was lavishly produced, with illustrations by Beardsley that Wilde thought over-sophisticated.Ellmann, p. 376{{refn|Wilde commented to Charles Ricketts, "Dear Aubrey is almost too Parisian: he cannot forget that he has been to Dieppe – once". Still, Wilde liked the illustrations more than did The Times, which observed, "They are fantastic, grotesque, unintelligible for the most part, and, so far as they are intelligible, repulsive … a joke, and it seems to us a very poor joke"."Books of the Week", The Times, 8 March 1896, p. 12|group=n}} An American edition, with the Beardsley illustrations, was published in San Francisco in 1896.Wilde (1918), p. 98 In the 1890s and 1900s translations were published in at least eleven other languages, from Dutch in 1893 to Yiddish in 1909.{{refn|The other languages were Czech (1905), German (1903), Greek (1907), Hungarian (1908), Italian (1906), Polish (1904), Russian (1904), Spanish (1908) and Swedish (1895).Wilde (1918), pp. 96–109|group=n}}

Plot

Characters

{{div col}}

• Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judea
• Jokanaan, the Prophet
• The young Syrian, Captain of the guard{{refn|In both the French and English texts Salome addresses the Syrian as "Narraboth", but he is not named in the dramatis personae.Wilde (1918) pp. 4 and 23; and (1950) pp. 8 and 16|group=n|name=syrian}}
• Tigellinus, a young Roman
• A Cappadocian
• A Nubian
• First soldier
• Second soldier
• The page of Herodias
• Jews, Nazarenes, etc.
• A slave
• Naaman, the Executioner
• Herodias, Wife of the Tetrarch
• Salome, daughter of Herodias
• The slaves of Salomé

{{div col end}}

Synopsis

Jokanaan (John the Baptist, Iokanaan in the original French text) has been imprisoned by Herod Antipas in a cistern below the terrace of Herod's palace, for his hostile comments about Herodias, Herod's second wife. A young captain of the guard admires the beautiful princess Salome, Herod's stepdaughter. A page warns the captain that something terrible may happen if he continues to stare at the princess. Salome is fascinated by Jokanaan's voice. She persuades the captain to open the cistern so that the prophet can emerge, and she can see him and touch him.Wilde (1950), pp. 1–17 Jokanaan appears, denouncing Herodias and her husband. At first frightened by the sight of the holy man, Salome becomes fascinated by him, begging him to let her touch his hair, his skin and kiss his mouth. When she tells him she is Herodias's daughter, he calls her a "daughter of Sodom" and bids her keep away from him. All Salome's attempts to attract him fail, and he swears she will never kiss his mouth, cursing her as the daughter of an adulteress and advising her to seek the Lord. He returns to his underground confinement. The young captain of the guard, unable to bear Salome's desire for another man, fatally stabs himself.Wilde (1950), pp. 17–22Herod appears from the palace, looking for the princess and commenting on the strange look of the moon. When he slips in the captain's blood, he suddenly panics. Herodias dismisses his fears and asks him to go back inside with her, but Herod's attention has turned libidinously towards Salome, who rejects his advances. From the cistern, Jokanaan resumes his denunciation of Herodias; she demands that Herod hand the prophet over to the Jews. Herod refuses, maintaining that Jokanaan is a holy man and has seen God. His words spark an argument among the Jews concerning the true nature of God, and two Nazarenes talk about the miracles of Jesus. As Jokanaan continues to accuse her, Herodias demands that he is silenced.Wilde (1950), pp. 23–32File:Munte-Salome-head.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=young woman in ancient middle-eastern costume holding a tray on which is a severed male human headHerod asks Salome to dance for him. She refuses, but when he promises to give her anything she wants, she agrees. Ignoring her mother's pleas – "Ne dansez pas, ma fille" – "Do not dance, my daughter" – Salome performs the dance of the seven veils.{{refn|In the original, Wilde instructs "Salomé danse la danse des sept voiles".Wilde (1918), p. 74 The title of the dance is his own invention.Tanitch, p. 135|group=n}} Delighted, Herod asks what reward she would like, and she asks for the head of Jokanaan on a silver platter. Horrified, Herod refuses, while Herodias rejoices at Salome's choice. Herod offers other rewards, but Salome insists and reminds Herod of his promise. He finally yields. The executioner descends into the cistern, and Salome impatiently awaits her reward. When the prophet's head is brought to her, she passionately addresses Jokanaan as if he were still alive and finally kisses his lips:{| border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"||| Ah! j'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, j'ai baisé ta bouche. Il y avait une âcre saveur sur tes lèvres. Était-ce la saveur du sang? ... Mais, peut-être est-ce la saveur de l'amour. On dit que l'amour a une âcre saveur ... Mais, qu'importe? Qu'importe? J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, j'ai baisé ta bouche.||| Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood? ... But perchance it is the taste of love. ... They say that love hath a bitter taste. ... But what of that? what of that? I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan.|Herod, frightened and appalled at Salome's behaviour, orders the soldiers, "Tuez cette femme!" – "Kill that woman!", and they crush her to death under their shields.Wilde (1950), pp. 33–47

