Skidmore College
Creative Matter
Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS)
Student Scholarship by Department
11-1-1997
Modern Drama and Culture: A Dramaturgy of
August Strindberg's A Dream Play
Stephen Aiello
Skidmore College
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Aiello, Stephen, "Modern Drama and Culture: A Dramaturgy of August Strindberg's A Dream Play" (1997). Master of Arts in Liberal
Studies (MALS). Paper 8.
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M od ern Dram a and Culture :
A D ramaturgy of August Stri ndberg 's A Dream Play
by
Step h en A i e l lo
Final Project S u bm itted i n Part i al Fu lfil l m ent of the R eq u i rem ents for the Deg ree of
M aster of Arts i n Li beral Studies
S k i d m ore Co l l eg e
August 1 997
Advi sors : Victor L. Cah n, Daniel Bal m uth
Aiello 1
Table of Co ntents
I.
A N ew Con sciousness Em erges
11.
The R evolt of the N ew Consciousn ess
Il l . Nyanatu ral i sm in Strind berg 's A Dream Play
IV.
Concl u sion : Strind berg as The Poet
V. A Dream Play
in Perform ance : Prod uction Notes
Aiel lo 2
Photography Credits
Figure # 1 : M eyer, M ichael . Strindberg: A Biography. New York, N Y: R andom
House, Inc. , ! 985.
Figures #2 & 3 : Tornqvist, Eg i l . "Stag i ng A Dream Play." Strindberg's Dramaturgy.
Goran Stockenstro m , ed. M i n n eapolis, M N : The U n i versity of M i n n esota
Press, 1 988.
Fig ure #4: Styan , J . L. . Modern Drama in Theory and Practice, volume 3. N ew
York, N Y : P ress Syndicate of the U n iversity of Cam bridge, 1 993.
Figu res #5 t h roug h#1 2 : Tornqvist, Eg i l . "Staging A Dream Play." Strindberg's
Dramaturgy.
Goran Stockenstro m , ed . M i n n eapolis, M N : The U n iversity of
M i n n esota P ress, 1 988.
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Abstract
The prim ary o bjective of this paper is to show a con nection between a
revolution i n thought, a " n ew consciousness , " of young i ntel l ectuals at the turn of the
n i n eteenth century and the ideas of their forefath ers that preceded them. The p h rase,
"new con sciou sness , " to which this paper frequently refers, is som ewhat of a m isnomer
in that the d evelopm ent of these revo l utionary ideas was i ntim ately rel ated to the
philosoph ical , scientific, political and aesthetic trad ition s from which the g eneration of
1 900 sou g ht to separate them selves. I n their eag erness to find an identity, what those
of that era chose to define as " n ew" was actually the result of a creative synthesis
formed fro m the d i al ectic of what they as a generation i n h erited and what they
i m agined . I n dramatic l iterature, no better exam ple of such a synthesis exists than
Aug ust Stri ndberg 's, A Dream Play, which so i n novatively and powerf u l l y merges
naturalism , the l iterary form of the material and scientific con sciousness of the
n i n eteenth century and expressioni sm , the form of the subjective and i rrational mod ern
m i nd of the twentieth century.
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Indra's Voice. Where art thou, Daughter?
Daughter. Here, Father, here!
Indra's Voice. Thou hast strayed, my child.
Take heed, thou sinkest.
How cam'st thou here?
Daughter. Borne on a cloud, I followed the lightening's
blazing trail from the ethereal heights.
But the cloud sank, and is still falling.
Tell me, great Father Indra, to what region
am I come? The air's so dense, so hard to breathe. . .
( Prologue to August
Stri n d berg 's A Dream Play (197, 198). 1
I . A New Consciousn ess Em erg es
T h e constriction in h er breath ing that I nd ra's daughter experiences from the
atmosphere of earth while o n her quest to learn the true n ature of "th e Creator's
c h i ldren" (198) in August Strind berg's A Dream Play echoes sim i l ar fee l i ng s of
strang u l ation that Stri nd berg and the other i ntel l ectuals of the pre-World War I
generation expressed i n reg ards to what they con sidered as a m iasma of stagn ant and
desiccated n i n eteenth century thought. Historian Robert Woh l describes the attitude of
' All textual references are to the following edition: Strindberg, August. A Dream Play. translated by
Elizabeth Sprigge. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1955.
