Talk:Salome (play)
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[edit] Timing and language of the play
Something smells : From reading various short pieces on Oscar Wilde (in French, nothing I remember precisely enough to quote), I had come to the understanding that Salomé had been originally written in French (as attested to by it being mentioned that it was Lord Alfred Douglas who translated it in English. Now, why would wilde have done this? : until his trial and imprisonment, he was the darling of good society throughout the united kingdom, so his natural audience would have been british, and not everybody would have been as fluent in French as he was, not to mention the trouble of finding players able to act in French. So my source stated, which I found perfectly logical, that the play was written after he was released and emigrated to Paris, likely late in 1897.
This story of the play having been written in French (why?) and even rehearsed in 1891, but the première forbidden, only to be translated, and published as a literary work 3 years later does not add up. Neither does a Paris production in 1896 add up : at the time, producing a new play without collaboration from the author ould have been nearly unthinkable, as it constituted an artistic and social faux pas, and wilde was in jail at the time.
would anybody have additional data or sources to either confirm or infirm this version? --Svartalf 01:02, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm writing about the play in my dissertation right now, so I can provide a few answers:
As to why Wilde would have written in French, I think it likely that it was an artistic statement. Around the time that he decided to write his version of the Salomé story down, he stayed in France, where he met members of the French and Belgian artistic avant-garde (Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Verlaine...). The British stage was very conservative at that time, and to make money Wilde had to work within a tradition, as he did with "Lady Windermere's Fan". Writing "Salomé" in French was a way of breaking free from the constraints of the British stage. He also loved the French language. Plus, the French stage doesn't appear to have been officially censored.
As for players who could act in French: the actress who was going to stage it in London was Sarah Bernhardt. She was French, and even when she toured in Britain or the States, it was with French-language productions!
In fact it is likely that Wilde never dared count on the play actually getting staged. He wrote it in French in late 1891, early 1892, and though it wasn't published in book form till early 1893, there is an extant proof copy dating from July 1892 - very close to the refusal of the licence (Josephine Guy & Ian Small, "Oscar Wilde's Profession", OUP 2000, pp. 112-3). Normally Wilde didn't start to think about publishing until well after a play's performance (at least that's how things went with the society comedies).
Wilde was very happy about the 1896 production of his play. It's true that he couldn't be there to supervise it, but he writes in "De Profundis" that he was very touched because it meant he hadn't been forgotten as an artist. He considered the production a tribute, and the thought perked him up while he was in prison.
--Ms.ampersand 21:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
