Salome (play) - Origins and Themes

Origins and Themes

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 Salome in Joris-Karl Huysmans's À rebours. Other literary influences include 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 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.

Scholars like Christopher Nassaar point out that Wilde employs a number of the images favored 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 Salome 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.