Authors: August Strindberg

At secondary school he was stimulated by the study of science, and to the end of his life he studied geology, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. He attended Uppsala University but was unhappy there; he was poor, lonely, and confused. Leaving the university without taking a degree, he engaged in a bewildering series of activities, becoming at various times a teacher, a tutor, an actor, a journalist, a political radical, a landscape painter, a medical student, a playwright, a librarian, a Sinologist, a poet, a chemist, a novelist, and an autobiographer.

Most of all, however, he was a dramatist who gradually attained fame all over Europe, though at home his genuine distinction proved difficult for his compatriots to discern through the clouds of scandal surrounding his melodramatically unsuccessful marriages, the shocking notoriety resulting from his frankly autobiographical books, subjective novels, and short stories, and his bizarre conduct during periods of near-insanity and frightening religious mania. Although few of the many studies of Strindberg have succeeded in making him a completely understandable human being, the “mad genius” strikes scholars of literature and drama increasingly as a genius, less as a madman. Strindberg spent much of his adult life abroad, but five years preceding his death he ended his continental exile and again lived in Stockholm, where he was associated with an intimate theater for the presentation of his plays and where he became a respected public figure. Nevertheless, he was still frustrated and tormented in his search for certainty, and his literary record of volcanic adventures of mind and spirit made him a violent and controversial figure to the end.

Critics consider Strindberg one of the most important and influential playwrights of the twentieth century. George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill are two of many dramatists who greatly admired his work. Strindberg wrote naturalistic plays such as The Father, Miss Julie, and The Stronger in the late 1880’s but later penned expressionistic dramas such as A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The sweep of Strindberg’s dramatic output is breathtaking: historical verse plays, fairy plays, romances, dozens of realistic and naturalistic plays, moralities, religious dramas, plays of complete cynicism and pessimism, and expressionistic plays. Not only was he far more versatile than any other modern playwright, but he also attained distinction in every genre he attempted. The reader is sharply conscious of the dynamic intellect on every page of Strindberg.

Strindberg’s historical and religious dramas and his social-reform or crusading plays generally hold little interest for British and American critics, who believe that Strindberg reached his full stature in his revolutionary naturalistic and expressionistic plays. The former reflect, if not a pathological misogyny, at least the most ferocious antifeminism ever to appear in drama. The Father, Comrades, The Dance of Death, and Creditors have as their central theme the duel of the sexes, in each of which the woman is more unscrupulous, selfish, and conscienceless than the man. The Father is one of the most terrifying tragedies ever written, partly because Strindberg poured into it experience from his own shattered marriage, partly because there is no alleviation of hope, and partly because of the superb construction and swift tempo that sweep the playgoer or reader along in breathless horror to the tragic and cynical final curtain. This work includes echoes of Greek tragedy (the Omphale motif) and of William Shakespeare’s works (Iago cleverly planting the seeds of doubt in Othello), but The Father is modern in its sharp study of a crumbling mind. Comrades is not a tragedy but is no less an intense expression of Strindberg’s misogyny, his contempt for Henrik Ibsen’s and Nora Helmer’s ideal of marriage as a companionship of equals. To Strindberg, woman has neither the integrity nor the intelligence to succeed as a comrade or partner. The Dance of Death exploits the same theme: that the underside of love is hate and that only tragedy can result from their inseparableness.

Miss Julie is perhaps Strindberg’s most popular play in the United States; the play involves an aristocratic young woman who sleeps with Jean, an impudent, attractive servant and who subsequently commits suicide. Miss Julie’s problems derive from various sources, such as her mother’s immorality, her father’s failure to bring her up properly, and the rigid class system, but her dilemma arises predominantly from her own want of character. She is far wealthier than Jean, and her social class results in greater expectations for her and greater shame when Jean, the thirty-year-old valet, deflowers her. Julie mistakenly thinks that she loves Jean; her feelings prove to be an infatuation, and the significant difference between their social classes renders their relationship impossible. Perhaps the impossibility of their relationship makes Jean more attractive to Julie. Jean’s power thus derives, ironically, from his lower social class; the twenty-five-year-old heroine has much more to lose than he. Gender roles also prove a factor in Strindberg’s drama because of the sexual double standard, which increases Jean’s reputation while destroying that of Julie. Strindberg effectively juxtaposes Julie’s tragedy with the jocular festivities of Midsummer Eve.

Strindberg stands as the father of expressionistic drama, which was carried to its greatest success in Germany after World War I and then declined as a dramatic form in the 1930’s. Echoes of expressionism still appear in modern plays, where its techniques have been used to some extent by O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Jean Anouilh, J. B. Priestley, and others. To Damascus is the first real expressionistic drama. In it Strindberg abandoned traditional dramatic techniques in order to dramatize his own soul’s inferno in his search for religious certainty. His other two great expressionistic dramas are A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata. This latter play O’Neill much admired, and its influence may be seen in a number of his plays.