Oscar Wilde and Romain Coolus—Program for Raphaël and Salomé

The consummate French actress Sarah Bernhardt was slated to play the tragic lead in the premiere of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in London in 1892, but legal issues shuttered that production. It eventually appeared in its original French in Paris in 1896, while Wilde was in prison for gross indecency. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s program for a double bill of Salomé and Raphaël, by the French playwright Romain Coolus, includes cast lists as well as portraits of the two authors.