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