Abstract

Salome is a mysterious image in western culture. Her prototype stems from The New Testament of The Bible. The image of Salome appears frequently in Western art history. The play Salome is composed by nineteenth century English Aesthete Oscar Wilde. In Salome, Wilde changes the original sense of the religious stories in the Bible. He only uses its frame to express the theme of love and beauty, yet aestheticism is not the only theme of the play. Love and death are implicit in the text and serve as the hidden theme.

Love and death seem to be an eternal theme. To Oscar Wilde, love has more than one definition. Love includes body love and spiritual love, the complicated relationships of the lover and the beloved, love between the opposite sex and the same-sex. Salome’s true identity is a male so that her affection for John as well as Herod’s affection for her is actually homosexual.

Death is an inevitable ending for our human beings in reality. Death is also an eternal theme. Generally, death impresses people with great agony as well as the feeling of fear. However, Oscar Wilde’s works, with the impression of being sad but not depressing, enrich “beautiful sense” and “poetic quality”. Death also has different forms, natural death like the star-child, death for love like the actor Vera, death for kindness like happy prince. 

Though the main characters in this play can’t have a happy ending, they undoubtedly represent Wilde’s efforts to search for the ultimate value of death and the meaning of life.

Key words: Salome; Oscar Wilde; love; death

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

2. Comparasion between Salome Described by Wilde and Salome in Bible-1

2.1 Salome Described by Wilde-1

2.2 Salome Described in Bible-2

3. Love: the Hidden Theme-2

3.1 The Love in Salome-3

3.2 The concept of Love-4

3.3 The Theme of Love -4

4. Salome: Death for Love-4

4.1 The Theme of Death in Oscar Wilde’s Works-5

4.2 The Theme of Death in Salome-5

4.3 Death is the realization way of love-6

5. Conclusion-7

References-9