- Salomé enters.
- Salomé angry; she wants to leave. She's sick of Herod staring at her with his beady little eyes. She's freaked out, because he's her father, and she knows what that kind of stare means.
- The Syrian tries to talk to her, but she doesn't pay attention to him.
- Salomé is more interested n the freshness of the air. She's glad to get away from the Jews, who are arguing, and the drunken barbarians and the vain Greeks and the moody Egyptians and the coarse Romans.
- Oooh, she says to herself, how I hate those nasty Romans.
- The Syrian asks her if she wants to sit down.
- The Page tells him to stop bothering her…or else.
- Salomé's looking at the moon now. It looks like a little coin, she says, like a silver flower, cold and chaste and undefiled. The moon looks like a virgin.
- Jokanaan starts up again. This time he's talking about "the Lord."
- The son of man has come, he says, and the centaurs have hidden themselves and the nymphs have left the rivers and started hiding in the forest (74). Sounds like the Cappadocian could get some help finding his gods from Jokanaan.
- Salomé wants to know who's yelling.
- The second soldier tells her that it's the prophet yelling.
- Ah, she says, the prophet who scares the Tetrarch?
- The second soldier says he knows nothing about that. All he knows is that he's a prophet and he's named Jokanaan.
- The Syrian asks Salomé if she'd like them to bring out her litter. It sure is a nice in the garden, he says.
- "He [Jokanaan] says terrible things about my mother," Salomé asks the soldier," does he not?" (80).
- The soldier says he never understands what he says.
- Yes, Salomé says, he says terrible things about my mother.
- The Slave enters, bringing news from the Tetrarch: Herod wants Salomé back at the feast.
- The Syrian tells her she'd better go back…or else something bad might happen.
- Salomé asks Syrian if Jokanaan is an old man.
- The Syrian tells her she'd better go back in.
- Salomé asks him the same question.
- No, says the first soldier, he's actually really young.
- I don't know, says the second soldier, some say he's actually the prophet Elias.
- Who's Elias? asks Salomé
- An old prophet, says the second soldier.
- The slave's getting impatient now. He wants to know what he should tell Herod.
- Jokanaan interrupts again. He's saying something about a broken rod and a basilisk and some birds.
- Salomé wants to talk to Jokanaan.
- The first soldier tells him she can't. The first soldier says that there's no way she can. She insists. The Syrian asks her if she wouldn't rather go back to the banquet.
- Salomé tells the slave to bring out Jokanaan. The slave leaves.
- The soldiers tell her, again, that they aren't going to get Jokanaan.
- Salomé goes to the side of the cistern and looks down into it. She can't believe how black it is down there. She yells at the soldiers and tells them to bring out Jokanaan.
- The first soldier begs her to stop asking them, but that only makes Salomé angrier.
- Salomé sees the Syrian, and then gasps. The Page is certain that something bad is finally going to happen.
- Salomé addresses the Syrian—who happens to be named Narraboth—like he's a young child. You'll do what I say, she says, right? She tells him that she just wants to have a look at the prophet, because she's heard so much about him. The Tetrarch fears him, she says, but you're not afraid, right?
- The Syrian tells her that he, brave dude that he is, fears no man, but that Herod has forbidden any man to even raise the cover of the well.
- Salomé tells the Syrian that, if he does him this one little favor, she'll drop him a green flower when she passes him by the next day.
- The Syrian insists that he just can't do it.
- Salomé assures him that he can and will do it, and that he'll get a flower and a smile when he does.
- The Syrian tells a third soldier to let Jokanaan out.
- Salomé gasps with pleasure.
- The Page starts looking at the moon again. It looks like the hand of a dead woman, he says, who is seeking to cover herself with a shroud (116).
- The Syrian says she looks like a "little princess whose eyes, whose eyes are amber" (116).
- Jokanaan emerges from the cistern. Salomé slowly steps back.
- The prophet begins talking about "he whose cup of abominations is now full," and demands that he come forward.
- Salomé wants to know what he's talking about, but no one understands.
- Now Jokanaan calls out to she who "gave herself up into the lust of her eyes" (121). Salomé guesses that that he's talking about her mother. The Syrian tries to assure her that he's not, but she's pretty sure of it.
- Jokanaan continues to call for that woman, she who "gave herself unto the Captains of Assyria [… and] to the young men of the Egyptians" (125). He demands that she be roused from "her incestuousness, that she may hear the words of him who prepareth the way of the Lord, that she may repent her iniquities" (125).
- Salomé is amazed by how terrible he is.
- The Syrian begs her to leave, but she won't.
- She's mesmerized by Jokanaan's eyes, which she compares to black caverns and black lakes. She wonders if he'll speak again.
- The Syrian begs her to leave, but she won't. She's too busy admiring Jokanaan's "wasted" body. He's like a "thin ivory statue," she says, "a moonbeam […] a shaft of silver." She begs to look more closely at him.
- The Syrian is flipping out, now, and Jokanaan is getting angry. He doesn't want this strange woman looking at him. He tells the Syrian to get her out of his way.
- Salomé introduces herself as the daughter of Herodias. Jokanaan flips out and tells her to get away. "Thy mother hath filled the earth with the wine of her iniquities," he says, "and the cry of her sinning hath come up even to the ears of the Lord" (134).
- Salomé asks Jokanaan to keep talking. His voice is like music to her ears; the Syrian continues to flip out.
- Salomé begs Jokanaan to keep talking, to tell her what to do.
- Jokanaan tells her to get out of his sight, cover herself with a veil, scatter ashes on her head, and go out into the desert to find the Son of Man. Dang.
- Salomé asks him to tell her more about the Son of Man. Is he as beautiful as you are, she asks? Jokanaan tells her to leave him be. He can hear the beating of the wings of the angel of death.
- The Syrian begs Salomé to leave.
- Jokanaan addresses the angel of death, asking it why it has come.
- Salomé calls out Jokanaan's name. She has something important to tell him. She wants his body, his body that is "white like the lilies of the field." "There is nothing in the world so white as thy body," she tells him. "Suffer me to touch thy body" (145).
- Jokanaan tells her to get away from him. "By woman," he says, "evil came into the world." He won't listen to her, he says, because he only listens to God.
- Now Salomé tells Jokanaan that his body is "hideous […] like the body of a leper" and like a half dozen other terribly ugly things. It's his hair, his rich black hair, that she loves. "The silence that dwells in the forest is not so black," she says. "There is nothing in the world so black as thy hair...Suffer me to touch thy hair" (147).
- Jokanaan tells her to get back.
- Salomé changes her tune again. Now his hair is the hideous thing…it's his mouth that she wants. It is "like the bow of the King of the Persians, that is painted with vermilion, and is tipped with coral." "There is nothing in the world so red as thy mouth," she says. "Suffer me to kiss thy mouth" (149).
- No way, cries Jokanaan.
- Salomé insists that she will kiss his mouth.
- The Syrian tries to stop Salomé. He tells her to stop looking at him, to stop speaking to him. "I cannot," he says, "endure it" (152).
- Salomé insists that she will kiss the mouth of Jokanaan.
- The Syrian kills himself.
- Whoa.