Plays Of August Strindberg

The Father; Miss Julie; The Stronger; Easter; A Dream Play; The Ghost Sonata.

August Strindberg is one of the most enduring of nineteenth-century dramatists, and is also an internationally recognised novelist, autobiographer, and painter. This Companion presents contributions by leading international scholars on different aspects of Strindberg's highly colourful life and work. The essays focus primarily on his most celebrated plays; these include the Naturalist Dramas, The Father and Miss Julie; the experimental dramas with which he created a true modernist theatre – To Damascus and A Dream Play; and the Chamber Plays of 1908 which, like so much of his work, exerted a powerful influence on much later twentieth-century drama. His plays are contextualised for what they contribute both to the history of drama and developments in theatre practice, and other essays clarify the enormous importance to these dramas of his other work, most notably the autobiographical novel Inferno, and his lifelong interest in science, the occult, sexual politics, and the visual arts.

Strindberg's most important and most frequently performed plays--The Father, Miss Julie, A Dream Play, The Dance of Death, and The Ghost Sonata--are gathered together here in translations praised for their fluency and their elegance.

August Strindberg (1849-1912) has been referred to as "the father of modern literature" in Sweden, and has earned the distinction of one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. As an author unafraid of exploring new possibilities in dramatic fiction, Strindberg is noted for his psychological realism, blatant misogyny, symbolism, and his utterly fluid and subjective sequences of events. His works bore intense scrutiny in their time, but have since been recognized for the prodigious influence they exhibited not only in the Naturalist and Expressionist genres, but on modern theatre as a whole. His catalogue includes over sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction. This collection includes: "Comrades", "Facing Death", "Pariah", or "The Outcast, Easter", "The Father", "Miss Julie", "The Outlaw", "The Stronger", "The Dance of Death", "A Dream Play", and "The Ghost Sonata".

August Strindberg is one of the founders of the modern theater. George Bernard Shaw considered him "the only genuinely Shakespearian modern dramatist," Sean O'Casey called him "the greatest of them all." And to Eugene O'Neill he was "the greatest interpreter in the theater of the characteristic spiritual conflicts of our lives today." Twelve Major Plays includes the most famous and most characteristic Strindberg plays. This selection is particularly interesting in its depiction of the great range of Strindberg's moods and styles, from naturalism to expressionism, from ironic comedy to bitter tragedy. It displays his great gift for symbolic, mystical verse as well as his command of dramatic prose. In issues of sex and gender, Strindberg anticipated the modern temperament in society and drama alike. These translations gave American readers their first opportunity to know the true genius of Strindberg. Most previous versions in English had been based on existing German translations. Elizabeth Sprigge's unique achievement was to render the original Swedish texts into English that is at once fluent and accurate and that captures the full vigor and impact of the original plays. August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a Swedish writer and playwright and is credited and being one of the founders of modern theatre. His writings combined elements of psychology and naturalism. Some of his minor writings, not included in this book, include The Outlaw, Master Olaf, Pariah, The Comrades, and Among French Peasants. Elizabeth Sprigge was educated in London and Ontario and was the author of a number of novels, biographies and children's books. She was co-founder of the famous avant-garde Watergate Theatre in London and lectured on literature and theatre in many parts of the world.

One of the greatest classics of modern theater concerns a willful young aristocrat's seduction of her father's valet during a Midsummer's Eve celebration. Complete with Strindberg's highly-regarded critical preface.