Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity Sharon Marcus

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Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity sharon marcus

ARAH VA JOUER SALOMÉ!!” FOR READERS TODAY, OSCAR WILDE’S “ Salome S is best known as a literary object, the 1894 English edition whose stylized Aubrey Beardsley drawings and archaic prose accentuated the decadent qualities of the work Wilde originally wrote in French. For the play’s author and public, however, Sa lome was also a dramatic event, identiied with the celebrity actress Sarah Bernhardt, whose agreement to play the title role in 1892 sent Wilde into raptures—“Sarah is going to play Salome!!”—when he re- layed the news to a fellow author (“To Pierre Louÿs”; June 1892; Hol- land and Hart-Davis 529). he drama continued when Sa lome was denied a license for performance in London, putting Wilde where he had so oten placed himself—in the public spotlight. Because scholars oten study nineteenth-century dramatic texts and performance culture in isolation from each other, I begin with Wilde’s exclamation (and will return to it) as an emblem of my argument that during this period celebrity informed drama and theatricality structured SHARON MARCUS is Orlando Harriman celebrity. (Whether the argument holds for other times and genres is Professor of En glish and Comparative outside the scope of this essay.) Read on to discover the connections Literature at Columbia University. The au- between a star author, a celebrity actress, and the scandalous work thor of Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth- Century Paris and London (U of of art that brought them together; read on for an account of how Salome California P, 1999) and of the prizewinning , a play in which almost every character is both fan and idol, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and represents the theatricality of celebrity in its themes and form. Marriage in Victorian England (Prince ton Nineteenth- century celebrity was theatrical not simply in the UP, 2007), she is working on a book about anecdotal sense that many celebrities were actors; it was also theatri- theatrical celebrity in the nineteenth cen- cal in structure, by which I mean organized around nonreciprocal tury and recently wrote “The Theater of Comparative Literature” for A Companion exhibition and attention, around the asymmetrical interdependence to Comparative Literature (ed. Ali Behdad that obtains between actors and audiences. Many have argued that and Dominic Thomas; Wiley, 2011). all celebrities are actors because they impersonate a fabricated role

and purvey a duplicitous illusion. By contrast, melded absolutism and democracy. Aes- I deine celebrity as theatrical because it com- thetically, celebrity relied both on the star’s bines proximity and distance and links celeb- bodily presence and on representations that rities to their devotees in structurally uneven substituted for it. heatricality’s asymmetri- ways. he star is one, the fans are many, just as cal interdependence inflected each of these audience members outnumber players. Stars aspects of celebrity. Impudent celebrities were are known to and tracked by more people than impervious to their diference from the norm they could ever personally know or follow but needed to display their indiference to the (Mills 72), just as in dramatic performance conforming crowd. Oten deemed royal and actors who move and speak onstage rarely, if divine, stars, like modern gods and kings, de- ever, acknowledge spectators who watch and pended for their power on the populace that listen. For all their asymmetry, however, ce- worshipped them. Nineteenth- century idols lebrity and theatricality are also organized had a physical presence, but their incarnations around interdependence, since plays and stars were rendered glamorous by press coverage exist only because of audiences and fans. and visual imagery, and their live appearances Wilde’s play similarly revolves around registered untouchable distance from the au- obsessive attention and desire, portrays ob- dience as much as thrilling proximity to it. jects of fascination as surrounded by barriers his essay ofers a theory of celebrity, a even when on display, and depicts attempts historical account of Sarah Bernhardt and to breach the distance between spectacle and Oscar Wilde as celebrities, and an interpre- spectator as dangerous failures. As a preview, tation of Salome as staging celebrity through consider Iokanaan (Wilde’s name for John its formal emphasis on asymmetrical gazes, the Baptist), who fascinates Salome with his desire, and speech and through its thematic dramatic rants but forbids her to breach the preoccupations with impudence, religion, distance between them: “Back, daughter of populism, and bodily presence.2 Holding the Sodom! Do not touch me. One must not pro- mirror of Salome up to relect the nature of fane the temple of the Lord God” (“Arrière, celebrity, the argument unfolds by re- creating ille de Sodome! Ne me touchez pas. Il ne faut associations and contexts, since the claim pas profaner le temple du Sei gneur Dieu”; 23; that drama informed celebrity and celebrity 33).1 Salome, angered by Ioka naan’s repulsion, shaped drama is a historical and structural demands his head on a silver platter, then re- one best illustrated cumulatively. Ater mak- proaches it for not having returned her gaze: ing this point in general terms, I dramatize it “why did you not look at me, Iokanaan? . . . I by juxtaposing scenes from Salome with epi- saw you, Iokanaan, and I loved you” (“pour- sodes from Bernhardt’s and Wilde’s careers, quoi ne m’ as- tu pas regardée, Iokanaan? . . . finding resonances of the actress’s stardom Moi, je t’ai vu, Iokanaan, et je t’ai aimé”; 65; and the author’s notoriety in the play itself. 82). he futility of posing such questions to a he essay thus reenacts the oscillations that lifelesss body part exempliies the lack of cor- Salo me ’s original readers and viewers would respondence that obtains between characters have experienced as they wove between ab- throughout the play. sorption in its ictional events and awareness hough theatrical in structure, celebrity of the storied celebrities who brought it to life. was also a social, political, and material phe- In theorizing celebrity, I build on the nomenon. Socially, celebrities ranged between work of previous scholars, especially Richard exemplarity and impudence and absorbed re- Dyer and Joseph Roach. However, where Dyer ligious energies and roles even as they trans- focuses on stars constrained by ilm studios, formed them. Politically, celebrity culture I focus on a stage diva known for control- 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1001 ling her career. Where Roach explores “It,” Woman”; Gilman; Raafat; Powell, Oscar a transhistorical, innate quality, I focus on a Wilde 45). Casting Bernhardt was a canny speciically theatrical and deliberately crated move, given Wilde’s plan to premiere his play celebrity.3 I share with Roach and Dyer, how- in London not in English but in French. For ever, a less censorious view of celebrity than over a decade, Bernhardt had drawn audi- the one prevalent in academic discourse. In- ences worldwide while performing exclusively tellectuals love to hate celebrity culture, view- in French, and she had an especially close re- ing it as frivolous at best, pernicious at worst lationship with the London public, which had (Morin; Braudy; Gitlin; Schickel; Rojek). made her an international star in 1879. Most dismiss fans as gullible and ickle, ce- With good reason, therefore, Wilde lebrities as artiicial, venal, and shallow, and trumpeted Bernhardt’s willingness to take denounce the star system for conlating pub- on his lead role when in June 1892 he wrote licity and privacy, triviality and seriousness, to Pierre Louÿs, “Sarah va jouer Salomé!!” and ephemerality and immortality. Many Wilde’s double exclamation points and inter- oversimplify celebrity by splitting it, label- nal rhymes reveal an artless glee rare in his ing it either fully participatory or thoroughly correspondence, a delight in being on a irst- manufactured, radically democratic or in- name basis with a star. he sentence’s brev- cipiently fascist, blasphemously secular or ity, also unusual, alerts us to the it between the newest expression of religious impulses, actress and role by accentuating the acoustic a rallying point for individualism or the im- similarity between “Sarah” and “Salomé,” position of mindless conformity. One could both Jewish names. he chiastic symmetry of temporize that celebrity is sometimes some of the phrase, which begins with a name and a these things, sometimes others, but celebrity verb (“Sarah va”) and ends with a verb and is always all these things: its omnivorousness a title (“jouer Salomé”), makes Sarah and is how and why it works (Dyer 36; Roach 8). Salomé into relections of each other, just as The oxymoronic structure of celebrity the play’s title mirrors its protagonist’s name. may explain its attractions for Oscar Wilde, Wilde’s sentence enacts what it announces, an author famously drawn to paradox. Sa- turning Sarah into Salomé and Salomé into lome, Wilde’s greatest meditation on celeb- an emanation of the star actress. rity, is a one-act drama, composed in French Celebrity linked Salome’s author and star in 1891, denied a license for performance in well before Bernhardt agreed to play the title the summer of 1892, and published in French role in Wilde’s play. As early as 1880, news- in February 1893 and in English in 1894. Al- papers were calling Bernhardt “the most fa- though Salome’s biblical setting may seem mous woman in France” (Picon 133), and the too archaic to generate celebrities, the play press began calling Wilde a celebrity as early became an episode in the history of celebrity as 1882 (Oscar Wilde’s Visit; “Days”). Journal- when Wilde announced that Sarah Bern- ists identiied them both as publicity hounds. hardt, the world’s most famous actress, would A British reviewer in 1910 noted that Bern- play the title character. Bernhardt was a per- hardt was not only “a great actress” but also fect choice, despite being almost fifty. She “unequalled” as “a purveyor of good ‘copy’” had just impressed spectators as a nineteen- (Lon don); a British journalist in 1893 lam- year- old Joan of Arc, and while Wilde was basted Wilde for “mistaking a forgotten but- composing his play in Paris, Bernhardt was terly notoriety for permanent fame” (Truth). incarnating a sexy Cleopatra (ig. 1), one of By the time Bernhardt agreed to play Sa- her many roles as the type of orientalized, lome, she and Wilde each had been subjects of queer femme fatale evoked by Salome (“Idol- “Bijou Portraits” in the periodical Society and 1002 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

