This short but extremely intense play is a dramatization of the Beheading of John the Baptist, more or less as told in the
Bible. As this play opens, we see a young Syrian prince (Narraboth), whom Herod has made captain of the guard, and who is obviously in love with Salome, the daughter of Herodias and Princess of Palestine. Salome leaves the banquet, where her stepfather (Herod) has been looking at her in the wrong way, and while walking in the garden, hears the voice of Iokanaan (as John the Baptist is denominated in this play) as he is prophesying while he is imprisoned in a deep cistern. She wishes to see him and inveigles the amorous young guard captain into bringing the
prophet out where she can see him. She tells Iokanaan that she is amorous of his body and
describes it in terms of untold beauty. He refuses her, telling her to repent and go into the desert to find the Son of Man. Then he says that he hears the wings of the Angel of Death beating. Salome, rejected, describes Iokanaan in terms of unspeakable ugliness. The young Syrian officer begs her to desist from seeking to kiss the prophet. She will not, and the young man commits suicide, fallling between Salome and Iokannon. It does no good. Then Herod, Herodias (Salome''s mother) and the dining party come out to the garden, and Herod insists that Salome dance for him. She does, having been promised anything she asks for, even to half of his kingdom. Salome demands Iokannon''s head in a silver charger (a vessel). Herod tempts her with priceless things of untold beauty and power, begging her not to ask for THAT, but she is adamant. When the prophet''s head is brought to her, she talks to it as though it were really he, and alive. She kisses its lips and says he can''t stop her now. Herod sees and hears this, is totally repulsed, and orders his soldiers to kill her as an odious thing -- they do, heaping their shields upon her until she dies, just as the prophet Iokanaan had foretold.