A Florentine Tragedy | Page 4

to all countries where it is not
prohibited. It is performed throughout Europe, Asia and America. It is
played even in Yiddish. This is remarkable in view of the many dramas
by French and German writers who treat of the same theme. To none of
them, however, is Wilde indebted. Flaubert, Maeterlinck (some would
add Ollendorff) and Scripture, are the obvious sources on which he has
freely drawn for what I do not hesitate to call the most powerful and
perfect of all his dramas. But on such a point a trustee and executor
may be prejudiced because it is the most valuable asset in Wilde's
literary estate. Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations are too well known to
need more than a passing reference. In the world of art criticism they
excited almost as much attention as Wilde's drama has excited in the
world of intellect.
During May 1905 the play was produced in England for the first time at
a private performance by the New Stage Club. No one present will have
forgotten the extraordinary tension of the audience on that occasion,
those who disliked the play and its author being hypnotised by the
extraordinary power of Mr. Robert Farquharson's Herod, one of the
finest pieces of acting ever seen in this country. My friends the
dramatic critics (and many of them are personal friends) fell on Salome
with all the vigour of their predecessors twelve years before. Unaware
of what was taking place in Germany, they spoke of the play as having
been 'dragged from obscurity.' The Official Receiver in Bankruptcy and
myself were, however, better informed. And much pleasure has been

derived from reading those criticisms, all carefully preserved along
with the list of receipts which were simultaneously pouring in from the
German performances. To do the critics justice they never withdrew
any of their printed opinions, which were all trotted out again when the
play was produced privately for the second time in England by the
Literary Theatre Society in 1906. In the Speaker of July 14th, 1906,
however, some of the iterated misrepresentations of fact were corrected.
No attempt was made to controvert the opinion of an ignorant critic: his
veracity only was impugned. The powers of vaticination possessed by
such judges of drama can be fairly tested in the career of Salome on the
European stage, apart from the opera. In an introduction to the English
translation published by Mr. John Lane it is pointed out that Wilde's
confusion of Herod Antipas (Matt. xiv. 1) with Herod the Great (Matt.
ii. 1) and Herod Agrippa I. (Acts xii. 23) is intentional, and follows a
mediaeval convention. There is no attempt at historical accuracy or
archaeological exactness. Those who saw the marvellous decor of Mr.
Charles Ricketts at the second English production can form a complete
idea of what Wilde intended in that respect; although the stage
management was clumsy and amateurish. The great opera of Richard
Strauss does not fall within my province; but the fag ends of its
popularity on the Continent have been imported here oddly enough
through the agency of the Palace Theatre, where Salome was originally
to have been performed. Of a young lady's dancing, or of that of her
rivals, I am not qualified to speak. I note merely that the critics who
objected to the horror of one incident in the drama lost all self-control
on seeing that incident repeated in dumb show and accompanied by
fescennine corybantics. Except in 'name and borrowed notoriety' the
music-hall sensation has no relation whatever to the drama which so
profoundly moved the whole of Europe and the greatest living musician.
The adjectives of contumely are easily transmuted into epithets of
adulation, when a prominent ecclesiastic succumbs, like King Herod, to
the fascination of a dancer.
It is not usually known in England that a young French naval officer,
unaware that Dr. Strauss was composing an opera on the theme of
Salome, wrote another music drama to accompany Wilde's text. The
exclusive musical rights having been already secured by Dr. Strauss,
Lieutenant Marriotte's work cannot be performed regularly. One

presentation, however, was permitted at Lyons, the composer's native
town, where I am told it made an extraordinary impression. In order to
give English readers some faint idea of the world-wide effect of
Wilde's drama, my friend Mr. Walter Ledger has prepared a short
bibliography of certain English and Continental translations.
At the time of Wilde's trial the nearly completed MS. of La Sainte
Courtisane was entrusted to Mrs. Leverson, the well-known novelist,
who in 1897 went to Paris on purpose to restore it to the author. Wilde
immediately left the only copy in a cab. A few days later he laughingly
informed me of the loss, and added that a cab was a very proper place