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these yo u n g i ntel lectuals toward s the world they i n herited from their forefathers as one
of com plaint for h aving " the m i sfortu n e to be born i nto a dyi ng world" ( 1 9). What
em erg ed from their despair was the floweri ng of a n ew con sciousness, rooted i n
abstract thought. This n ew con sciousn ess was one i n which d ream s, such a s t h e o n e
descri bed b y Stri ndberg in A Dream Play, were a more val id mode o f inqu iry than all
the sci entific certainties of the n i neteenth century. As one h i storian expresses the
transformation,"the rational i st and 'm echani stic' expl anation of the world that h ad
dominated European thought from the sixteenth century onward now g ave way to an
'organic' explanation . . . " (Stern hell 23). However, t h i s n ew consciousness did not
si m ply d escend from heaven to earth, as Ind ra's d aug hter does i n the Pro logue to A
Dream Play,
instead its genesis was cau sed by t h e m aterial conditions present i n the
n i n eteenth century. As Walter Benjam i n more specifically explains i n The Work o f Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
, "d uring long periods of h i story, the mode of
human sense perception ch anges with h u m an ity's entire mode of existence. The
manner i n which it is accompl i sh ed is d eterm i n ed not o n l y by nature but by historical
circumstances as well"(222).
These historical circu mstances that Benjam i n refers to were d etermined by the
hegemony of bou rg eois capital ism that man ifests itself in the industrialization and
u rbanization of Euro pe and i m periali sm throughout the world in the n i n eteenth
century. The id eology of the bo u rgeois econom ic revo lution was so "internal ized" by
most m iddle-class Europeans that its "pervasive set of assu m ptions," accordi ng to
historian R obert Paxton , were accepted by most m iddle-class Europeans as "self­
evident" (30). The first of these assu m ptions that was considered as "th e n atural order
of thin gs" was the rig ht to i nd ividual economic freedom, a concept u pon w h ich the
bourgeois econom ics of the eighteenth and n in eteenth centuries was based . This
concept , form al ly labeled "li beral ism , '' expressed a bel ief that prog ress was most
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efficacious when accom plished through the actions of ind ividuals rather than through
authoritarian form s of governm ent control . T h e economic determ inism of l i beral
"laissez-faire" capital i sm placed its faith in the h ands of those who possessed an
"enl ightened self-interest" ( Paxton 32) to act in accordance with the needs of society
as well as to their own.
However, l i beral po l itici ans sought to ach i eve another goal in add ition to their
stated obj ective of ind ivid ual freedo m , a freedom that clearly was more narrowly
defined as econom ic than anyth ing else. Their desire was to secure a stabl e and
orderly society that would better foster econo m ic growth . S uch a socially tractable
world wou ld be attainable not only t h rough offering g reater econom ic opportunity, in a
sense, a larger piece of the bourg eois economic pie to more of the m iddle-class; but
also from more oppo rtunities fo r social advancem ent through social pol ic ies, such as
universal ed ucation wh ich wou ld d iffuse any class antagonism s and potential social
d iso rder.
A second ideolog ical assu m ption that dom inated the establ ish ed
consciousness in the nineteenth centu ry and contributed to this sense of an ordered
and stable world was the concept of "reason. " Perceived as a "fixed , innate h u m an
qual ity" ( Paxton 3 1 ) , reason, expressed in more modern term s as positivism ,
perm eated intellectu al thought to the point that all other p h i loso p h i es, includ ing form al
rel ig ion, that were considered m etaphysical or su perstitious were cal led i nto q u estion.
Reason pro pounded a scientific view of
the world that was based in the ind ivid ual perception of m aterial phenom ena ; united
with l i berali sm it reinforced the val ue of util itariani sm and structu red thinking .
Reactions to bourgeois l i beralism at fi rst cam e from the pol itical l eft and the right in the
form of m ass pol itics. The most d i rect attack was from the social i st movem ent which
championed a working class consciousness and a workers' united revolt against the
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selfish individual i sm of l i beralism and capital ism . S i m il arly, o pposition to the
hegemony of the m iddle-class cam e from con servative parties and trad itional rel igious
organizations that cam e "out of the chateaux and pu l pits and i nto the streets" ( Paxton
34) , joi n i ng peasants, the lower m i dd l e-class, aristocrats, and the rel igious faithful i nto
a m ass movem ent. So intense was the revolt that conservative g rou ps, such as the
Action francaise
, voiced reactionary feeli ngs against bou rg eo i s capital i sm w h i l e
m ixi ng proto-fascist nationalist ic a n d anti-Sem itic views with cal l s for d i rect actio n .
