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Versions and premieres

Rehearsals for the play's debut on the London stage began in 1892, but were halted when the Lord Chamberlain's licensor of plays banned Salomé on the basis that it was illegal to depict Biblical characters on the stage. The play was first published in French in 1893, and an English translation, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, in 1894. On the Dedication page, Wilde indicates Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas as translator. In fact, Wilde had quarrelled about the translation with Lord Alfred because he thought his work unsatisfactory; the English text appears to be Wilde's own work, with Lord Alfred's as a basis.

The play eventually premiered in Paris in 1896, while Wilde was in prison. When asked why he had chosen to write Salomé in French, Wilde cited Maeterlinck as an example of the interesting effect resulting when an author writes in a language not his own.^{[citation needed]}

In June 1906 the play was presented privately with A Florentine Tragedy by the Literary Theatre Society at King's Hall, Covent Garden. The Lord Chamberlain's ban was not lifted for almost forty years; the first public performance of Salomé in England was at the Savoy Theatre on October 5, 1931.