Strindberg, (Johann) August

Strindberg, (Johann) August (1849–1912), Swedish dramatist who also wrote prolifically in the fields of fiction, criticism, and social commentary. After an unhappy childhood, his university career was cut short for financial reasons, and these early miseries set the tone both of his later life and of his writings. His first major play, Mäster Olof (1872), was a study of the humanist Olaus Petri, a prose work later rewritten in verse. In 1877 Strindberg married an actress; the first of his three disastrous experiences of marriage, it ended in divorce in 1891. Discouraged by the lack of success of his early dramas, he spent the greater part of the years 1883 to 1896 abroad, though he had to return to Sweden during this time to stand trial for blasphemy in his collection of stories Giftas (Married Life); he was acquitted. Misogyny and despair mark the plays of this period, notably Fadren (The Father, 1887), Fröken Julie (Miss Julie), and Fordringsägare (The Creditors), both 1888; and the one-act Den starkare (The Stronger, 1889). In them, as well as in the important Preface to Fröken Julie, Strindberg denounces the moral corruption of human nature, and concentrates on sin, crime, abnormality, and the pitiless battle between the sexes as he saw it. In 1895–7, following his divorce from his second wife, Strindberg suffered a severe mental break-down, his ‘Inferno crisis’; he became interested in alchemy and occultism and, abandoning his previous allegiance to the philosophy of Nietzsche, came under the influence of Swedenborg. The naturalism of his earliest dramatic works developed into a highly charged realism (he preferred the term ‘neo-naturalism’) which has been seen as an anticipation of Sartre. In this mode he explored his conception of spiritual reality in Advent (1898); in five plays completed in 1899— in the historical dramas Folkungsagan (The Saga of the Folkungs), Gustaf Vasa, Erik XIV, and Gustaf Adolf, and in Brott och brott (Crimes and Crimes); in Påsk (Easter, 1900); and supremely in Dodsdansen I–II (The Dance of Death, 1901). His work thereafter became progressively more experimental, symbolic, and dream-like, with Till Damaskus I–II (1898–1904) and (in 1901) Kronbruden (The Crown Bride, seen in New York as The Bridal Crown), Svanehvit (Swanwhite), and Ett drömspel (A Dream Play), all of them containing elements in which the major movements of 20th-century drama are rooted, notably Expressionism, Surrealism, and the Theatre of the Absurd. Also in 1901 Strindberg married his third wife, another actress; they were divorced in 1904.

Strindberg was always closely concerned with the practical presentation of his plays, and in 1907, with the director August Falcke, he established the Intima Teatern in Stockholm, writing his last group of plays—Spöksonaten (The Ghost Sonata), Oväder (The Storm), Brända tomten (The Burnt House), and Pelikanen (The Pelican)—for performance there. His last drama, Stora landsvägen (The Great Highway, 1909), contains many autobiographical elements.

Although many of Strindberg's plays have been translated and acted in English, only a few are regularly performed in English-speaking countries. The best known are probably The Father (first seen in New York in 1912 and in London in 1927) and Miss Julie (produced privately in London in 1927 by the Stage Society and publicly in 1935; not seen in New York until 1956). In America the Provincetown Players first performed The Ghost Sonata in 1924 (as The Spook Sonata, under which title it was seen in London in 1927) and A Dream Play in 1926 (London, 1933), and both productions had a great influence on the development of O'Neill. Among other productions were Advent (London, 1921); The Creditors (NY, 1922; London, 1952); Easter (NY, 1926; London, 1928); The Dance of Death (NY, 1923; London, 1928— superbly revived in 1967 by the National Theatre, with Laurence Olivier); The Road to Damascus (London, 1937; NY, as To Damascus, 1961); The Stronger (NY, 1937); There are Crimes and Crimes (London, 1946).