Then came dramatic surprise on surprise: while it was being rehearsed, the Lord Chamberlain refused to license it on the ground that it introduced Biblical characters.

Oscar protested in a brilliant interview against the action of the Censor as "odious and ridiculous." He pointed out that all the greatest artists--painters and sculptors, musicians and writers--had taken many of their best subjects from the Bible, and wanted to know why the dramatist should be prevented from treating the great soul-tragedies most proper to his art.

When informed that the interdict was to stand, he declared in a pet that he would settle in France and take out letters of naturalisation: "I am not English.

I am Irish--which is quite another thing." Of course the press made all the fun it could of his show of temper.
Mr.Robert Ross considers "Salome" "the most powerful and perfect of all Oscar's dramas." I find it almost impossible to explain, much less justify, its astonishing popularity.

When it appeared, the press, both in France and in England, was critical and contemptuous; but by this time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny.