page_title: Salome (play)
section_title: Origins and themes
hierarchical_section_title: Salome (play) / Origins and themes
caption_attribution_description: English: Spanish Actress Margarita Xirgu performing Salomé, by Oscar Wilde
context_page_description: Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.
  The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published. The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils.
context_section_description: Wilde had considered the subject since he had first been introduced to Hérodias, one of Flaubert's Trois Contes, by Walter Pater, at Oxford in 1877. His interest had been further stimulated by descriptions of Gustave Moreau's paintings of Salomé in Joris-Karl Huysmans's À rebours. Other literary influences include Heinrich Heine's Atta Troll, Laforgue's Salomé in Moralités Légendaires and Mallarmé's Hérodiade.  
  Many view Wilde's Salomé as a superb composite of these earlier treatments of the theme overlaid, in terms of dramatic influences, with Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck's characteristic methodical diction, and specifically Maeterlinck's La Princesse Maleine, 'with its use of colour, sound, dance, visual description and visual effect'. Wilde often referred to the play in musical terms and believed that recurring phrases 'bind it together like a piece of music with recurring motifs. ' 
  Although the "kissing of the head" element was used in Heine and even Joseph Converse Heywood's production, Wilde's ingenuity was to move it to the play's climax. While his debts are undeniable, there are some interesting contributions in Wilde's treatment, most notably being his persistent use of parallels between Salomé and the moon.
   
  Christopher Nassaar pointed out that Wilde employs a number of the images favoured by Israel's kingly poets and that the moon is meant to suggest the pagan goddess Cybele, who, like Salomé, was obsessed with preserving her virginity and thus took pleasure in destroying male sexuality.
  Following the prelude three demarcated episodes follow: the meeting between Salomé and Iokanaan, the phase of the white moon; the major public central episode, the dance and the beheading, the phase of the red moon; and finally the conclusion, when the black cloud conceals the moon.
  An argument is made by Brad Bucknell in his essay, "On "Seeing" Salomé" that the play can be seen as a struggle between the visual, in the form of various characters' gazing as well as Salomé's dance, and the written word. Salome's dance (which is never described) overpowers Iokannan's prophecies, and Salomé herself dies due to Herod's command to crush her. As Bucknell writes of Salomé's dance, "The power of the word is inverted, turned back upon its possessors, the prophet and the ruler-figure of the tetrarch."
  The idea of the gaze—specifically the male gaze—is also explored by Linda and Michael Hutcheon in ""Here's Lookin' At You, Kid": The Empowering Gaze in Salomé."  In their essay, the two write that Salomé's body "clearly becomes the focus of the attention—and the literal eye—of both audience and characters. As dancer, Salomé is without a doubt the object of the gaze—particularly Herod's male gaze."  The Hutcheons argue that while the male gaze has been traditionally rooted in the idea of sexual privilege, leading to a gendering of the gaze as 'male' in the first place, the character of Salomé undermines this theory by knowingly using the male gaze to her advantage, first by gaining access to Iokannan via the male gaze and later through her dance.
  However, others argue that the female gaze is also present in the play, with Salome gazing and objectifying Iokannan.  As critic Carmen Skaggs writes, "Syrian, Herod, and Salomé objectify the subjects of their gazes. They admire each one for his/her beauty alone. The desires of all three are forbidden and recognized as dangerous by those around them, but they are not persuaded to turn away".
  Skaggs also discusses in her essay "Modernity's Revision of the Dancing Daughter: The Salome Narrative of Wilde and Strauss” the possible homosexual subtext of Wilde's play.  Skaggs points to one instance in the play when Salome promises Narraboth a flower, a signal of homosexuality in Wilde's time.  Skaggs and other critics argue that Salomé's sexuality is presented as typically masculine, which makes the relationship between her and the Young Syrian border on the homoerotic.  Skaggs also argues that Wilde is attempting to explore different forms of worship, with Salome, the Young Syrian, and Herod
caption: Actress Margarita Xirgu in the Spanish premiere in 1910 in Barcelona
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