From a d i al ectic created b y the o pposition o f l i beral , reason ed ord er a n d mass
movement pol itical ideologies, a rebel lion of a d ifferent sort d awned : the revolt of the
new con sciousness. Suffering from what they perceived as spi ritual , i ntel lectual , and
aesthetic al ienation , turn of the centu ry scientists, artists, and phi losophers turned
i nward i nto the well-spri ng of their own creative and i ntu itive m i nds w h i l e escapi ng the
stultifying order of reason and what they perceived as corru pted M an ichean pol itical
ideologies of the l eft and right. This new consciousn ess, d efined by what it sought i n
t h e ethereal areas o f t h e m i n d , was t h e trenchant respon se o f the g en eration o f 1 900
to what it considered was choking them in the i ntel lectual atmosphere of the
n i n eteenth century.
H . Stuart H u g h es i n Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of
European Social Thought 1890-1930
details the terms of this phi losophical
generation g ap. Fi rst and foremost, these youn g i ntellectuals sought to d i stance
themselves from what they con sidered to be the conservative, stai d , and i ntellectually
suffocating m iddle-class society. As Hughes explains, the attraction to the philosophy
of Fredrich N i etzsche was a form of escape for this generation "away from the
smugness, the p h i l istinism of the upper m iddle-class . . . that exuded a sense of
heaviness, of material excess, of confinem ent" (40) . Seco ndly, the val i dity of either of
the materially based pol itical ideo logies, capitalist or soc ialist, was rejected. Accord i n g
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to Hug hes, for t h i s generation, "the task was to penetrate beh ind the fictions of pol itical
action . . . "
to reveal who were "the actual wield ers of power and the political
el ite" (65) . "One of the great su rvivors of the period , " whom Hughes does not further
identify, clai m s that the consensus among this cad re of young i ntel l ectuals was that
" politically things were going down , [wh i le] i ntel l ectu ally they were g o i ng u p
agai n" (43 ) . Lastly, t h e great faith their forefathers h ad i n t h e tradition o f reaso n 's "u ltra­
i ntell ectual doctri nes" becam e a defiant philosophy of "rad i cal anti-inte l l ectualism" for
their i n h eritors. Their phi losophi cal attack, explai n s H u ghes, was d i rected at
" positivism . . . a general term [that] was i nterchangeably with 'm aterial ism ' ,
'mechanism , ' a n d 'natu ral ism"' (37) w h i c h tended "to d i scuss h u m an behavior i n term s
of analogi es d rawn from natural science" (36) .
R obert Woh l describes the reactionary identity that these you n g i ntellectuals
adopted in The Generation of 1914 as the e m bodim ent of "a cu lture of anti­
necessity" ( 1 6) . As m uch as the generation of 1 900 wanted to l eave the positivist
trad itio n beh i n d , there was sti l l a " painful contrad iction , " as Woh l d escribes it, that this
generation had to acknowledge that although "man was free to create h i s own l ife, as
the novelist creates fiction . . . [he] was yet slave to the material conditions of h i s
existence" ( 1 7) . R aymond Will iams speaks t o t h i s sam e issue for playwrig hts o f the
period, for exam ple, the focus of this paper, August Strindberg , who, l i k e all
i ntel lectuals of the period , could sense a "dramatic tension . . . between what men felt
them selves capabl e of becom ing and a thwart i n g , d irectly present enviro n ment" (335 ) .
However, a s i l lusory the idea o f escapi n g i nto a world o f dreams m ay h ave been for
those of the era that was evident in "th e i r synthesis of neo-ideal ism and biological
determ i n ism , their el itism , their pessi m ism about the future of Western cultu re, [and]
their critiq ues of democracy and socialism" (Wo h l 1 8) , there was a unanim ity of
sentiment and arg u m ent that it was necessary.
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The answer to prosaic positivism , as many of th ese i ntel l ectuals perceived it, lay
i n a more poetic " reorientation of thoug ht" that replaced the "cult of m aterial
progress" ( H u g h es 4 1 ) with a "cult of i n stinct and sentim ent [and] an affirm ation of the
supremacy of the forces of l ife and the affections"(Stern hell 23) . The search for order
was replaced by the freedom of randomness as the accepted mode of thought. Yet as
m uch as there was movement forward i nto a " n ew sense for the frag m entary and
problematic character of modern l ife" ( H ug h es 43), there was an attraction to the past i n
a longi n g for rom antic values and the vitality of the preindustrial "organic" society.
