Alright Thespians and art enthusiasts. This one’s for you.
Better known for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) wrote, in 1891, Salomé-Drame en un acte; or in English, Salome-A Tragedy in One Act. The play is a portrayal of the Biblical story of Salome, the stepdaughter of Herod, who, after her performance of the Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod and his friends, requests the head of Jokanaan the Prophet (John the Baptist) on a silver platter.
Rehearsals for the play’s debut began in 1892, but because it was illegal to portray biblical characters on the stage at the time, the performance was banned.
The play finally received its debut on 11 February 1896 in Paris at the Comédie-Parisienne; unfortunately, Wilde was in prison at the time.
Within his play, special attention is paid to the Dance of the Seven Veils (named by Wilde), which, according to an analytical quote by Carmen Skaggs in her book, Modernity Revision of the Dancing Daughter: The Salome Narrative of Wilde and Strauss, gives Salome more depth of character and modernity. She writes,
“Wilde, as a Decadent writer in the nineteenth century, develops the themes of Orientalism and counter-cultural ethics. He enters the chasm of human emotion and reveals both the savage and noble heights to which humanity ascends. He explores the deeply ingrained gender ideologies of modernity and the sexual perversities of modern culture.”
“By focusing the narrative upon the dancing daughter and empowering her sexuality, Wilde brings new dimension to her character.”
What a great feminist close read! Nothing wrong with a sprinkle of feminism, right?
Anyway, Wilde originally wrote his play in French and this edition was first published in 1893. Earlier in 1892 for the Pall Mall Gazette, Wilde explained his reasoning for writing his play en français:
“I have one instrument that I know I can command, and that is the English language. There was another instrument to which I had listened all my life, and I wanted once to touch this new instrument to see whether I could make any beautiful thing out of it. […] Of course, there are modes of expression that a Frenchman of letters would not have used, but they give a certain relief or colour to the play. A great deal of the curious effect that Maeterlinck produces comes from the fact that he, a Flamand by grace, writes in an alien language. The same thing is true of Rossetti, who, though he wrote in English, was essentially Latin in temperament.”
The French edition was illustrated by André Derain (1880-1954), co-founder of the modern art movement, Fauvism. The first English edition of Salome was published one year later in 1894 and was illustrated by Audrey Bearsley (1872-1898). It was his striking illustrations that caught my eye and that I felt I should share with you all. Bearsley was a leading figure in the Aesthetic (along with Wilde himself) and Art Nouveau movements. His illustrations were created under the influence of the Japanese-style wood cuts, and, “emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.”
Signed copies of both the French and English editions of Oscar Wilde’s Salome are housed in MU Special Collections and Rare Books Department.
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. Salome : a tragedy in one act, translated from the French of Oscar Wilde / by Alfred Douglas and illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley ; with a new introduction by Holbrook Jackson. London : Printed for the members of the Limited Editions Club, 1938. Rare Folio PR5820 .S15 1938b (ENGLISH)
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. Salomé : drama en un acte / Oscar Wilde ; illustrations par André Derain. Paris : Imprimé pour les membres de The Limited Editions Club, 1938. Rare Folio PR5820 .S15 1938b (FRENCH)
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