Revivals

International

In 1901, within a year of Wilde's death, Salome was produced in Berlin by Max Reinhardt in Hedwig Lachmann's German translation,JOURNAL, 48569305, Richard Strauss's Salome and Oscar Wilde's French Text, The Wildean, 63–73, 52, January 2018, James Morwood, and ran, according to Robbie Ross, for "a longer consecutive period in Germany than any play by any Englishman, not excepting Shakespeare".Wilde (1918), p. x The play was not revived in Paris until 1973 (although Richard Strauss's operatic version was frequently seen there from 1910 onwards)."Salomé d'Oscar Wilde", Les Archives du spectacle. Retrieved 7 April 2021 Les Archives du spectacle record 13 productions of Wilde's play in France between 1973 and 2020.The American premiere was given in New York in 1905 by the Progressive Stage Society, an amateur group. A professional production was presented at the Astor Theatre the following year, with Mercedes Leigh in the title role. The Internet Broadway Database records five New York productions between 1917 and 2003."Salome", Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved 7 April 2021 The Salomes included Evelyn Preer (1923), Sheryl Lee (1992) and Marisa Tomei (2003), and among the actors playing Herod was Al Pacino in 1992 and 2003.The play was given in Czech in Brno in 1924, and in English at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1928 (directed by Hilton Edwards, with Micheál Mac Liammóir as Jokanaan).Barnaby, pp. lxxxix and xc In Tokyo in 1960 Yukio Mishima directed a Japanese version in a translation by Kōnosuke Hinatsu which, The Times reported, "rendered Wilde's rhetoric into the measured cadences of fifteenth-century Japanese"."Wilde's Salome on the Japanese Stage", The Times, 21 April 1960, p. 16 A later Japanese production was seen in Tokyo and subsequently in France in 1996."Salomé","Salomé d'Oscar Wilde", Les Archives du spectacle. Retrieved 7 April 2021

Britain

In Britain, the Lord Chamberlain's consent to public performance still being withheld, the first production there was given in May 1905 in a private performance in London by the New Stage Club, in which the performance of Robert Farquharson as Herod was reportedly of remarkable power.Wilde (1918), p. xI Millicent Murby played Salome, and Florence Farr directed. A second private performance followed in 1906 by the Literary Theatre Society, with Farquharson again as Herod.MacCarthy, Desmond, "Oscar Wilde and The Literary Theatre Club", The Speaker: The Liberal Review, 7 July 1906, pp. 315–316 The costumes and scenery by Charles Ricketts were much admired, but the rest of the cast and the direction were poor, according to Ross.Wilde (1918), p. xiii A 1911 production at the Court Theatre by Harcourt Williams, with Adeline Bourne as Salome, received disparaging notices.Tanitch, p. 149The ban on public performance of Salome was not lifted until 1931. The last "private" production, earlier that year, featuring a dance of the seven veils choreographed by Ninette de Valois, was judged "creepily impressive" by The Daily Telegraph.Kaplan, p. 264 For the first sanctioned public production, at the Savoy Theatre, Farquharson reprised his Herod, with real-life mother and daughter casting, Nancy Price and Joan Maude as Herodias and Salome. The production was deemed tame and unthrilling, and the play – "gone modest and middle class" as one critic put it – was not seen again in the West End for more than twenty years.Kaplan, p. 265A 1954 London revival, a vehicle for the Australian actor Frank Thring, made little impact, and it was not until Lindsay Kemp's 1977 production at the Roundhouse that Salome was established as a critical and box-office success, running for six months in repertory with Kemp's adaptation of Our Lady of the Flowers.Kaplan, pp. 265 and 278Smith, Rupert. "I first danced Salome in school, naked but for some toilet paper", The Guardian, 30 January 2002 That version was a free adaptation of the original, with an all-male cast, switching between French and English texts and using only about a third of Wilde's dialogue. A 1988 production by Steven Berkoff in which he played Herod, was seen at the Gate Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival and at the National Theatre, London. It focused on Wilde's words, relying on the skills of the actors and the imagination of audiences to evoke the setting and action.Kaplan, p. 267 A 2017 production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, described as "gender fluid", featured a male actor, Matthew Tennyson, as Salome."Matthew Tennyson: 'I hope gender fluid casting is the future of theatre'", What's On Stage, 15 June 2017