had their hands studied by Cheiro, celebrity he giving lectures; both had typed themselves palmist to kings and queens (Busson 59; Mc by designing their own clothes and adopting Kenna 229).4 Both had made lucrative tours lowers as signature accessories; and both had of the United States, she performing in plays, been frequently caricatured by the illustrated

FIG. 1

Napoleon Sarony, photograph of Bern hardt as Cleopatra in 1891, just before she agreed to play Salome. The star’s bare toes anticipate Salome’s notorious barefoot dance, and the composition’s homoeroticism adumbrates the queer atmosphere of Wilde’s play. Sarony had taken pictures of Bernhardt during her 1880 tour of the United States and Canada and of Wilde during his United States tour a year later. Collection of the author. 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1003 press of several nations. Actress and author heatrical presence also depends on the alike detly used photography, advertising, the asymmetry between actor and audience: “the mass press, and international travel to gain difference between the one who performs public recognition (Guibert; Ockman; Ga and the one who listens is the play”; the play gnier; Novak; Bristow, Introd.). heir celeb consists in the fact “that one person plays and rity was thus part of the event that was Salome not the other, who watches” (9; see also States; well before the lord chamberlain’s examiner of Garner). Onstage, argues the philosopher and plays refused the play a license for production theater practitioner Denis Guénoun, two ori in July 1892 and inadvertently demonstrated entations interact: the lateral, in which one that there is no bad publicity. British journal faces one’s partners in play and presents the ists took sides for and against the play, Wilde audience one’s proile, thus creating an image, defended his artistic stature by protesting this and the frontal, “rock star” orientation, which afront to it, and Salome remained a magnet persists even in the most naturalistic theater for scandal well into the twentieth century (13). For Guénoun, presence on the modern (Walkowitz; Lewsadder; Simon). stage results from the combination of ad dress and reticence, proximity and distance, that arises with the convention of the fourth Celebrity and Theatricality wall (17). When actors no longer directly ad To understand Salome, we must irst deine dress the audience, as Shakespearean clowns did and as rock stars still oten do, the result celebrity and its relation to theatricality. he is theatrical presence—the intensiied sense atricality is a mode of representation orga of play created when an actor performs in nized around the presence of live actors and front of an audience that listens and watches audiences, whose relation to each other is but neither overtly acknowledges the other. asymmetrical. Unlike textual representations, Because actors ignore spectators in order to which represent actions as printed signs that concentrate spectatorial attention, the fourth are usually read silently, individually, and in wall is not a refusal to acknowledge the audi private, theatrical imitations of action take ence but a deeper solicitation of it; it does not the form of action itself, and actors present reject theatricality but intensiies it. the characters they embody directly to pub Celebrity, like theater, combines referents licly gathered spectators (Garner 13; Hart and signs, presence and representation, inti 33). he stage body is not a natural body; it macy and distance; it is verbal and scriptive, depends on written texts and other recorded improvisatory and textbased, autocratic and media (Auslander) and needs lighting, acous dependent on the audience it seeks to please. tics, costume, makeup, blocking, and training Stars are recognizable in person because of to become vivid and audible. heatrical pres the widespread circulation of iconic, indexical ence is thus not metaphysical (transcendent, representations that register simultaneously complete, self identical) but physical, situated, their physical absence and their existence in directional, and intersubjective, since actors the flesh. Celebrity is premised on the be are always oriented to spectators and to one lief that a single, unique individual brings another (States 14). To act is “to be there . . . to life a given star persona—hence the fan’s in front of.” Dramatic action is presented, ad hope of glimpsing a star in person (Dames). dressed, and demands a response; its “frontal” To be sure, even as celebrity confects a fan energy comes from the actor’s confrontation tasy about peerless, inimitable presence, it of the audience, which generates theatrical turns individuality into a tissue of citations, “presence” and “manifestation” (Guénoun 15). since not only are stars widely copied, they 1004 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

oten present themselves as copies: Lady Gaga cannily extended her stardom by posing for echoes Madonna echoing Marilyn echoing photographs, commissioning posters, and Jean Harlow; Wilde echoed Byron echoing selling her name and image to advertisers Brummel. Yet despite, or because of, this de- (“Entr’acte”). Photographs, however, were the pendence on imitation and reproduction, a property of photographers (North), who kept star made recognizable by representation will proits from sales, paying one- time fees to ce- cause the greatest stir by appearing in person. lebrity sitters, for whom such images were not Presence was an even more salient fea- ends in themselves. Nineteenth-century ac- ture of celebrity before cinema. For most of tors did not present themselves onstage to sell the nineteenth century, celebrity representa- representations; they used representations to tions existed primarily to induce people to go sell theater tickets. Bernhardt became a star see stars perform live. he articles and pho- by circulating not only her image but also tographs we now use to reconstruct thespian her person on an almost superhuman scale, careers were almost all occasioned by actors’ traveling multiple times across the world to visits to cities and towns, and viewing live perform in venues that included elite the- performers was a common experience in an aters, music halls, and vaudeville tents. On an era when people of all classes went to the the- American tour, she commissioned a specially ater several times a week. Sound and ilm re- outitted train dubbed the Sarah Bernhardt, cordings of stage actors were rare for most of underscoring that her global stardom meant the nineteenth century, and commercial pho- being at once an image, a name, a machine, tographs, though compelling, did not substi- and a body in perpetual motion, traveling at tute for hearing and seeing stars in person. record- breaking speeds to town ater town in Indeed, the images of stage actors that circu- order to be seen live and in person (ig. 2). lated throughout the nineteenth century did Accounts of Bernhardt’s performances not eface theatrical aura but supplemented attest to her powerful stage presence. Wilde it; the haunting absent presence that deines himself wrote, after seeing her perform in photography and the exaggerated use of color, 1879, “Sarah Bernhardt’s Phèdre was the most line, and scale in posters only intensiied the splendid creation I ever witnessed. he scene aura of singular reality around performers only lasted 10 minutes yet she worked the au- appearing in person. As Walter Benjamin put dience to a strained pitch of excitement such it, “[T] he artistic performance of a stage ac- as I never saw” (“To Oscar Browning”; 3 June tor is deinitely presented to the public by the 1879; Holland and Hart- Davis 80). Contem- actor in person. . . . [A]ura is tied to [the ac- poraries wrote of her expressive physicality: tor’s] presence; there can be no replica of it” “everything in her person speaks: the eyes, (228–29). Even today, mechanically reproduc- the gestures, and the entire body as much as ible media stoke the desire to experience ce- her lips” (Fourcaud 12). Bernhardt gave many lebrity presence, as we see every time a movie the impression that she could reach across the star draws crowds to the theater (as Al Pacino footlights to touch, even attack, the audience. did when he played Herod in a staged reading he nineteenth-century drama critic Arsène of Salome). Houssaye declaimed, “Her voice is by turns a In the case of Sarah Bernhardt, an ac- caress and a dagger’s blow. . . . [S]he is stronger tress known for her distinctive voice and than the spectators when she wants to strike dramatic sinuosity, photographs and posters them right in the chest with some natural and brought the star just close enough to remind characteristic words.” Onstage, Bernhardt’s viewers what was missing: the presence they lexible body conveyed a contained mobility, a could experience at the theater. Bernhardt coiled vitality even when at rest (Ockman 29; 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1005

