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.[1][n 1] 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.[3]
Wilde wrote the play while staying in Paris and explained to an interviewer the following year why he had written it in French:
Punch's view of Wilde as a poilu, when he threatened to take French citizenship over the ban on Salome in BritainI 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. The play was written in Paris some six months ago, where I read it to some young poets, who admired it immensely. 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.[4]
He 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.[5] 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.[4] Bernhardt too condemned the ban and said she would present the play in Paris at some time, although she could not say when.[6][n 2]
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".[8] 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.[9]
Wilde 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.[1] The play was first given, in the original French, in a one-off performance[10] 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.[11][12][n 3] The main roles were played as follows:[12]
- Iokanaan – Max Barbier
- Hérode – Lugné-Poe
- Young Syrian[n 4] – 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.[n 5]