These " n ew perceptions" that Walter Benjam i n d i scusses (cited earl i er in this paper)
were realized "sin ce it had apparently proved i m possible to arrive at any sure
knowledge of h u m an behavior . . .
[and], " if one m u st rely o n flashes of subjective
i ntuition or on t h e creation of conven i ent fictions, then the m i n d h ad i n d eed been freed
. . . to specu late, to i m ag i ne, to create" ( H ug hes 66) .
Benjam i n , however, contri butes another perspective as to the cause of the new
consciousn ess as exemplified i n the d evelopment of new tech nologies i n the arts. One
of the most notable successes of n i n eteenth century l i beralism was the d i scovery of
advanced technolog ies that had a sign ificant effect on the n ature of art for both artists
and its audiences. For Benjam i n , art i n the "age of m echan ical reprod uction . . .
represents som eth i ng new" ( 2 1 8) . The abil ity of technology to reproduce copies of art
i n mass q u antities h ad the effect of separating artist and art from long held cu ltural
trad itions. " By making many reproductions, " explains Benjam i n , "it substitutes a
plural ity of copies for a u n iq u e existence" (221 ) . This loss of " u niquen ess" was further
exacerbated by reproductions of art being brought home to be appreciated by any
" beholder or l i stener in his own particu lar situation" (221 ). What the m echan ical
reproduction of art ach ieved , accord ing to Benjam i n , was a m ass aud i ence for art and
a con n ection of art to everyday l ife ; what was lost, however, was its "aura" (226) . The
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aura of art, Benjam i n explains, that orig i n ated with art's i nvolvement i n the rel i g ious
rituals of the M iddle ages(224) was m aintain ed in a more secular sen se in the
n i neteenth centu ry through concepts such as "creativity and genius, eternal val ue and
mystery" ( 2 1 8 ) . The reaction to the "commod ification" of art in the age of m echan ical
reprod uction , however, was to separate art if at all possi ble from its ever-increasing
social and pol itical popularizatio n . Thus, as Benjam i n points out, m ovem ents such as
/'art pour /'art
sought as a goal to d ivorce art, as m uch as possible, from the everyday
world. Thus, the n ecessity for artists, as wel l as for others from diverse epistemologies,
was to turn inward to subjectivity, to feelings and i n stincts, to the u nconscious, and as
August Strind berg d i d , to d ream s.
Thus, the i n itial n eorom antic ( H ughes 35) sti rrings of the revolt of the n ew
consciousn ess agai n st a general sense of the loss of "aura" were fi rst visible i n a " new
aesthetic i n which personal sensi b i l ities replaced the obj ective aesthetic of
representing external n ature" ( Paxton 41 ) . As reason and order g ave way to subjective
i nterpretation, "progress insofar as it existed , o n ly too k place i n i nd ivid ual's
m inds" (Woh l 1 6) . Such a turn to the subjective was apparent even i n the n eed fo r
redefinition of ti me "to free experience from the d eterm i n ism of sequence" ( Wo h l 1 6) .
Accord ing to H . Stuart H u ghes, this new aesthetic man ifested itself i n m ultifarious
form s: i n the "u nconscious strivi ngs" (34) of Fredrich Nietzsche, as well as i n Henri
Bergso n 's m etaphysical I mag ical phi loso ph ical i nq u i ries i nto the relation sh i p
between time and h i story ( 34) . Bergson also piqued t h e i nterest o f t h e tu rn o f the
century generation "in the role of the "u nconscious" i n his fi rst book Essay on the
Immediate Data of Consciousness
i n which h e postulated that "the depths of
consciousness . . . fol lowed a log ic of its own" ( 63) Moreover, H u g h es explains that
Bergson " h ad com e to the concl usion that the world of dream s m i g ht offer a clue to thi s
secret a n d u nexplai ned real m " (63) .