FIG. 2

Itinerary of the Sarah Bernhardt, 1905. The train transporting Bernhardt across the United States becomes a marquee in motion. This metonym for the actress, a container identified with and advertising the star it contains, endows the words “Sarah Bernhardt” with the modernity of speed, the evanescence of smoke, and the propulsive momentum of an object moving at a record-breaking pace toward the beholder. Courtesy of the Biblothèque Nationale de France, Arts du Spectacle.

Picon 75–76). Her ability to twist and spiral what Martin Puchner has termed a theater her scandalously uncorseted form became a of mimesis and a theater of diegesis. The metaphor for features of her celebrity persona play’s investment in a theater of narration is that the press both celebrated and mocked: obvious. Although Salome has been success- the capacity to bend around obstacles, to re- fully staged many times (Kaplan), it is also a configure norms at will, and to create her- symbolist work written as much to be read self, to become her own signature by making as to be performed. Its reliance on elaborate her body itself into a sinuous S, the letter she igurative language oten seems to make the claimed as her irst initial when she changed characters stand for the process of representa- her name from Rosine to Sarah (igs. 3 and 4). tion itself. When not converting one another into elaborate similes, characters narrate the action in verbal bursts that function almost Salome’s Theory of Celebrity like intertitles. In the play’s opening scene, Salome, like theatrical celebrity, is about the for example, before Salome has made her en- interplay between presence and mediation, trance, the Young Syrian tells us what she is display and distance, acting and watching, doing ofstage: “the princess is getting up! She talking and listening, getting paid and pay- is leaving the table! She looks very troubled” ing. Just as celebrity combines presence and (“la princesse se lève! Elle quitte la table! Elle representation, so Salome combines a the- a l’air très ennuyée”; 9; 18). So much of Salome ater of action and a theater of narration, or involves characters talking about what they 1006 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

FIG. 3 H. Scott and G. Clairin, drawing of Bernhardt accompanying an article in La vie moderne 2 Oct. 1880: 639. Bernhardt is depicted as a winged angel in flight, lifted above clouds and birds. The S shape traced by the undulating arc that begins with the hand on the right and ends with the rising twist of the ruffled skirt on the left echoes the reversed and horizontal S shapes curving around the capital letter L. Courtesy of the New York Public Library. 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1007

FIG. 4 Illustration on the title page of Les mémoires de Sarah Barnum, by Marie Colombier, 1883. This unflattering image shows Bernhardt with bony arms, frizzy hair, and an exaggerated hook nose. Crowned by a Jewish star, her body forms an S on the title page of a scandalous mock memoir, written in French by a disgruntled former member of Bernhardt’s acting troupe and then translated into English and published in the United States. Courtesy of Carol would like to do, describing in long speeches ied as focal points of the celebrity physique: Ockman and Kenneth E. Silver what they are doing, and then narrating at hair, skin, eyes, and mouth. On the page, the and of the Laurence length what they have done that it can read as play’s blazons seem to fragment the charac- Senelick Collection. an antidramatic machine for turning action ters and turn them into pure language, but on into description. the stage, those words accentuate the theatri- Salome is equally engaged, however, with cal condition of corporeal presence. he long the physical presence that, we have seen, was descriptions Salome ofers of Iokanaan’s hair also crucial to nineteenth-century celebrity. and mouth and those other characters give Wilde planned to make Salome an over- of her eyes and skin are verbal equivalents whelming sensory experience that would of the fragmented close- ups that theatergo- match the expressiveness of its star, using lu- ers obtain using lorgnettes and opera glasses, rid, saturated colors for the set and costumes and characters frequently spotlight the actor’s and releasing scents into the auditorium presence onstage from head to toe, as when during the performance (Meisel; Garelick Herod tells Salome, “Ah! You are going to 148). By play’s end, the stage is littered with dance barefoot! hat’s good!” (“Ah! vous allez the discarded clothing, blood, and corpses danser pieds nus! C’est bien!”; 53; 68). typical of melodrama and boulevard theater. Throughout, dematerializing similes One of the most verbally ornate plays of the and metaphoric language give way to physi- nineteenth century, Salome is also one of the cal manifestations. Elaborate figurative most physical, obsessively drawing attention speeches oten begin and end with blunt as- to body parts that Joseph Roach has identi- sessments of bodies or bold statements of 1008 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

sexual intention: “Your hair is horrible. . . . literature, Wilde decided not to represent Sa- Let me kiss your mouth” (“Tes cheveux sont lome’s dance in words, leaving it to the actress horribles. . . . Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche”; playing her to present it in person. 23–24; 33–34). Salome irst likens Iokanaan Salome evokes theatrical celebrity not to “a ray of moonlight, . . . a ray of silver” only by combining presence and represen- (“un rayon de lune, . . . un rayon d’argent”), tation but also by incorporating the non- but her next simile is more tactile: “His lesh reciprocity that obtains between fans and must be very cold, like ivory” (“Sa chair doit celebrities, spectators and actors, into its id- être très froide, comme de l’ivoire”; 19; 29). iosyncratic form, which transposes the sepa- By play’s end, she has renounced comparison ration of audience and actors in the theater altogether: “here was nothing in the world onto the stage itself. he nonreciprocity that as white as your body. here was nothing in defines theater as the distance between ac- the world as black as your hair” (“Il n’y avait tors and spectators becomes a nonreciproc- rien au monde d’aussi blanc que ton corps. Il ity among the play’s characters. Iokanaan n’y avait rien au monde d’aussi noir que tes spurns Salome, who ignores the Young Syr- cheveux”; 65; 82); no longer the basis for end- ian, who pays no heed to the pleas of the less similes, Iokanaan’s body is now incompa- Page, just as actors pretend not to see spec- rable, a cosmic reference point. tators, and celebrities exhibit themselves but he plot similarly moves toward physi- maintain an aloof distance from the “praying cal contact and wordless action. Salome and supplicant[s]” craving to communicate with the audience first experience Iokanaan as them (Roach 17). On display but untouchable, an ofstage voice, whose disembodied aural celebrities can never personally acknowledge presence stimulates the wish to see him in all their fans individually; devotees pay to person: on hearing Iokanaan, Salome imme- gaze on a star who is dramatically present but diately wants to see and speak to him (14–15; rarely returns their look and to whom they 23–24). Ater having him hauled up from the cannot speak (Garner 49; Bennett 15). The cistern, she wants to “look at him up close” fan’s look is self- annihilating, because it seeks (“le regarde de près”), stating that his “voice intoxicates” her (“Ta voix m’enivre”) and that a recognition that it can structurally never she is “amorous” of his “body” (“amoureuse receive: fans desire intimacy with the adored de ton corps”; 19–21; 29–31). After declar- celebrity (Dames 44; Blake 168), but the celeb- ing, “Let me touch your body!” (“Laisse-moi rity either ignores them or, by acknowledging toucher ton corps!”; 22; 32), she aggressively them, destroys the gap needed to maintain repeats “I will kiss your mouth” (“Je baiserai stardom (Dyer 7; Morin 69–73; Roach 17; ta bouche”; 24, 25, 26, and passim; 34, 35, 37, Braudy 27, 556). and passim), then does so when presented These asymmetries between actor and with his severed head. he dance Salome per- spectator, star and fan, surface in Salome as forms to gain access to Iokanaan is even more the nonreciprocity of its characters’ speeches, physical; nonverbal, it silences even the play’s desires, and gazes. Part of Salome’s notori- author, who gives only this laconic stage di- ous strangeness derives from this disjunctive rection: “Salome dances the dance of the principle; characters repeatedly speak past seven veils” (“Salomé danse la danse des sept one another, oblivious to the utterances of voiles”; 54; 70). As Jessica Simon has argued, their putative interlocutors. Failed acknowl- this spare verbalization refuses to contain ki- edgment structures the play from its opening netic performance within ekphrastic descrip- lines, which function less as dialogue than as tion; unlike his many predecessors in French parallel monologues that fail to meet (Lew- 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1009 sadder 521); not for this play the dictum that “always looking” at Salome (“vous la regar acting is reacting. dez toujours”; 2; 11), who looks at Iokanaan, who averts his eyes from her. Each character young syrian. How beautiful is the Princess is conined to being audience or actor for an Salome tonight! other but never both at once. herodias’s page. Look at the moon. he moon Idolized by the Young Syrian, Salome has a strange air. (1) idolizes Iokanaan; he is an object of her gaze, le jeune syrien. Comme la princesse Salomé est attention, and desire, but she is not an object belle ce soir! of his. This nonreciprocity only stokes Sa le page d’hérodias. Regardez la lune. La lune a lome’s fandom: she desires that he return her l’air très étrange. (9) look, even as his refusal to do so only intensi ies her obsession with him. Salome crosses Characters frequently speak about one an over from fan into stalker when she demands other in the third person, even when both are Io ka naan’s head, an act that manifests the onstage, and rarely acknowledge one another’s tensions of celebrity: the idol is most alive to statements and wishes. he Young Syrian pays the fan when lifeless; stars incite desire, but no heed to the Page’s repeated imperative “You intimacy undoes stardom. As a sign of the must not look at her” (“Il ne faut pas la re gar impossible relation between celebrity and fan, der”; 4; 12); Salome ignores the Young Syrian’s we have the decadent pathos of Salome’s ad many eforts to distract her from Iokanaan, dress to Iokanaan’s severed head: “Open your addressing the First and Second Soldiers when eyes. . . . Why do you not look at me?” (“Ou he speaks to her (11–14; 20–24). She finally vre tes yeux. . . . Pourquoi ne me regardestu speaks to the Young Syrian only to negate pas?”; 64; 81). he fan’s look can kill the ce his fascination with her by requesting that he lebrity, as Salome’s gaze does Iokanaan, but it bring Ioka naan to her. In exchange, she ofers can also annihilate the fan; Salome’s biggest the condescension of a beloved but distant su fan, the Syrian, kills himself when she does perior: to let a lower fall in his path, to look not return his gaze, and Salome dies as a fan, at him through muslin veils, and “perhaps” to when her raving over Iokanaan’s head pro give him a smile (16; 26). Such nonreciprocity vokes Herod to order her death. is the rule in Salome, whose characters repeat Wilde’s play poses questions central to edly reject one another’s erotic approaches, a celebrity: whether power comes from look refusal of mutuality that the French version ing or showing of, from being seen or with underscores by playing with the formal and holding oneself from view. Most critics of familiar forms of the second person. Salome, the play have argued that it equates looking for example, addresses Iokanaan as “tu,” an with sexual domination. This is clearly at intimacy he usually fails to reciprocate. On work: Salome, for example, acquires power the rare occasions that Iokanaan shits from over Iokanaan by feasting her eyes on him “vous,” he does so only to reject the demand before and ater his death. Linda and Michael that he return her attention: “Be cursed. . . . I Hutcheon have complicated the equation of do not want to look at you. You are cursed” looking and domination by arguing that in (“Soyez maudite. . . . Je ne veux pas te re gar Salome “to look is to grant power to the one der. Tu es maudite”; 26; 37). his familiarity observed” and that the title character “is not is all contempt. Just as the characters talk past objectiied by the gaze but empowered by it” one another, their looks spectacularly fail (16). his formulation cannot account, how to coincide. Herodias watches Herod watch ever, for the fact that Salome enters the stage Salome; the Page looks at the Syrian, who is fleeing Herod’s troubling gaze: “I will not 1010 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

