Fingerposts, limelight, staircases, and other delights: Oscar Wilde’s Salomé as popular drama

The  article  raises  the  question  of  what  the  term  “popular  drama”  really  means.  Taking Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé as an extended test case, it argues that, despite its  apparent  identity  as  an  esoteric,  Symbolist­oriented  work,  the  play  possesses  features common to the structure and ethos of popular plays on West End stages. Examining two prominent features of current staging, limelight and staircases, he intentionally  muddies  the  waters,  hoping  to  provoke  further,  productive  thought  about an elusive term. Joseph Donohue, a theatre historian and textual scholar, is Professor  Emeritus  of  English  at  the  University  of  Massachusetts  Amherst.  He  is  currently editing a group of Oscar Wilde’s plays, including Salomé and The Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  for  the  Oxford  University  Press  collected  works  of  Wilde.