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It was the work of Sigmund Freud that most popularized "a theory of the
uncon scious to which the l ife of d ream s offered the key" ( Hug h es 64) . T h e deg ree to
which bourgeois soci ety viewed Freud's theories as threaten ing social order can o n ly
be seen i n the attack and isolation Freud received from the sci entific com m u n ity d uring
his l ifet i m e . R ather than consi dering reason as g u i d i ng d eterm i n ism of h u m an
behavior, Freud revealed " how depend ent ratio n al con scious tho u g ht i s o n the
u nconscious mental l ife" ( Paxton 40) . S i m i l ar to Berg so n , Freud asserted that through
psychoan alysis "the i m po rtance of d ream s as a sou rce of what g u ides o u r
behavior" ( Paxton 4 0 ) could b e real ized . From the i nflu e nce o f Bergson , Freud and
others, the " psycholog ical process h ad replaced the extern al as the most pressing
topic for i nvestigation" (Wo h l 66).
Positivism faced an even greater challenge as the scientific com m u n ity took up
the cal l of the n ew consciousn ess. As in psychology and the social sci ences, the
irrational nature of pheno mena rather than the rational drew the attention of those in
the sciences. Even in terms of m ethodology, the m i nd's i rrational and u nconscious
respo n ses were felt to be val id modes of i n q u i ry. Paxton explai n s that "the physicist's
i ntuition and som et h i ng aki n to aesthetic flair becam e essential to the eleg ant
mathematical languag e with wh ich the u n iverse was i nterpreted , a l anguag e
i ncom patible with the k i n d o f m aterial certai nty science had o nce seem ed t o
em body" (37) . T h u s, if positivism used data t o reveal a rationalistic order i n the
u n iverse, scientists of the turn of the century sought irrational ity: N iels Boh r discovered
the " rand o m n ess" of su b-ato m i c particles, w h i l e Werner H eisen berg " proposed the
theory that atom ic structures were 'indeterm inate"' ( Paxton 36) . Across the i ntellectual
spectru m , t h i n kers becam e "obsessed . . . [and] i ntoxicated with the non-log ical ,
uncivil ized , and i n explicab le" ( H ug hes 35) .
T h e turn to i rrational ity, the uncon scious, and subjectivity as sources of
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i nspi ration had even far more effect on the art and artists of the turn of the centu ry who
staged an open revolt agai n st the trad itions of the past . The revolutionary goals of
artists of the period were to break art's long standing representation of the external
world , to abandon a d ependence on acq u i red tech nique ( i n schools often spon sored
and approved by the state), and to find artistic inspiration i n "child ish spontaneity . . .
[and] prim itivi sm" or anything "outsid e the real ms of reason and learn i ng " ( Paxto n 38) .
Artists d evoted t o abstraction and the expression o f emotions, such a s Wassily
Kand i nsky, sought "to create an art of pure i nward n ess without any reference to
n atu re" ; other artistic rebels such as the Fauves ("wild beasts") in Paris d esired to
"sm ash the slickness of over-refined art , " while the Cubists d i storted n ature through the
use of a variety of perspectives ( Paxton 37, 38). R evol utionary i rrationalism, in its
break with exist i ng thought and defiance of the soci al institutions, espec i ally w ith
col leges and un iversities that m ai ntai n ed the positivist I rationalist tradition, was not
without n eg ative i m pact as well . As Zeev Stern hell posits in Neither Left nor Right.'
Fascist Ideology in France,
the lack of restraint of the revolt of the n ew consciousness
i n som e areas of thoug ht led to o m i nous concl usions. Stern h e l l differentiates between
what he considers the necrom antic i rrationalism "that affected o n ly the world of arts
and l etters" and i rrational i sm i n the soci al sciences that contributed an ideology that
supported the rise of fascism i n Europe (24).
This i s not to say that literary n ecromantic i rrationalism d id not h ave a political
im pact on the era. As M arxi st l iterary critic, Terry Eag l eton arg ues in Literary Theory,
literature i n the eig hteenth and n i neteenth centu ries always possessed an ideology
that served eith er as a force to establ i sh and maintai n the pol itical status quo, or to
provide a pol itical altern ative in a form of creative i m ag i n ation to transcend it. Eag leton
expl ains that l iterature developed i nto an ersatz rel igion in the m id-Victorian era due to
the anti-metaphysical nature of the prevai l i ng rational i sm . Wh at was recog n ized
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among the bourg eois el ite was that l iterature possessed m any of the same qual ities of
social contro l that formal relig ion did in its appeal to the affective n ature of
con sciousness : " Li k e al l successful ideolog ies, l iterature, [ l i ke reli g io n] works less by
expl icit concepts or form ulated doctri nes than by i m age, sym bol , h abit, ritual , and
mythology." Moreover, Eag l eton states that the protean nature of l iterature, from highly
i ntellectual and com plex works to simple sentimental sto ries, worked in a si m i l ar
fash ion to religion i n its abil ity to u n ite people from all classes as readers. Thus,
l iterature as a form of rel igion acted as a pall i ative for soci al tensions and un rest, by
" providing the social cement, the affective val ues and basic m ytholog i es by which a
socially turbulent class society can be welded together" (20, 2 1 ) .