stay. I cannot stay. Why does the Tetrarch of the imperative “Approach” and his shit to look at me all the while with his mole’s eyes the familiar form when he mentions money under his shaking eyelids?” (“Je ne resterai express the hope that payment will allow the pas. Je ne peux pas rester. Pourquoi le té- spectator to command intimacy with the per- trarque me regarde- t- il toujours avec ses yeux former. Breaching the distance that normally de taupe sous ses paupières tremblantes?”; 10; obtains between spectator and star almost 18–19). Nor can the claim that being seen em- immediately causes the spectator great dis- powers Salome explain the play’s penultimate tress, however, for instead of “argent” in the lines: “[A ray of moonlight falls on Salome and form of money Salome demands “argent” in illumines her.] herod. [Turning round and the form of a silver basin containing Ioka- seeing Salome.] Kill that woman!” (“(Un rayon naan’s head, an implacable wish that reduces de lune tombe sur Salomé et l’éclaire.) hérode the imperious king to a wheedling bargainer (se retournant et voyant Salomé). Tuez cette who would rather sacrifice priceless jewels femme!”). hese lines equate visibility with than honor his royal word. death, but Salome does not die simply from excess visibility, since her execution also co- Exemplarity and Impudence incides with being rendered invisible, blocked from view by the soldiers’ shields (67; 84). Having explored the aesthetics of theatrical What is at stake in the play’s ending is not celebrity in terms of Salome’s form, I now the sheer fact of being seen but control over turn to the social, political, and religious fac- one’s image; Salome is defeated when she be- ets of celebrity that shape the play’s content. comes too absorbed by the sight of Iokanaan Scholars of celebrity have often reworked to manage her own appearance. the classical distinction between good fama Power in Salome thus resides not simply (truth and honor) and bad fama (rumor and in looking or being looked at but in the exhi- infamy) as a contrast between fame and ce- bition of presence. Salome is most powerful lebrity. This schema casts fame as genuine, when she can solicit an adoring gaze but keep digniied, and permanent renown, linked to her audience at a physical distance, which was masculine virtue and civic deeds, and casti- precisely the power of the theatrical celebrity gates celebrity as factitious, supericial, and onstage (and oten of it, before the paparazzi transient, associated with feminine artifice era). Salome’s exchange with Herod ater her and the shameless public display of actions dance encapsulates the star’s ability to com- that should be kept private (Rojek; Inglis). bine deliberate display with an imperious he opposition between fame and celebrity aloofness that averts the risk of degradation rarely holds in postmodern times, but the few inherent in performance. For Herod, Salome’s critics to note this have aimed to show that dance is an occasion to deprive her of star fame is as ephemeral and constructed as ce- power; immediately ater her performance, lebrity (Baty; Gamson). he reverse, however, he commands her, “Approach, Salome! Ap- also holds true: when the diference between proach so that I can give you your wages. Ah! fame and celebrity dissolves, celebrity can in- I pay female dancers well, I do. You, I’ll pay corporate the gravity and inluence of fame. you well” (“Approchez, Salomé! Approchez For a poet like Walt Whitman, for example, ain que je puisse vous donner votre salaire. celebrity was fame, because in a democratic Ah! Je paie bien les danseuses, moi. Toi, je te society public opinion was the legitimating paie rai bien”; 54–55; 70). By calling Salome a power (Blake 6). By the nineteenth century, “dan seuse,” Herod reduces the princess to the fame had begun to succumb to celebrity, and epitome of sexual availability. His repetition celebrity was absorbing fame, becoming a 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1011 complex concept that encompassed virtue proclaiming imperviousness to public opin- and vice, representativeness and uniqueness, ion: “I am tired to death of being advertised. I conformity and transgression (Braudy 344, feel no thrill when I see my name in the news- 388; Rojek 146–48, 179; Roach 8; Blake 56). paper. . . . I wrote this book entirely for my The distinction between celebrity and own pleasure, and it gave me very great plea- fame became less important in the nineteenth sure to write it. Whether it becomes popular century than the interplay between two kinds or not is a matter of absolute indiference to of celebrity: a celebrity of exemplarity and a me” (“To the Editor of the St James’s Gazette”; celebrity of impudence, sometimes combined 25 June 1890; Holland and Hart- Davis 428– in the same figure. The exemplar typified 29). The paradox of announcing in a letter social virtues, embodied normative values, written for publication in a newspaper that and consented to being considered a model one has no interest in being in the news par- worthy of imitation. Queen Victoria, a great allels the paradox embedded in the celebrity fan of star performers (Schoch), cultivated a of impudence, which is not content simply to celebrity of exemplarity when she displayed challenge social mores but gambles on being herself as an eminently domestic mother in rewarded by society for doing so. published accounts of her family vacations, Over the course of a career that began in complete with photographs (Homans; Plun- the 1870s and lasted until her death in 1923, kett). By contrast, the impudent showily de- Sarah Bernhardt was known for both her im- parted from norms and presented themselves pudence and her exemplarity, shiting from as inimitable, though they oten inspired em- one to the other over space and time. Until ulation: like Byron, Liszt, and George Sand, the 1890s, she was a controversial igure in Wilde launted his diference from the crowd France, where the press caricatured her Jew- and his indiference to popular opinion and ishness and her queer femininity. As we have middle-class conventions (Gagnier 51). Such seen (fig. 4), illustrators in the 1870s and igures were not simply eccentric, a term that 1880s pilloried Bernhardt’s money- making implies involuntary uniqueness; the impu- abilities as Jewish greed, mocked her ex- dent shamelessly chose their diferences and treme thinness as ugly and unwomanly, and elected to exhibit that choice. associated her theatrical and sexual successes The celebrity of impudence marked with the overweening masculine ambition Wilde up to the end of his career, when he of a Napoléon (fig. 5). Unfazed, Bernhardt made witty quips during his 1895 trials, and launted her status as an unmarried mother can be traced back to the example set by his whose son bore her surname, announcing mother, Speranza, a well- known feminist and herself at social gatherings as “Mademoi- Irish nationalist, who believed that “[t] hose selle Sarah Bernhardt et son fils” (Martin who make public opinion . . . do not heed it” 36). When she inally married, in 1882, she (Sherard 63). According to a fellow Oxonian, caused more scandal by choosing a younger Wilde declared in college, “Somehow I’ll be man. For years the French media resented famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious” her for attaining stardom abroad and quit- (Blair 122); years later, he asked men attend- ting the Comédie Française in 1880, but out- ing the premiere of Lady Windermere’s Fan to side France she came to represent the glories wear green carnations, in order to “annoy the of its language and culture. By the 1890s even public,” because, he explained, “it likes to be the French press had begun to laud her as a annoyed” (qtd. in Gagnier 163). When the St national ambassador and artistic genius, and James’s Gazette attacked he Picture of Dorian in the early twentieth century, ater becom- Gray in 1890, Wilde sent a letter to the editor ing a grandmother, undergoing a partial leg 1012 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

