Salomé Analysis

Salomé takes place in the palace of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judæa. But even though it's a palace, Wilde's description of the set is pretty simple. The action occurs on a "great terrace" in the...

Salomé is based on the story of John the Baptist's beheading, which can be found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, making it a—you guessed it—Biblical drama.And although Wilde changes—some...

Salomé is a confused girl, to put it mildly. Standing toe to toe with Jokanaan, she can't seem to decide whether she loves him or hates him. Even when she declares that she will kiss his mouth, he...

Wilde, who is usually a pretty hilarious dude, isn't as witty here as you might expect. There's not a lot of wordplay on display. This has a lot to do with the tone and genre of the piece (You can...

This may seem like an easy question. Sure, it refers to Salomé, daughter of Herodias, who you might call the main character in the play. But it ain't that easy-peasy. For one, Wilde himself said t...

Okay—it's really easy to get distracted by that whole kissing-a-severed-head thing, but we need to take a step back and figure out what exactly led up to it. These things don't happen by accident...

Salomé may be a short work, but it'd be a lot longer if you included all the footnotes necessary to make sense of it all. An understanding of the New Testament is essential to understanding the pl...

There are a lot of different conflicts/plot threads/going on here, and though we don't want to mix our metaphors, let's just say they all come to…a head.One night in Herod's palace, we find a gr...

Salomé begins the play chaste, a virgin. She is lusted after—innocently by the young Syrian, creepily by her stepfather, Herod—but she does not lust. But the moment she hears Jokanaan crying...

A group of soldiers watches Herod banqueting. Their captain, a young Syrian, pays special attention to Salomé, daughter of the queen, Herodias. They discuss religion, and the status of Herod's pr...

In the first edition of his 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellmann included a picture of a dude dressed as Salomé with the caption "Wilde in Costume as Salome." The photograph actually sho...

Salomé is strictly adults only. Sure, we don't see anything really indecent—a tasteful flick of the light switch in the play's final moments makes sure of that—but there's plenty of talk, tens...

Song of Songs, Book of Revelation, Gospels (Luke and Matthew) "a satire against [the Stoics]," written by Caesar (86)Regarding the view that Jokanaan is Elias/Elijah (90-92): Matthew 14:10-13Regar...