Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act
By Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was a Dublin-born poet and playwright who studied at the Portora Royal School, before attending Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford. The son of two writers, Wilde grew up in an intellectual environment. As a young man, his poetry appeared in various periodicals including Dublin University Magazine. In 1881, he published his first book Poems, an expansive collection of his earlier works. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was released in 1890 followed by the acclaimed plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
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Reviews for Salomé
286 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Note to Oscar -- stick to the witty repartee and the mocking of society that is your trademark. I could not sit through this wordy, heavy piece if my life depended on it. The guy who was beheaded was the lucky one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wilde's writing is the center piece of this play about Herod, Salome, and John the Baptist. A fine, quick read, with a very fine introduction by Holbrook Jackson.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very well-edited, newly translated three-language edition (French, English, Swedish) of Wilde's quite short and very quickly banned play. The annotations are very good, placing the script in a biblical and historical context, even noting where Wilde, for example, uses phrases in his other works. Not my fave tome by Wilde, but still very readable.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I suppose its actually better than this old, twentieth century, South Pacific native could ever appreciate. If it was, indeed, written by Oscar Wilde, it is so different from his Victorian English comedic dramas that I couldn't recognize any threads of sisterhood to them. I love those and I don't love this.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Salome by Oscar Wilde was a very strange play. The usual witty, humorous dialogs which I expected in his play was totally absent. This actually turned out to be a very depressing book. I could not relate to the protagonist Salome one bit I felt she was an eccentric character. First of all Salome desiring a Baptist was something very odd and on top that she wanted him very badly and then when he rejected her at once she took a very drastic step to get him back which was horrible and disturbing. I am unable to understand what to make out of this play!!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Classic retelling of the story of The daughter of Herod and her wish of the Head of John the Baptist for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Book preview
Salomé - Oscar Wilde
SALOMÉ
A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT
By
OSCAR WILDE
Illustrated by
AUBREY BEARDSLEY
First published in 1891
Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics
This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics,
an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any
way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.
For more information visit
www.readandcobooks.co.uk
Contents
Oscar Wilde
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
A NOTE ON SALOMÉ
NEW STAGE CLUB
ACT ONE
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and Wilde became fluent in French and German early in life. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pate. Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist. After university, he moved to London and became involved with the fashionable cultural and social circles of the day. At the age of just 25 he was well-known as a wit and a dandy, and as a spokesman for aestheticism—an artistic movement that emphasized aesthetic values ahead of socio-political themes—he undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, before eventually returning to London to try his hand at journalism. It was also around this time that he produced most of his well-known short fiction.
In 1891, Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel. Reviewers criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusions, although it was popular nonetheless. From 1892, Wilde focussed on playwriting. In that year, he gained commercial and critical success with Lady Windermere's Fan, and followed it with the comedy A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895). Then came Wilde's most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest – a farcical comedy which cemented his artistic reputation and is now seen as his masterpiece.
In 1895, the Marquess of Queensbury, who objected to his son spending so much time with Wilde because of Wilde's flamboyant behaviour and reputation, publicly insulted him. In response, Wilde brought an unsuccessful slander suit against him. The result of this inability to prove slander was his own trial on charges of sodomy, and the revealing to the transfixed Victorian public of salacious details of Wilde's private life followed. Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labour.
Wilde was released from prison in 1897, having suffered from a number of ailments and injuries. He left England the next day for the continent, to spend his last three years in penniless exile. He settled in Paris, and didn't write anymore, declaring I can write, but have lost the joy of writing.
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on in November of 1900, converting to Catholicism on his deathbed.
THE PERSONS
OF THE PLAY
HEROD ANTIPAS, Tetrarch of Judæa.
JOKANAAN, The Prophet.
THE YOUNG SYRIAN, Captain of the Guard.
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.
SALOMÉ, Daughter of Herodias.
THE SLAVES OF SALOMÉ.
A NOTE ON SALOMÉ
SALOMÉ
has made the author's name a household word wherever the English language is not spoken. Few English plays have such a peculiar history. Written in French in 1892 it was in full rehearsal by Madame Bernhardt at the Palace Theatre when it was prohibited by the Censor. Oscar Wilde immediately announced his intention of changing his nationality, a characteristic jest, which was only taken seriously, oddly enough, in Ireland. The interference of the Censor has seldom been more popular or more heartily endorsed by English critics. On its publication in book form