FIG. 5 judgments proliferated. Asked what “attri- A. Robida, detail butes women love in men,” she replied, “hose of “La conquête of women” (“Sarah Bernhardt’s Idea”). When de l’Amérique, par the very proper Madge Kendal congratulated Sarah Bernhardt,” Bernhardt on a ine performance but added, La caricature 2 Feb. “It is a pity, madame, that your plays always 1881. This image of deal with passion, so that I cannot take my Bernhardt from a young daughters to see them,” Bernhardt re- full-page newspaper cartoon about her torted, “Ah, madame, you should remember American tour that were it not for passion you would have no echoes Napoleonic daughters to bring” (Marbury 145). In 1879 iconography. the actress wrote to a Protestant minister who The actress is in had denounced her, “My dear confrère, Why imperial robes, attack me so violently? Actors ought not to be wearing a crown, hard on one another,” then published her let- holding an orb, and wielding a ter in a newspaper (Huret 91). Bernhardt her- comically large self articulated the principle underlying the sword. Courtesy of celebrity of impudence in an 1879 interview the Biblothèque on how to garner fame: “Humour them, con- Nationale de form to the tradition, and you may win some France, Arts du admiration. Dare to disregard it, and bear the Spectacle. chill of their temporary disfavour, and you will win all” (qtd. in Stokes 32). One way to please the middle-class mass public, which conferred celebrity, was to stand apart from it and demonstrate indiference to its opinion. Bernhardt’s famously seductive contempt for norms and authorities ampliied her reso- amputation, and entertaining French soldiers nance as a casting choice for Salome, a will- during World War I, she became an exem- ful adolescent (Kaye) who insolently disobeys plary igure of patriotic womanhood (Silver). her parents, performs the scandalous dance In 1892, when Bernhardt agreed to play of the seven veils, and attempts to seduce a Salome, her celebrity image blended exem- saint, then demands his head for her “own plarity and impudence. She was lauded for pleasure” (“propre plaisir”; 56; 71). Where being “conventionality deied and original- Bernhardt combined impudence with exem- ity expressed. . . . Far beyond the majority plarity, Salome evacuates exemplarity com- of mortals she has found it possible to disre- pletely from the scene, becoming what the gard limitations, and do pretty much as she censor called, more aptly than he perhaps wished” (Vassault 576). he press revered her realized, a “miracle of impudence” (qtd. in as a tragic actress who represented all that Lewsadder 525). Royal and religious igures was “universal” (Case), but it also fastened on are typically exemplary characters, but in the singularity and rebelliousness associated Wilde’s play their endless conflicts prevent with her penchants for exotic pets, sleeping in them from incarnating standards. Salome’s a coin, and challenging pieties while charm- mother, Herodias, accuses her husband, ing the public. Anecdotes about Bernhardt’s the king, of lacking royal blood and mocks ripostes to gender regulation and to moral Herod’s cowardice (34; 46), crowing, “The 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1013 kings of the earth are afraid” (“Les rois de la traction and national tradition (Roach 60). terre ont peur”; 53; 69); in turn, he calls her a For centuries fame had been a privilege of liar (33; 44), casting doubt on the royal word. hereditary caste, priestly status, and poetic Throughout the play, saints, prophets, genius; absolute monarchs and religious in rabbis, and monarchs charge one another stitutions had monopolized pageantry and with defying the law, then denounce such strictly controlled the stage (Braudy 315–20). denunciations as themselves insolent. Ioka In the nineteenth century, by contrast, celeb naan upbraids the queen and princess for be rity and its theatrical powers could belong to ing shameless, “impudique” (42; 54), but his anyone willing to acknowledge the author exotic name aligns him with the characters ity of the populace, which during the French he excoriates, and his rhetoric and diction Revolution had proved itself capable of using echo those of Salome, whom he reviles. He direct action to make and break gods, rul is also an outlaw, his moral supremacy de ers, and theatrical performances (Maslan). nied by Herodias, who labels his challenges Democratization intensiied what had oten to her royal authority “infâme” (42; 55)—not been close ties between theater and religion only infamous but slanderous, operating by (Knapp), and by the late nineteenth century inflammatory innuendo. Herodias’s word divinity and government had come to de choice also underscores Iokanaan’s theatri pend, like celebrity, on media representation cality, for infâme was the technical term for and public opinion. As increasingly large and actors’ legal status before the French Revo heterogeneous groups legitimated religious lution finally granted performers rights to and political leaders (Blake 47), monarchs marry and receive religious burial (Maslan and popes retained power only by consenting 19). Steeped in scandal, the play generates se to be stars, and celebrities became gods (Mo rial accusations of infamy that are themselves rin 32, 54, 100; Braudy 28; Gitlin 81; Baty 20; bound up in shameless, insubstantial claims Rojek 9, 74–77; Roach 17, 153–54). to authority. In Salome, nothing is sacred. Populist, commercial, and participa tory, nineteenthcentury theater molded the populace but was also subject to it, thus chal Celebrity as the Democratization of lenging the religious monopoly on shaping Religion and Monarchy values as well as the unilateral, antidemo Wilde wrote Salome at the end of a century cratic way that most sects exercised moral whose increasing democratization spurred suasion. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that people to theorize religion and royalty us “[p] lays . . . represent, even among aristo ing the same concepts underlying celebrity: cratic nations, the most democratic element expressive individualism, the social body, of their literature” (567), and in 1880 Oscar democratic choice, and mass diversion. David Wilde wrote, “. . . I am working at dramatic Strauss and Ernest Renan personalized Jesus art because it’s the democratic art, and I want by making him a historical, biographical ig fame . . .” (“To E. F. S. Pigott”; Sept. 1880; ure; Ludwig Feuerbach redefined deities as Holland and HartDavis 98). Tellingly, Wilde projections of the human ideal of “personality deined fame as celebrity—not as providing itself” (153); and Émile Durkheim considered deep and lasting pleasure to the discern gods expressions of what human beings val ing few but as attracting the attention of the ued most, their social bonds with one another many. Ironically, he made this observation in (Roach 18). Walter Bagehot recast the British a letter accompanying a copy of Vera, one of monarchy as a popular spectacle, deprived of his few theatrical lops, and addressed to none real power but useful as an entertaining dis other than E. F. S. Pigott, who would later 1014 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

deny Salome a license for performance. Pig- modern sovereigns, she was a target of deri- ott’s decision underscored that even in 1892 sion as well as of accolades, subject to public the struggle among democracy, religion, and exposure and to popular judgment. he story royalty was far from over. The office of the went that when Bernhardt complained to the lord chamberlain was part of the royal house- Prince of Wales about malicious press cover- hold and still enforcing a Reformation ban age, he consoled her by saying, “[Y] ou are not on depicting biblical characters onstage, in- nearly so badly spoken of as my mother” (All stituted when the English state absorbed the 15). As Wilde experienced during his trials, church. Such laws originally aimed to delegit- celebrities, like royalty, could be demonized imize Catholicism’s theatrical approach to re- as readily as they were acclaimed. ligion, but by the nineteenth century they had Salome incorporates the conlict that led become ways to protect religion from theater’s to its censorship, over who owns religion and profaning democracy and to prevent blasphe- has the right to determine how others will mous views from gaining public inluence. present sacred figures such as gods, saints, Democratization similarly converted and monarchs. In refusing Wilde’s play a li- royalty into a form of celebrity, thus making cense for public performance, the lord cham- it easier for celebrities to approximate royalty. berlain’s oice objected both to the portrayal Describing his 1882 tour of the United States, of biblical igures onstage and to how Wilde which resembled those of Sarah Bernhardt portrayed them: as carnal objects of erotic the year before and of the Prince of Wales in desire whose physical attributes are oten de- 1860, Wilde comically played up how public- scribed through biblical citations that adapt ity had elevated him: “I . . . am now treated “scriptural phraseology to situations the re- like the Royal Boy. . . . I stand at the top of verse of sacred” (“Books”). One can see the the reception rooms . . . bow graciously and censor’s point; when Iokanaan urges Salome sometimes honour them with a royal ob- to seek out Jesus, she asks, “Is he as beauti- servation, which appears next day in all the ful as you are?” (“Est- il aussi beau que toi?”; newspapers. . . . Loving virtuous obscurity as 21; 31). Salome goes further, depicting both much as I do, you can judge how much I dis- like this lionising, which is worse than that royalty and religion as ephemeral and dispos- given to Sarah Bernhardt I hear” (“To Mrs able, the results of human creation and thus George Lewis”; c. 15 Jan. 1882; Holland and vulnerable to human destruction. Neither Salome Hart- Davis 126). Wilde could archly claim kings nor gods rule absolutely in , not equivalence with the Prince of Wales and su- least because they are at war with each other. premacy over Bernhardt because, like them, As we have seen, the royal family is riven he was now a celebrity. To be treated like by inighting and its legitimacy questioned, royalty was not to be given political power or while lengthy doctrinal quarrels among Jew- aristocratic titles but to have one’s sayings re- ish sects, whose centrality oten puzzles read- ported in the newspapers. ers, establish a situation in which religious In a democratic age, however, when di- beliefs are subject to debate. Herod is king, vinity and royalty were no longer sacred, to be but he has a “master” (“maître”), Caesar, who called divine or imperial could not protect ce- must share the title “Savior of the world” lebrities from calumny—just as the monarchs (“Sauveur du monde”) with Jesus, leaving and saints of Salome have no immunity from it doubtful that either wields the power the insult. Bernhardt was dubbed “the divine epithet implies (36–37; 49–50). Similarly, Sarah” and oten hailed as a queen, not least characters refer to both Herod and Christ as because she played so many onstage, but, like “Sei gneur”; that two such disparate charac- 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1015 ters share a title to supremacy indicates how characters speak of him as human enough to relative power is in this play’s universe. be sighted (38–41; 50–54), their accounts of Recurrent motifs of regicide and deicide, his miracles framed as the chatter of rumor: rarely remarked by critics, further under “they say he’s in Samaria at present” (“On dit mine the autarchy of monarchy and religion. qu’il est en Samarie à présent”; 41; 53); “he Characters frequently mention kings and was seen by a crowd of people” (“Il a été vu gods withering at the pleasure of the popu par une foule de personnes”); “people who lace or dying at one another’s hands. Early in were there told me about it” (“Des personnes the play, one character explains to another qui étaient là me l’ont dit”; 38–39; 51). that the Romans chased his deities away and Iokanaan’s vivid speeches about Jesus that when he went to look for them he could function, like publicity, to provoke interest not find them: “I think they are dead” (“Je in a igure still little known in the world of pense qu’ils sonts morts”; 5; 13). Just as there the play, most of whose characters do not ac are many gods, there are many monarchs, cept him as divine. In Christian iconography, all expendable mere mortals. We learn from John the Baptist is a publicist for Jesus, an Herod that the Young Syrian is a hostage, nouncing the news of his divinity on a scroll his father a king chased by Herod from his that declares “Behold the Lamb of God.” kingdom, his mother a queen whom Hero Wilde presents Iokanaan as both impresario dias enslaved (30; 42). Iokanaan calls for and groupie, a publicist who creates fans and Queen Herodias’s death: “Bring a multitude is also the supreme fan. As a disciple, Ioka of men against her. Let the people take stones naan fulills the fan’s functions of worship and stone her” (“Faites venir contre elle une ping and talking about the celebrity; as Jesus’s multitude d’hommes. Que le peuple prenne intimate, Iokanaan enjoys his own vicarious des pierres et la lapide.....”; 42; 54 [ellipsis in celebrity, attracting a crowd of followers be orig.]). When the Cappadocian remarks that cause of his eccentric habits, bizarre clothing, “it is a terrible thing to strangle a king,” the and proximity to Jesus Christ, superstar. As First Soldier replies, “Why? Kings have only the First Soldier says of Iokanaan, “An enor one neck, like other men” (“c’est terrible d’é mous crowd used to follow him. He even had trangler un roi . . . Pourquoi? Les rois n’ont disciples” (“Une grande foule le suivait. Il qu’un cou, comme les autres hommes”; 9; 18), avait même des disciples”; 7; 15). he French referring to Herod’s execution of the former word Wilde uses, “foule,” links Iokanaan’s ruler, his elder brother. followers to a particularly modern form of As we saw earlier, the rhetoric of scan public, teeming with democratic desires to dal attenuates royal prestige throughout the pull down and mingle with their rulers and play. Conversely, religion thrives in Salome as divinities (Garelick 132). a matter of the visible and through publicity he ultimate representative of the power and report. Several extended dialogues high of the public and the celebrities it creates is light the conlict between Jews, who “worship Salome, who thwarts the king by requesting a God that one cannot see” (“adorent un Dieu that he cut Iokanaan down to size, thus elim qu’on ne peut pas voir”; 5; 13), and those who inating the only person onstage whose star adore a god they can see and touch. Herod power rivals her own. Salome’s dance allows notes of Iokanaan, “He is a man who has seen her to demand “[t] he head of Iokanaan” (“[l] a God” (“C’est un homme qui a vu Dieu”; 34; tête d’Iokanaan”; 58; 74); her performance 46); other characters remark that, as a re licenses her domination of both king and sult, a cult has coalesced around him. Salome holy man. After exhorting the executioner never names Jesus or puts him onstage, but to “[s] trike, strike, . . . [s] trike” (“[f] rappe, 1016 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