S i m i l arly, for Eag l eto n , literature i n its evocation of "emotion and experience" ,
was able to serve the bou rg eois society i n a more "secular" and utilitarian fash ion as
"the p i l l of m iddle class ideo logy was to be sweetened by the sugar of l iterature" ( 22) .
The goal of l iterature, as M atthew Arnold explai n ed it, i n terms that Eag l eton praises
for their lack of hypocrisy is "to cu ltivate the m iddle class to u nd erpi n their political and
eco no m ic power with a suitably rich and subtle ideo logy" ( 22 ) . Essential t o this
ideology, accord i n g to Eagleto n , was a sense of the "wholeness" of society; a feeling
of com ity was attain ed through l iterature that " h u m an izes" its readers by focusing on
" u n i versal" val ues rather than local ized pol itical o nes and also reinforces the "moral
riches of bourgeois civi l i zation . . . and a reverence for the m id d l e class" (23 ) .
Furthermore, the readi n g o f l iterature provided a "so l itary and conte m p l ative" form of
d i straction that not only red uced any disruptive tend ency to "collective action" but also
prod uced a means of escape through the vicarious experience of literature for those
whose m undane and ro utine l ives were " i m poverished" of vital experi ence (23 ) .
The n ew con sciousn ess i n l iterature of t h e n i neteenth century that traces its
roots back to early rom anticism defined the modern concept of l iterature. Eag l eton
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claims that ro manticism of that period was a "literary rad ical ism . . . [th at] sign ifies a
concept of h u m an creativity w h ich is rad ical ly at odds with the utilitarian ideology of
early industrial capitali st Eng land . " In opposition to " prosaic" util itarian ism ,
romanticism asserted the val u e of the "imagination " and the " im ag i n ative vision" that is
evident in the writing of poetry ( 1 6) . Eag l eton clai m s that the "visionary hopes and
dynamic energ i es" of the bourgeois revolution expressed in early rom antic literature
conflicted with the transform ation of that vital ity i nto "crassly p h i l istine Utilitarianism . . .
that as the domi n ant ideo logy of the m id d l e class, tetish izing fact, red ucing h u m an
relations to m arket exchanges . . . dismiss[ed[ art as un profitabl e ornam entation ( 1 6) .
Thus, tor romantic writers and readers, literature became a n "enclave of creative
values . . . [in wh ich] an im age of non-al ienated l abor" survived . R o m anticism was a
victory of the "intuitive, transcendental m i nd" over rational i sm and empiricism that were
"enslaved to tact" ( 1 7) . According to Eagleton , the l iterary i m ag in ation, in its poetic
expression by Blake and S h el l ey, becam e a "pol itical force . . . that sought to
transform society in the name of those energies and val ues which art em bodi es" ( 1 7) .
As R obert Paxton explain s in regards to the visual artists of the turn of the
centu ry period, the subjectivity i n herent in irrationalism not o n ly separated its bel ievers
from trad itio n , but also left them "su bject to the lonel i n ess and anxiety of being adrift in
a m ean i ng l ess u niverse" (42). This held true for the rom antic writers as well who
"deprived of any proper place within social movem ents,which m ight h ave transferred
industrial capitali sm into a j u st soci ety . . . [were] d riven back into the solitariness of
[their] own creative m i nd [s]"(Eag leton 1 8) .
Daug hter. So be it. I descend. Come with me, Father!
I nd ra. No. I cannot breathe their air.
Daug hter. Now the cloud sinks. It's growing dense. I suffocate!
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This not air, but smoke and water that I breathe,
so heavy that it drags me down and down.
And now I clearly feel its reeling!
This is surely not the highest world.
I ndra. Neither the highest, truly, nor the lowest.
It is called Dust, and whirls with all the rest,
And so at times its people, struck with dizziness,
live on the borderline of folly and insanity . . .
Courage, my child, for this is but a test!
Daug hter, [on her knees as the cloud descends.]
