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    Salome: "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
    Salome: "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
    Salome: "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Salome: "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."

    By Oscar Wilde

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891. His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. Whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. It was to break him. On release he left for France, There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’. Here we publish the infamous play ‘Salome’. A work of great art that is now being accepted and placed where it rightfully belongs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    ISBN9781783946648
    Salome: "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.

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    Reviews for Salome

    3.5/5

    281 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A haunting story based on a few short bible versus this play was the base of the opera. Libretto is almost identical. Excellent preparation if u plan to see the opera
    • 1/5
      Note 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.
    • 2/5
      I 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.
    • 3/5
      Classic 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.
    • 4/5
      Wilde'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.
    • 3/5
      Salome 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!!
    • 4/5
      Very 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.

    Book preview

    Salome - Oscar Wilde

    Salomé by Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland.  The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles.  With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

    His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891.  His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London.

    Whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel.  The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. It was to break him.

    On release he left for France, There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.

    Here we publish the infamous play ‘Salome’. A work of great art that is now being accepted and placed where it rightfully belongs.

    A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT:

    Index Of Contents

    The Persons Of The Play

    A Note On ‘Salome’

    Mr Oscar Wilde On Salome

    Robert Ross On Salome

    Cast Of The Performance Of Salome

    Act I

    Oscar Wilde – A Short Biography

    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 Salomé was greeted by a chorus of ridicule, and it may be noted in passing that at least two of the more violent reviews were from the pens of unsuccessful dramatists, while all those whose French never went beyond Ollendorff were glad to find in that venerable school classic an unsuspected asset in their education, a handy missile with which to pelt Salomé and its author. The correctness of the French was, of course, impugned, although the scrip had been passed by a distinguished French writer, to whom I have heard the whole work attributed. The Times, while depreciating the drama, gave its author credit for a tour de force, in being capable of writing a French play for Madame Bernhardt, and this drew from him the following letter:

    The Times, Thursday, March 2, 1893,

    MR. OSCAR WILDE ON SALOMÉ.

    To the Editor of The Times.

    Sir, My attention has been drawn to a review of Salomé which was published in your columns last

    week. The opinions of English critics on a French work of mine have, of course, little, if any, interest for me. I write simply to ask you to allow me to correct a misstatement that appears in the review in question.

    The fact that the greatest tragic actress of any stage now living saw in my play such beauty that she was anxious to produce it, to take herself the part of the heroine, to lend to the entire poem the glamour of her personality, and to my prose the music of her flute-like voice, this was naturally, and always will be, a source of pride and pleasure to me, and I look forward with delight to seeing Mme. Bernhardt present my play in Paris, that vivid centre of art, where religious dramas are often performed.

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