frappe, . . . [f] rappe”; 63; 80), Salome ad cast the actress as Pygmalion and the author’s dresses a vengeful tirade to Iokanaan’s text as Galatea, completely realized only by bloody, severed head, reveling in her triumph the performer’s inal, vivifying touch. over him: “I will kiss your mouth, Iokanaan. Wilde also valued the autonomy of the . . . I still live, but you, you are dead, and your poet, however, and on occasion asserted the head belongs to me. I can do what I want supremacy of authors and the uselessness with it” (“je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan. of actors, claiming to prefer puppets. He fa- . . . [M]oi je vis encore, mais toi tu es mort mously insisted that he had not written Sa- et ta tête m’appartient. Je puis en faire ce que lome for Bernhardt: “I have never written a je veux”; 64; 81). Salome is an imperious star play for any actor or actress, nor shall I ever performer and scandalous princess who will do so. Such work is for the artisan in litera- herself soon die, but she also occupies the role ture, not for the artist” (“To the Editor of he of an unruly public, defying a king to obtain Times”; c. 1 Mar. 1893; Holland and Hart- a saint’s head on a silver platter, a sanguinary, Davis 559). In an 1892 interview, he praised sacrilegious demand that aligns her with the Bernhardt, describing his pleasure at hearing revolutionary crowds who applauded the use “my own words spoken by the most beauti- of the guillotine to subject royalty and reli ful voice in the world” during rehearsals gion to their demotic power. (“Cen sure”), but his phrase tellingly avoided naming her. At the height of his career as an The Author and the Actress author, Wilde saw himself as writing only for himself and therefore owning his text (“my Salome is performer and spectator, idol and own words”). he performer is subtly second- fan, star and stalker; her name and the play’s ary, reduced to a “voice,” which, no matter title encapsulate the link between celebrity how supremely beautiful, speaks the words of and fandom, the connections between prox an author who underscores that he is not the imity and distance, interdependence and star’s servant and did not produce them with nonreciprocity. Wilde’s career suggests a sim her in mind. ilarly tensile bond between the author, master Earlier in his career, when Wilde was bet- of representation, and the actress, queen of ter known as a celebrity than as an author, he presence. As his exclamation over Bernhardt’s was happy to hitch his wagon to Bernhardt’s decision to play Salome shows, Wilde enjoyed star. Since Jean- Jacques Rousseau, writers had the vicarious publicity conferred by associa been minor celebrities, and in the Victorian tion with a celebrity performer. In an 1882 era Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and Ralph letter to the actress Mary Anderson, he de Waldo Emerson achieved fame as heroes ined drama as a collaboration between rep- and sages. Wilde, however, was a new type: resentation and presence: “All good plays are the author as feminized celebrity personal- a combination of the dream of a poet and that ity—as actress. One of the earliest caricatures practical knowledge of the actor which . . . for of Wilde, an 1881 image by J. B. B. Nichols, poetic efect, which is description, substitutes portrays him with long hair and full lips, in dramatic efect, which is Life” (“To Mary An- aesthetic white costume, holding a branch derson”; early Sept. 1882; Holland and Hart- of lilies, the words “how utter” floating Davis 178–79). In 1888 Wilde averred “it was around his knees (ig. 6). In the border of the not until I heard Sarah Bernhardt in Phèdre image, idealized muses and cupids alternate that I absolutely realized the sweetness of the with recognizable images of real actresses, music of Racine” (“Literary and Other Notes including Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, and, di- III” 109). In statements such as these, Wilde rectly above Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt. he im- 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1017