I am sinking! (199).
I I . The R evolt of The New Consciousness i n Dramatic N atural ism
If l iterary rom anticism protected the sensib i l ities of the artistic i m ag i nation
from the ravages of uti litarianism and positivism by allowing it to escape i nto an
subjective "enclave of creative values , " then the n aturali st movem ent explored the fate
of consciousness on the o bj ective earthly plane. The basic concepts of n aturalism
were drawn from the social and i ntellectual changes of the n i n eteenth century :
" m ech anization a n d urban ization, democratic reform , a n d the rise o f the physical
sciences" ( Bentley 23) . Used as criteria with which to view critically the relation
between i nd ividuals and their enviro n m ent, these concepts were analyzed i n a l iterary
work that served as a "clin ical lab" (Zola qtd . in Bentley 6) to exam i n e "scientifically and
dispassion ately" the effect of "hered ity and e nviro n m ent" ( Bentley 2 5) on human
behavior. For phi losopher and writer, Em ile Zol a, who i s credited with out l i n i ng the
goals of n atural ism i n the preface to h is play, Theresa Raquin,
Aiello 1 6
the task of th e playwright was "to reprod uce m an 's environm ent, endow it with h u m an
life and show that one prod uced the other, and what [th at] h appened h ad seemed
small and insignificant could be i m portant and u rgent"(Styan 8). As British l iterary
critic, R aymond Wi l l i ams, explains, "natural ism was also an i n herently critical form ; it
showed the world as u n acceptabl e by showing d i rectly what it was l i ke, and how
i m possible it was when people tried to change it" (340) .
It was Zola's bel ief that by dedicating itself to the drama of ord i n ary people
th rough the "experim ental and sci entific spi rit" of natural ism , theater, as an art form ,
which he bel ieved had been long since rendered i m potent as a force for artistic and
social c hange through its dependence on melodrama and sentimental co m edy would
find its "salvatio n " ( Bentley 27) . The ultimate goal of naturalism in the theater for Zol a
was t o explore t h e truth o f real l ife no matter h o w d ifficult or " pessi m i stic" ( Styan 6) the
experience wo uld be for audiences. Of co urse, that truth for each playwright was as
varied as the forms of n atural ism itself ; however, pl aywrig hts of the period were not
afraid to seek the truth in subject areas long since considered "taboo in m iddle class
culture - sex, rel igio n , and eco nom ics .. . all d isplayed freely on the stag e" ( Bentley
27) . Moreover, these natu ral ist writers bel ieved that the truth lay beyond the style of the
sim pl e reprod uction of " photog raph ic" real ity that was most co m mo n ly associated with
natu ral ism . For Stri ndberg sim ply " sketching a piece of nature in a natural manner"
amounted to "fake n atural ism"; "true natural i sm seeks o ut those poi nts of l ife where th e
great co nflicts occur" (qtd . i n Wil liams 333). S i m ilarly, for Yeats, n atural ism explored a
consciousn ess which did not appear i n " photographs . . . [but] i n a gro u p of figu res,
sym bols, i m ag es [that] enable us for a few mom ents i nto a deep of the m i nd" ( Wi l liams
333 ) . R egardl ess of i nterpretatio n , what un ited the n aturali st playwrig hts was a
"passion for truth i n strictly h u m an and contem porary terms"(Will iams 334) . Zola's
"essential requ i rem ent [was] that theater shou ld not l ie" (Styan 1 0) , and h i s desire to
Aiello 1 7
ground theatrical n aturalism i n the scientific deter m i n ism represented an effort to
i ndemn ify that goal . For Zo la, the so ul of natural i sm was a probing of the relationsh i p
between h u m an experience a n d environment: "art a n d l iterature shou ld serve t h e
inq uirin g m i nd , i n vestigati n g , analyzi n g , a n d repo rting on m an a n d soci ety, seeki n g
facts a n d t h e logic behind h u m an l ife" (qtd . i n Styan 1 0) .
