The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: theatre Wilde would never have contrived the long speech of Salome
at the end in a drama intended for the stage, even in the days of
long speeches. His threat to change his nationality shortly after
the Censor's interference called forth a most delightful and good-
natured caricature of him by Mr. Bernard Partridge in Punch.
Wilde was still in prison in 1896 when Salome was produced by Lugne
Poe at the Theatre de L'OEuvre in Paris, but except for an account
in the Daily Telegraph the incident was hardly mentioned in England.
I gather that the performance was only a qualified success, though
Lugne Poe's triumph as Herod was generally acknowledged. In 1901,
within a year of the author's death, it was produced in Berlin; from
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