Critical reception

(File:Salome-title-page-1893.png|thumb|Title page of first edition, 1893|alt=title page of book giving details of author, title, publishers and date)In Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, Edouard Stoullig reported that press reviews had been generally benevolent out of protest at the harsh treatment received by Wilde in Britain. In Stoullig's view the play was a good piece of rhetoric marred by too many "ridiculous repetitions" of lines by minor characters.Stoullig, pp. 413–414 In Le Figaro Henry Fouquier shared Stoullig's view that the piece owed something to Flaubert, and thought it "an exercise in romantic literature, not badly done, a little boring". The reviewer in Le Temps said, "M. Wilde has certainly read Flaubert, and cannot forget it. The most interesting thing about Salome is the style. The work was written in French by M. Wilde. It is full of very elaborate and ornate verses. The colours, the stars, the birds, the rare gems, everything that adorns nature, has provided M. Wilde with points of comparison and ingenious themes for the stanzas and antistrophes that Salome's characters utter"."Théâtres", Le Temps, 13 February 1896, p. 3 La Plume said, "Salomé has almost all the qualities of a poem, the prose is as musical and fluid as verse, full of images and metaphors".Segard, Achille. "Théâtres", La Plume, 1 March 1896, p. 164When banning the original 1892 production of Salome, the responsible official in the Lord Chamberlain's office commented privately, "The piece is written in French – half Biblical, half pornographic – by Oscar Wilde himself. Imagine the average British public's reception of it".Pigott, Edward, quoted in Wilson, Simon, "Wilde, Beardsley, Salomé and Censorship", The Wildean, No. 51 (July 2017), p. 48 {{subscription required}} In Britain the critics in general either ignored or disparaged the play. The Times described it as "an arrangement in blood and ferocity, morbid, bizarre, repulsive, and very offensive in its adaptation of scriptural phraseology to situations the reverse of sacred"."Books of the Week", The Times, 23 February 1893, p. 8 The Pall Mall Gazette suggested that the play was far from original: "the reader of Salome seems to stand in the Island of Voices, and to hear around him and about the utterances of friends, the whisperings of demigods" – particularly Gautier, Maeterlinck and above all Flaubert – "There is no freshness in Mr Wilde's ideas; there is no freshness in his method of presenting those ideas"."Salome", The Pall Mall Gazette, 27 February 1893, p. 3 New York reviewers were not impressed when the play was first professionally produced there in 1906: The Sun called it "bloodily degenerate"; The New-York Tribune thought it "decadent stuff, not worthy of notice".Tanitch, pp. 142–143Raby comments that later criticism of the play "has tended to treat it either as a literary text or as a theatrical aberration".Raby, p. xiv The historian John Stokes writes that Salome is a rare instance in British theatrical history of an authentically Symbolist drama. Symbolist authors rejected naturalism and used "poetic language and pictorial settings to invoke the inner lives of characters", expressing without the constraints of naturalism all kinds of emotions "both spiritual and sensual".Stokes, John. "Salomé: symbolism, decadence and censorship", British Library. Retrieved 8 April 2021

