August Strindberg: Five Major Plays

The five plays in this volume represent Strindberg (1849-1912) at the height of his dramatic powers. In his great works Strindberg is a playwright second to none, and as such he shares the world stage with his major contemporaries: Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, and Shaw. The Father (1887) is one of the great modern tragedies and has had enormous impact on some of the leading dramatists of the 20th century.

In The Father a husband and wife struggle tragically for possession of their only child. Miss Julie (1888) is one of the most performed plays of the modern repertory, a coruscating battle of the sexes between a young noble woman and her father's young valet for whom she has developed a neurotic passion.

The Stronger (1888-89) is a naturalistic blockbuster - a three-character one-act in which the central character never appears, and one of the two female rivals for his love says nothing. Great actresses have flocked to this challenge, both silent and verbal. The final two plays, A Dream Play (1901) and The Ghost Sonata (1907), find Strindberg in an Expressionist mode, where time, place, characters and situation merge, split, melt and reach heights of theatricalism unmatched since. Mueller's brilliant new translations renew the currency of these works in the canon of modern theatrical masterpieces.