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    Salomé
    Salomé
    Salomé
    Ebook63 pages52 minutes

    Salomé

    By Oscar Wilde

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Originally published in French, ‘Salomé’ is Oscar Wilde’s 1896 dramatization of the biblical story of Salome, the step-daughter of Herod who danced before Herod and in so doing wins the granting of any wish that Herod may be able to fulfill. Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist. Fans of Wilde will delight in the dramatization of this biblical story.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781420909821
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet and playwright who rose to global fame in the 1880s as a larger-than-life public persona with plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, and Lady Windermere's Fan. The author of countless brilliant epigrams that form part of our popular lexicon, he was sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison for having relations with men, which ruined his reputation and career. Upon his release he exiled himself in France, where he died penniless. Today Wilde is celebrated as a courageous crusader for free expression, gay love, and anyone oppressed by hypocritical conventions.

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    Reviews for Salomé

    3.5/5

    287 ratings7 reviews

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    • 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
      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
      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
      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

    Salomé - Oscar Wilde

    SALOMÉ

    A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT:

    TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF OSCAR WILDE

    A Digireads.com Book

    Digireads.com Publishing

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2754-2

    Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-0982-1

    This edition copyright © 2011

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    TO MY FRIEND

    LORD ALFRED BRUCE DOUGLAS

    THE TRANSLATOR OF

    MY PLAY

    CONTENTS

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    SALOMÉ

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    OSCAR WILDE

    Oscar Wilde is one of the most widely recognized names in British literature. An accomplished journalist, poet, storyteller and playwright, Wilde is also well known as the leader of the Fin de siècle (end of the century) aesthetic movement that helped shape modern Britain. But Wilde's legacy is not merely about his aesthetic, as his dramatic personal life has sometimes overshadowed his literary accomplishments. He published widely, often to critical acclaim, before his life combusted in a controversial trial for indecent homosexual activity – a trial that saw the ruin of Wilde's personal and professional success. Often, Wilde's art imitates his life, both are complex and insistently demand the audience's attention, and undoubtedly this dramatic demand is what fuels Wilde's legacy today. Since his death in 1900, interest in Wilde's private life, particularly his sexuality, his criminal offences and his imprisonment, have never waned. One critic sums up Wilde's life by saying, His story is like a vivid Victorian soap opera with shocking twists and turns in plot lines, taking in on the way love, hate, sex, treachery, fame, success, conspiracy, blackmail, dramatic courtroom scenes, prison, redemption and finally death (Marshall).

    Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1854 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was the second son of the eccentric Sir William and Lady Jane Wilde. Sir William Wilde was a renowned philanthropist and surgeon, Lady Jane was a poet and fierce supporter of the Irish Nationalist Movement. In the mid 1860's, Lady Jane published a series of poems denouncing the Irish potato famine, dedicating the collection to her two sons, Willie and Oscar. Lady Jane had always wanted a daughter, so following popular practice of the time she dressed Oscar solely in girls' clothing for the first few years of his life. Wilde lived a quiet family life, marred only by the unexpectedly tragic death of his younger sister at the age of nine. He moved to Trinity College to study the classics at the age of 20. From there, Wilde went to study at Oxford, dropping his unfashionable Irish accent in favor of a stately English tone, and took a keen interest in fashion, particularly formalwear. He joined the Freemasons, as his father had done before him, and established himself as a dramatic aesthetician brimming with bitingly sarcastic wit.

    Wilde thrived in London's superficial, artistic circles. While his literary work was not well received, Wilde was in high demand at dinner parties due to his sparkling wit. Wilde later reflected that during this period of his life he strove to honor the Pater quote, To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life (Black). He strove to maintain its message in even the most mundane daily activities, which he desired to make beautiful. For the majority of his life, Wilde surrounded himself with elements of beauty, of art, and arguably, of surface vanity. He wore his hair long, decorated his home with peacock feathers and the frivolities of lilies and sunflowers alongside imported blue china. At the time, British culture did not like to be seen taking art seriously, and liked even less an artist who took himself seriously, as Wilde clearly did. Many critics of the aesthetic movement found interest in interior design, fashion, and art to be vacuous, and their arguments were only strengthened when Wilde made comments like, I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china (Cohen). Despite the critics' arguments, Wilde toured through Britain and then America lecturing on the value of aesthetics, beauty, and art. He earned a fair sum and returned to England with the hopes of propelling his future with literary works that would challenge the hypocrisy of society and embrace the delicate intricacies of artistic beauty.

    Upon returning home, Wilde married an acquaintance, Constance Lloyd, and fathered two sons: Cyril

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