FIG. 6

J. B. B. Nichols, How Utter, 1881. Wilde is framed by famous actresses of the day, including Bernhardt, at the top. Courtesy of the Clark Library, UCLA. 1018 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

age presents Wilde as the actresses’ fan, muse, Wilde attained celebrity as an author and author, but it also makes him an aspiring by emulating an actress, while Bernhardt member of a dramatic sorority. He is superior secured theatrical stardom by taking autho- to the actresses in scale but inferior in the de- rial control over her image, roles, and career gree of dignity conferred on his image; he is (Stokes). hough the actress was known for above and beneath them, dwarfs them and is riding roughshod over writers, and the au- outnumbered by them.5 thor oten wanted to dictate to performers, Wilde embraced the theatrical celebrity they were not simply in conlict but also in that such images attributed to him. He was cooperation and identification—a mutual a fan of actors and actresses, a playwright admiration society. Such incorporation is committed to writing crowd- pleasing com- part of the celebrity process, which demands edies, and a theorist of the self as a work of that performers script themselves and that art. Known as a “great admirer” of Bernhardt authors put themselves on display. Ater re- (Mas sett), Wilde capitalized on her success- turning to Britain in 1882, Wilde vaunted the ful London debut in the summer of 1879 links between his American tour and Bern- by publishing a sonnet entitled “To Sarah hardt’s, even claiming that he had agreed Bernhardt” in the newspaper the World on to wear an oilskin costume at Niagara Falls 11 June 1879, thus balancing a high art form “only when he was informed that such a with the speedy tempo of a commercial tie- great artist as Mdlle Sarah Bernhardt had in; in the 1881 book edition of his poems, he [also] worn a dress of that kind” (“Mr. Oscar gave the work a more literary and less topical Wilde”). Years later, in December 1898, Wilde title, “Phèdre.” In her autobiography, Bern- went “to see my dear Sarah in La Tosca” (“To hardt vaunted that Wilde was there to greet Frank Harris”; 29 Dec. 1898); ater the show her, bearing “an armful of lilies,” when she he wrote, “I went round to see Sarah and she disembarked in En gland to begin her 1879 embraced me and wept, and I wept, and the tour, thus situating the author, ten years her whole evening was wonderful” (“To Robert junior, as the actress’s adoring fan (310). In Ross”; 2 Jan. 1899; Holland and Hart- Davis 1882 he turned the stance of imitative fol- 1115–16). Wilde and Bernhardt now both lower into a celebrity of his own when he lie in Père Lachaise Cemetery, in graves that toured the United States and Canada one year register their indelible absence and their on- after Bernhardt had. Wilde liked to credit going presence, still assiduously attended by Bernhardt with suggesting that he undertake fans acting out and carrying on the drama of the tour, although the idea probably came celebrity. from a newspaper publisher, Mrs. Frank Les- lie (Holland and Hart- Davis 123), and he pre- pared for his public appearances by taking elocution lessons from the actor Hermann Vezin (Holland and Hart- Davis 99). Once in NOTES

America, he followed Bernhardt’s itinerary, I thank James Eli Adams, Ellis Avery, Joseph Allen Boone, staying at hotels she had visited and sitting Jean Howard, Shannon Jackson, Eleanor Johnson, Jefrey for Napoleon Sarony, who had photographed Knapp, Martin Puchner, Nancy Vickers, and others too Bernhardt the year before. In the 1890s, an numerous to name for their generous, incisive comments etching of a Bernhardt portrait, inscribed by on versions of this essay. 1. The quotations in English from Salome are my “the great tragedienne,” hung in the Wildes’ translations of Wilde’s original French text, published aesthetically decorated and much publicized simultaneously in France and En gland in 1893. Almost house (“Mrs. Oscar Wilde” 93). all my translations difer from those of Alfred Douglas, 126.4 ] Sharon Marcus 1019 who is credited with the En glish translation published in Bennett, Susan. heatre Audiences: A heory of Production 1894 that has become the standard En glish edition and is and Perception. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1997. Print. widely available in a Dover facsimile reprint. For the con Bernhardt, Sarah. Memories of My Life: Being My Per- venience of readers who use that edition, the irst of the sonal, Professional, and Social Recollections as Woman two page numbers that follow mentions of Wilde’s play and Artist. New York: Appleton, 1907. Print. refers to Douglas’s translation; the second page number Blair, David Hunter. In Victorian Days. 1939. London: refers to the 1893 French edition, available in a 2008 fac Longmans, 1969. Print. simile reprint from Presses Universitaires de France. Blake, David. Walt Whitman and the Culture of Ameri- 2. Previous critics have related the play’s emphasis on can Celebrity. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print. the gaze and on desire to gender and sexuality (Dijkstra; “Books of the Week.” London Times 23 Feb. 1893: 8. Print. Del la mora; Gagnier; Garelick; Donohue; Lewsadder). Sev eral critics have read Salome as a camp take on celebrity, Braudy, Leo. he Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. arguing that Wilde uses irony, reversal, and excess to un New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print. settle the audience and alienate it from commodity culture Bristow, Joseph. Introduction. Bristow, Oscar Wilde 1–45. (Gagnier 165–66; Garelick 13, 146; Powell, Oscar Wilde ——— , e d . Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: he Making 52). I would argue that the camp reading oversimpliies ce of a Legend. Athens: Ohio UP, 2008. Print. lebrity culture and overestimates Wilde’s distance from it. Busson, Dani. Sarah Bernhardt. Paris: Fischer, n.d. [c. 3. Dyer claims that celebrity ideologically resolves 1912]. Print. irreconcilable beliefs (36); Roach describes stardom as a Case, Jules. “La ille à Blanchard.” La plume 1 Jan. 1901: “precarious balance between . . . mutually exclusive al 20. Print. ternatives” (8). I would modify these claims in two ways. Dames, Nicholas. “Brushes with Fame: hackeray and First, the celebrity unites alternatives and beliefs that are the Work of Celebrity.” Nineteenth-Century Litera- neither irreconcilable nor mutually exclusive but dialec ture 56.1 (2001): 23–51. Print. tically entwined. Second, celebrity is neither stabilizing “Days with Celebrities.” 1883. Print. CL, Wilde Portfolio nor teetering but dynamic; it dramatizes the production Case. of mobile selves and plastic social relations. Dellamora, Richard. “Traversing the Feminine in Oscar 4. Wilde was the subject of a “Bijou Portrait” in Soci- Wilde’s Salomé.” Victorian Sages and Cultural Dis- ety on 21 Mar. 1885, Bernhardt on 8 Dec. 1883. course: Renegotiating Gender and Power. Ed. haïs E. 5. On Wilde’s relation to the igure of the actress, see Morgan. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990: 246–64. Powell, “Verdict,” although in my view Powell overstates Print. Wilde’s hostility to female performers. Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de- Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print. WORKS CITED Donohue, Joseph. “Distance, Death and Desire in Sa- lome.” Raby 143–60. Many of the newspaper articles cited below are located in the Harvard heatre Collection’s boxes of Sarah Bern Douglas, Lord Alfred, trans. Salome. By Oscar Wilde. hardt material (HT), the Victoria and Albert Theatre London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894. New Collection of “Personal Boxes” for Sarah Bernhardt (VA), York: Dover, 1967. Print. and the Clark Memorial Library collection of Wildeiana Dyer, Richard. Stars. 1979. London: BFI, 1986. Print. (CL). In these collections, materials exist as clippings “Entr’acte: Bernhardt and Advertising.” Sarah Bernhardt: oten shorn of page numbers and dates. I have used ab he Art of High Drama. Ockman and Silver 144–47. breviations to give the archival provenance of articles Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. 1841. lacking such identifying information. Trans. George Eliot. Amherst: Prometheus, 1989. Print. All about Sarah “Barnum” Bernhardt: Her Loveys, Her Fourcaud. “Le théâtre.” Rev. of Fédora, by Victorien Sar Doveys, Her Capers and Her Funniments. London: dou. Vaudeville, Paris. La vie moderne Jan. 1883: Williams, 1884. Print. 11–12. Print. Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde Culture. London: Routledge, 1999. Print. and the Victorian Public. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986. Baty, S. Paige. American Monroe: he Making of a Body Print. Politic. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995. Print. Gamson, Joshua. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contempo- Benjamin, Walter. “he Work of Art in the Age of Me rary America. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. Print. chanical Reproduction.” Illuminations: Essays and Garelick, Rhonda K. Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender, and Relections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. Performance in the Fin de Siècle. Princeton: Princeton New York: Schocken, 1968. 217–51. Print. UP, 1998. Print. 1020 Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity [ PMLA

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