Themes and derivatives

Critics have analysed Wilde's use of images favoured by Israel's kingly poets and references to the moon,Nassaar, Christopher S. Wilde's Salomé and the Victorian Religious Landscape Victorian Web. Retrieved 7 April 2021 his depiction of power-play between the sexes,Hutcheon, Linda and Michel Hutcheon. "Here's Lookin' At You, Kid: The Empowering Gaze in Salome", Profession, 1998 {{subscription required}} his filling in of gaps in the biblical narrativeMarrapodi, Eric. "A Head on a Silver Platter – Rethinking John the Baptist and Oscar Wilde" CNN Belief Blog. Retrieved 7 April 2021 and his invention of the "dance of the seven veils".Ziolkowski, Theodore. "The Veil as Metaphor and as Myth" Religion & Literature Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer 2008), pp. 61–81.File:Portrait of Ida Rubenstein1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|left|alt=painting of nude white woman with dark hair, reclining on a couch, holding a single veilWilde's version of the story spawned several other artistic works, the most famous of which is Richard Strauss's opera of the same name. Strauss saw Wilde's play in Berlin in November 1902 at Reinhardt's Little Theatre, with Gertrud Eysoldt in the title role. He began to compose his opera in summer 1903, completing it in 1905 and premiering it later the same year.Osborne, pp. 38–39 Critics including Horst Schroeder have argued that the international success of Strauss's adaptation "virtually drove Wilde's drama in its original form off the stage".Schroeder, Horst "The First Salomé: Lina Munte", The Wildean, No. 33 (July 2008), p. 20 {{subscription required}}Walton, p. 189; and Isherwood, Charles. "Salome", Variety, 16 March 2004There have been numerous adaptations and interpretations of Wilde's Salome, on stage and screen and in the visual arts. In St Petersburg in 1908 Mikhail Fokine created a ballet based on the play, with music by Glazunov and décor by Léon Bakst. Ida Rubinstein played Salome.Tanitch, p. 147 For the cinema, Salome was first filmed in an American silent version directed by J. Stuart Blackton in 1908, with Florence Lawrence as Salome and Maurice Costello as Herod,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20210805085553weblink">"Salome (1908)", British Film Institute. Retrieved 7 April 2021 followed by an Italian version in 1910.weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20210412070326weblink">"Salomè (1910)", British Film Institute. Retrieved 7 April 2021 Later adaptations include a 1918 silent film starring Theda Bara,"Defend Salome's Lack of Clothing: Theda Bara and her Director, J. Gordon Edwards, Reply to Critics of Star's Characterization", Moving Picture World, vol. 39, issue 8, p. 1059, February 22, 1919. Retrieved April 4, 2021 a 1923 silent version directed by Charles Bryant starring Alla Nazimova as Salome and Mitchell Lewis as Herod,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160208203140weblink">"Salome (1923", British Film Institute. Retrieved 7 April 2021 and a 2013 sound adaptation directed by and starring Al Pacino, with Jessica Chastain as Salome.weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170426083601weblink">"Salomé (2013)", British Film Institute. Retrieved 7 April 2021 Excerpts from the play featured prominently in Ken Russell's 1988 film Salome's Last Dance.weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20190524203441weblink">"Salome's Last Dance (1988)", British Film Institute. Retrieved 23 April 2022

Notes, references and sources

Notes

{{Reflist|group=n}}

References

{{Reflist}}

Sources

• BOOK, Barnaby, Paul, Performance Timeline of the European Reception of Oscar Wilde, The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, Stefano Evangelista, 2010, London and New York, Continuum, 978-1-84-706005-1,
• BOOK, Dierkes-Thrun, Petra, Salome's Modernity: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetics of Transgression, 2014, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 978-0-47-203604-2,
• BOOK, Donohue, Joseph, Distance, death and desire in Salome, The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby, 1997, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press,weblink 978-0-52-147471-9,
• BOOK, Ellman, Richard, Oscar Wilde, 1988, London, Hamish Hamilton, 978-0-24-112392-8,
• BOOK, Kaplan, Joel, Wilde on the stage, The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Peter Raby, 1997, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press,weblink 978-0-52-147471-9,
• BOOK, Osborne, Charles, The Complete Operas of Richard Strauss, 1988, London, O'Mara, 978-0-94-839751-6,
• BOOK, Raby, Peter, Introduction, Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, 2008, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press,weblink 978-0-19-953597-2,
• BOOK, Stoullig, Edmond, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique, 1896, 1897, Paris, Ollendorff,weblink 172996346,
• BOOK, Tanitch, Robert, Robert Tanitch, Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen, 1999, London, Methuen,weblink 978-0-41-372610-0,
• BOOK, Walton, Chris, Composing Oscar: settings of Wilde for the German stage, The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, Stefano Evangelista, 2010, London and New York, Continuum, 978-1-84-706005-1,
• BOOK, Wilde, Oscar, Salomé; La Sainte Courtisane; A Florentine Tragedy, 1918, 1910, London, Methuen,weblink 485278059,
• BOOK, Wilde, Oscar, Salome and Other Plays, 1950, London, Penguin,weblink 1071305437,

External links

{{Commons category|Salome (play)}}

• {{Wikisource-inline|Salomé|Salomé|single=true}}
• {{wikisourcelang-inline|fr|Salomé|Salomé}}
• Project Gutenberg e-text of Wilde's Salomé (French)
• Study guide containing analysis, glossary and historical background.
• {{librivox book | title=Salome | author=Oscar WILDE}}

{{Salomé}}{{Oscar Wilde}}{{Authority control}}