Reviews of Maud Allan's performances

Here is some primary source material, gathered from Philip Hoare's book, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century, which is about Maud Allan's unsuccessful libel suit against MP Noel Pemberton Billing.  His citations are not always complete, so I am not always clear as to a specific newspaper, writer, or date.  If I'm able to track them down, I'll add them in.

Reviews of The Vision of Salome and Oscar Wilde’s Salome

On The Vision of Salome:

“It is as if a wildly jerking sensuality were driving into the slender body, as if it began to blossom and swell forth and glow through her skin…In naked sensuality, her body calculating, she meets the eyes of Herod; the rhythm of her motion accelerates; she knows what she wants, and suddenly in its grisly horror the head of the prophet is handed her from the cistern.  With the natural motions of the wild ash she dances Salome, the demivierge of the perverse instincts, gaze now focused on the pale head in heated ecstasy.  Wildly she revolves her head in jerking madness; her eyes and fingers groping in the cramps of love, they fastasise about unheard-of desires; shame seems to have vanished from her perspiring body; one draws back from the flame of this passion.  Finally abrupt shock overcomes her, freezes her motion, forces her to lay aside the dead head and to be paralysed in the numb pose of nameless self-disgust” (a review of a performance in Prague, cited by Hoare, 74)

“To Maud Allan, swaying like a passion flower in the last steps of the Seven veils, a giant negro brought upon a great salver Jokanaan.  Her eyes half closed, the dancer raised by its dank hair the ghastly prize of Herodias’ daughter.  She leaned towards its lips.  Gently the severed head touched her wrists, and there shot through her a terrible tremor, a shivering of the soul.  Upon her white flesh were the stains, dark crimson clots.  It was blood.  Her body rigid as though carved in marble, the dancer slowly forced her eyes to the face she held aloft.  It was the face of a man not long since dead.  As one from whom life passes very quickly, she crumpled to the floor.  From her hands dropped the head.  It rolled upon her breast and fell beside her, leaving upon her white body a crimson trail.  So was the dancer Maud Allan taught that it is not well to jest with a Noble of Hungary.” (an American paper, cited by Hoare, 74)

“…Miss Allan is such a delicious embodiment of lust that she might win forgiveness with the sins of her wonderful flesh.  With her hot mouth parched for kisses the impeccable saint had refused to give her, she lures an invisible Herod to grant her fiendish prayer.  In the very height of her furious exaltation at winning her request, the change comes.  Before her rises the head she has danced for, and the lips that would not touch her in life she kisses again and again.”  (Alfred Butt, publicity for The Vision of Salome, all copies later destroyed, cited by Hoare 76)

“a reincarnation of the most graceful and rhythmic forms of classic Greece…in The Vision of Salome her writhing body enacts the whole voluptuousness of Eastern femininity” (The Observer, cited by Hoare 77)

“One moment she is the vampire…next she is the lynx.  Always the fascination is animal-like and carnal…Her slender and lissome body writhes in an ecstasy of fear, quivers at the exquisite touch of pain, laughs and sighs, shrinks and vaults, as swayed by passion…She kisses the head and frenzy comes upon her.  She is no longer human.  She is a Maenad sister.  Her hair should be disheveled, her eyes bloodshot.  The amazing crescendo ceases, she falls to the ground a huddles yet wondrously beautiful mass…London has never seen such a graceful and artistic dancing.  It is of a magical beauty.  But the beauty is magic; and the magic is black and insidious.”  (The Labour Leader, cited by Hoare 77)

“She dances like a revivalist preacher and makes as many converts…It would be stupid not to admire the character which has brought about so great a success.  But it would be just as stupid to mistake this American ‘grit’ and ‘bluff’ for beautiful art.”  (Christina Marshall in The Academy, cited by Hoare 78.  The Academy was a magazine of Lord Alfred Douglas, former lover of Oscar Wilde, who later converted to Catholicism, repudiated Wilde and testified against Maud Allan at the libel trial.)

On Oscar Wilde's Salome:

“…a bizarre melodrama of disease…One may admit its atmosphere though it is an atmosphere people who are healthy and desire to remain so would do well to keep out of…One is reminded of some richly jeweled watch that does not go…At the same time, high praise is due…to Miss Maud Allan for her excellent reproduction of the symptoms of Salome” (G.E. Morrison, Morning Post, review of Wilde’s Salome.  The Post supported Billing’s campaign.  Cited by Hoare 97)

“We cannot in the least share in the view that Salome is ‘not an impure work.’  This view was very emphatically expressed by Mr. J.T. Grein in his brief speech at the close of the Independent Theatre private performance on Friday afternoon.  We think that, on the contrary, Salome is a very impure work.  It is impure in its theme – the explicity carnal desire of the daughter of Herodias for Jokanaan the Prophet, otherwise John the Baptist.  It is even more impure in its atmosphere, which is charged with a sickly voluptuousness.  A decadent literary art would scarcely go farther than the gaudy harlotry of words in which Salome is set out.  If there were anything of the tragic spirit behind it, if there were any psychology of character, the manner, while it could not be overlooked, might perhaps be borne with.  But the late Oscar Wilde, though an adroit writer of showy, insincere comedies of modern society, had no perception of tragedy….Salome is little more than a mass of luscious verbiage, with the adjective doing most of the work…rouged and painted like a courtesan’s face…very repellant to a healthy taste…This kind of stuff has no relation to art.  It is animalism, or worse; for animals have their decencies.  As a study in decadent expression, and also from the personal point of view as a human document, Salome is interesting in the library, but it is not fitted for stage representation.” (Bernard Weller, The Stage, review of Wilde’s Salome, cited by Hoare 97-8)

“In her acting as Salome she seemed to feel more than she could express, and her elocution was very faulty.  To the suggestion that Salome is only a child influenced by the first stirrings of puberty, Miss Allan did not lend any support.  Her Salome, on the contrary, suggested a passionate woman, and this reading is of course the only one consistent with the text.” (Bernard Weller, The Stage, review of Wilde’s Salome, cited by Hoare 98)

Reference: Hoare, Philip.  1997.  Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century.  New York: Arcade Publishing.