Salomé

On a terrace of Herod's palace, the princess Salomé hears the voice of the prophet Jokanaan (John the Baptist) from the cistern where he is kept prisoner. She falls in love with him, he rejects her, and when Herod begs her to dance for him she agrees, on one condition: the prophet's head on a silver platter.

Wilde wrote the play in French in 1891. Its London production was banned in rehearsal because it showed biblical characters, and it was first staged in Paris in 1896 while Wilde was in prison. Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for the English edition and Richard Strauss's opera made it one of the defining works of the decadent era.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, studied classics at Trinity College and Oxford, and became the most quotable man in London, the leading voice of the movement that preached art for art's sake. Between 1892 and 1895 his comedies filled the theatres, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, caused a sensation.

At the height of his fame he was convicted for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years of hard labour, an experience he wrote about in De Profundis. He died in exile in Paris, poor and broken, at forty-six. The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of the funniest plays in English.