She also performed numerous travesti roles onstage, including Hamlet. Bernhardt, the daughter of a courtesan, was also famously transgressive, and known for her independence and tireless self-promotion as much as for her electric stage presence. When Salom é was composed, Sarah Bernhardt was keen to both produce and star in the play, though despite rehearsing the role, she did not follow through with her appearance when it was mounted in France. The novel was composed anonymously but is sometimes attributed to Wilde, who was certainly involved, though to what extent is unclear. Smithers was another friend and colleague of Wilde’s who dealt in erotic and pornographic literature, and who published the queer pornographic novel Teleny. The inclusion of Beardsley’s illustrations to accompany the text of Salom é added a layer of frisson to Wilde’s work, after the former’s work with The Yellow Book, followed by his work with Leonard Smithers. It should be noted, however, that despite the associations of Beardsley and his work with queer figures or subtext, there is no definitive proof that he was anything other than asexual (posthumous rumours of incest with his sister notwithstanding). In some quarters his friendship with Wilde was seen as closer than was entirely appropriate. Oscar Wilde was famously arrested for “gross indecency” in 1895, and Beardsley’s reputation was tarnished by association. One can see how the exaggerated, stylised language and art of the piece, as well as their esotericism, fit so neatly within Susan Sontag’s “Canon of Camp”.īoth Wilde and Beardsley were key figures identified with a queer sensibility in art and literature that has persisted to the present, because of the nature of their respective oeuvres as well as their personal lives. The writer, artist, content and the proposed cast of the play are all queer, in one sense of the word or another. However, the play is suffused with transgressive sexuality from every angle. First penned in 1891 in French by Oscar Wilde, Salom é is a one-act play that has entered the canon of Decadent literature, as well as that of Decadent art, accompanied by the dark, sexually-charged illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and translated into English by Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.

Salomé by Oscar Wilde