“Salome” is a play connected with the biblical story. Wilde wrote, as it is now called, on motives, for which he paid a ban and problems with staging in the theater, although nothing that would be treated bawdy here. The play is rather terrible, dramatic, exposing power, vices and the senselessness of disputes about faith. Nothing more, but, apparently, this was quite enough.
Salome … A very beautiful name, very beautiful girl – the daughter of a king, from whom, conceivable, could not take her eyes off everything: from guards to her own stepfather (he’s an uncle). What is the world in which the family lives? The world of masks, luxury, seen and unseen treasures, about which not even everyone knew. Here it was possible to promise almost everything in the world and the word of King Herod – there was a law that commands life and death by order. The king is everything. It’s almost God. I would like to know more about God.
It’s very unusual to see Wilde the playwright. Not a drop of irony, piercing horror, pale from premonition of the moon, and towards the end – bloody. Therefore, the play is shocking. About God. God, as we know from the Bible, created man in his image, and man should not be angry with the Lord in his life, even if he is a king. Herod is a man who lives in unimaginable luxury, tries to be friends with all the influential people, rolls a feast with a mountain and, of course, he is a king who has his arms to the elbow in blood, who dares to appoint himself above all. Such sinful people in their world of luxury can rule anyone, but they are intolerably afraid of their own sins. King Herod had a very valuable captive, the prophet Iokanaan, saying that he was the one to whom God had touched. Around the tsar’s monastery often there were senseless discussions about God, His power, and the prophet was the one who constantly cries out some terrible future. He was the one from whom even the omnipotent king escaped, denying his attitude to the words of the saint. Herod believed that he had captured God himself. How does Wilde finish the play? And where is the beautiful Salome? Read the tragedy of human desires, and you will know everything, and then compare with the fate of the biblical Salome. You are waiting for interesting discoveries.
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