'Salomé' is a short, but bewitching tragedy based on the biblical story of King Herod in the New Testament. Telling a tale of lustful desire and power, the language of the play is saturated and verbose, and the imagery, decadent and lush. The sequences of seduction and passion are consistently offset by the grotesque, most evident in the sudden suicide of the Young Syrian, and the presentation of Jokanaan's severed head on a silver shield. Wilde wrote 'Salomé' in French in 1891 while residing in Paris. It was translated into English in 1894; despite the Lord Chamberlain's ban dating from the Reformation that forbade the representation of biblical characters onstage, it was given 5 private performances in London between 1905 and 1931. Besides being performed fairly extensively in recent times, it has inspired a multitude of contemporary plays, songs, and films.