It is, however, since the author's death that the great body of critics have emitted the opinion that the play is really an extremely clever piece of work and a valuable contribution to the English drama. So many pieces are apt to get démodés in a few years, but now, twelve years after its production, "The Importance Of Being Earnest" is as fresh as ever, and does not date, as ladies say of their headgear. To compare the blatant nonsense that Mr Bernard Shaw foists on a credulous public as wit with the coruscating bon mots of his dead compatriot, as seems to be the fashion nowadays, is to show a pitiful lack of intelligence and discernment; as well compare gooseberry wine to champagne, the fountains in Trafalgar Square to Niagara.
PART III
THE ROMANTIC DRAMAS
"SALOMÉ"
Of all Wilde's plays the one that has provoked the greatest discussion and most excited the curiosity of the public is undoubtedly "Salomé," which, written originally in French and then translated into English, has finally been performed in two Continents.
Never perhaps has a play, at its inception, had less of a chance than this Biblical tragedy written for a French Jewess (Madame Sarah Bernhardt) banned by the English Censor and only produced after the disgrace and consequent downfall of its author. From Salomé's first speech to the end of the play we realise how the little part was absolutely identified in the author's mind with the actress he had written it for. To anyone who has studied, however superficially, Madame Bernhardt's peculiar methods of diction and acting, the words in the first speech—"I will not stay, I cannot stay. Why does the Tetrarch look at me all the while with his mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids?" convey at once a picture of the actress in the part. If there is a fault to be found with the character it is that Bernhardt not Salomé is depicted, and yet who shall say that there is much difference between the temperaments or the physique of the two women. It is true that, in a letter to The Times, the author strenuously denied that he had written the play for Sarah, but one is inclined to take the denial with a very big grain of salt. That while in detention Wilde made most strenuous efforts to get her to produce it is a well-known fact.
The play, as even Macaulay's schoolboy knows, is based on the story of Herodias' daughter dancing before Herod for the head of John the Baptist.