Salome Lesson Plan

Salome is Oscar Wilde's interpretation of the biblical tale of the beheading of John the Baptist. In the Bible, it is Salome who requests the head of John on a silver platter, and she is usually seen as merely an instrument, simply fulfilling her mother's wishes. In Wilde's telling of the story, however, Salome plays a much more central role. Her agency and sexual empowerment were groundbreaking for the time and scandalized Victorian England so much that the Examiner of Plays, Edward Smyth-Pigott, censored the play. While Wilde was no stranger to darkness, sensuality and scandal in his personal life, the violent and abstract Salome marked a stark contrast to his previous work, which was...