Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

Okay, let's say your father is a king, and he wants you to dance for him. In return, he promises to give you anything—even half his kingdom! Now, what would you ask for? Whatever it is you would want, we're guessing it wouldn't be somebody's head on a platter.

Salomé, however, would like nothing more. She's quirky like that. We get a good idea of what Herod's like, too, when we consider that he looks lustfully at his stepdaughter (ewwww) and who happens to have killed his own brother in order to marry his brother's wife.

Clothing

Well, let's see: Herodias wears a black mitre sewed with pearls and powders her hair with blue dust; Jokanaan, on the other hand, was known to clothe himself in "camel's hair" and a big leather belt. One of these people is a queen and the other is an imprisoned prophet. Can you guess which is which?

Food

In Salomé, it's really about what characters drink. Toward the beginning of the play, one of the soldiers talks at length about the different wines which Herod has: wine from Samothrace "purple like the cloak of Caesar," wine from Cyprus "yellow as gold," and wine from Sicily "red as blood." If that's not a status symbol—back in those days you couldn't just walk down to your local liquor store—we don't know what is. 

Physical Appearances

Salomé is overflowing with physical imagery. Salomé's descriptions of Jokanaan alone are dense with detail, with pomegranate-reds and sepulchral whites. That being said, two of the simplest and most powerful physical descriptions in Salomé are related to the look of lust. Bow-chicka-bow-bow.

Salomé tells us that Herod looks at her "with his mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids," and Jokanaan describes Salomé as having golden eyes, under gilded eyelids (68; 132). These few words manage to tell us a lot about Herod and Salomé: they both have one thing on their minds.

Speech and Dialogue

It's not just his tendency to shout cryptic statements that sets Jokanaan apart, it's the way he shouts them. He speaks in a sort of highfalutin' Biblical dialect.

When he sees Salomé giving him the once over, he doesn't say "Why's that chick looking at me funny?" or even "Why is that woman looking at me in such a strange way?" No, he says, "Wherefore doth she look at me with golden eyes, under her gilded eyelids?" (132). Both Salomé and the young Syrian have a tendency to indulge in poetic language—they talk about doves and flowers—but neither has as distinctive a voice as Jokanaan.

Thoughts and Opinions

Salomé actually features a group of characters that are identified by nothing more than their thoughts and opinions. There are a number of players referred to simply as "A Jew," "Another Jew," "A Third Jew," and so on.

That said, though they are all Jews, they have very different opinions regarding the nature of God. One thinks it is impossible for a man to see God. Another thinks God has simply been hiding since the time of Elias. A third thinks God is always present in all times and all places. Without their opinions, these characters would not only be unnecessary, they wouldn't really exist at all.