A s detach ed and objective as the naturali st l iterary work clai m s to b e i n its
i n q u i ry into " h u m an l ife, " there is an undeniably passio nate d efense of the ord i n ary
person as a victim of society ( Styan 6 ) . R aymond Wi l l iams i n the conclusion of Drama
from Ibsen to Brecht
provides an excellent m etaphor for the conflict between the
individual and soci ety explored i n n aturalist d ra m a. Building on the i nsistence of Zol a
and other natu ral i st playwrig hts for exact representations of the i nterior settings i n their
plays, Wil li am s depicts the basic conflict that a character faces i n a n atu rali st work as
one in which a perso n , " a u n iquely representative figure , " (338) is trapped i n a room
(visi ble on stage), and left o n l y "to stare from a win dow at wh ere o ne's l ife is being
decid ed " (336) . Caught between two worlds, a "world of action , in which an
environment is mad e and a world of conscio usness in which a conseq uence is
realized" (338), the person "discovers a h u m an ity" that a "relatively leisu re society" is
found to be "frustrating or destroying" (335, 337). Wi l l iams expl ains that these room s
devised b y t h e n atural ist playwrig hts are not on stage simply to "defi ne t h e people" but
rather to "define what they seem to be, what they can not accept they are" (336 ) .
Wi l l iam s further states that there exists a subtle i rony i n t h e confl ict between the
ind ivid ual and contem porary society represented i n n atural i st drama. In a l i beral era
that extol l ed the virtues of ind ividual ism , natural ist d rama expressed the " i nd ivid ual
revolt agai n st an orthodox i nd ividualist society" or as Wil l iam s characterizes it, a
"bourgeois revo lt against the fo rms of bourgeo i s l ife" (337) .
Natural ist dram a's attem pts to rescue con sciousness through a form of l iterary
Aiello 1 8
empiricism concl uded pessi m istical ly for audiences and artists alike. One o n ly has to
think of the endings of a representative sam ple of plays of the era, especially those of
I bsen and Chekhov to realize the futility experienced by those "trapped i n the rooms. "
If naturalism offered no place i n the world for the expression of the n ew consciousn ess
in dram atic l iterature, its only recou rse was to turn i nward to su bjectivity and the
expressio n of n ecro m antic dreams, fantasies, m yths and vision as sources of
inspi ratio n .
The walls o f n aturali sm 's "rooms" were artistical ly d i ssolved a s "Stri ndberg , i n a
younger generation . . . abandoned the g iven enviro n m ent and m ad e a d ramatic form
out of i ntern al strugg l es" (Wi l l iams 338) . Strindberg was one of those rare artists i n
whom long h eld cu rrents of co ntent, form , and style merge and reappear as
recognizable but i rrevocably altered and revital ized . August Strindberg , who
cham pioned what h e d escri bed as "th e modern psycholog ical d rama", transformed
theater through a " m ajor new i n novation , a dram atic form m ad e wholly fro m the
already iso l ated con sciousness . .. the dram a of a 'si ngle m i n d ' " (Wil liams 338 ) . Th us,
drama as an art form , constrai n ed by what Zola descri bed as its "hidebo u nd
conventions" ( Styan 8 ) , finally join ed the other arts i n their turn toward subjectivity as a
result of finding no solace for their new co nsciousn ess i n the external world . For
Stri ndberg and other artists of the period, truth becam e their own truth, an artist's i n ner
conception of the world. An external vision of the worl d , ach ieved by "peering t h rough
windows" was replaced by "in n er vision and external distortio n " (Wi l l i a m s 339) .
Through the plays of Strindberg , the n ew co nsciousn ess that was emerg i n g i n all
areas of tho ught aro u nd 1900 finally mad e its appearance o n the stage .
Because o f Stri ndberg 's relevance t o a part icular moment i n both h i story and
developm ents in the arts, his "early expression i sm" that is so apparent in A Dream
Play
should not be considered unusual . Accord ing to R aymond Wil l iams, "it is not then
A i e l lo 1 9
really real ly surprising that two apparently d ifferent forms, serious n atu ral ism and
psycholog ical expression ism should h ave com e to exi st i n the sam e d rama . . . " (339).
Fortunately, Strind berg 's exact notions of h i s "early expressionism" are d etail ed i n h i s
extended preface t o Miss Julie Formally consid ered b y most critics a s Strind berg 's
.
defin itive statem ent on n atu ral ism , the preface extends far beyond the l i m its of "pure"
Zolaist n atural ism . Stri ndberg 's natu ralism , or "nyanatural ism " ( G i l m an 90) as he
descri bed it, is more inclusive of the trends i n i ntellectual thought of the period . "The
stage, h e [Strin d berg] remarked d u ri ng this period , was 'reprehensi ble' in its
im permeability by the n ew con sciousn ess . . . " ( G i l m an 90) . I n order to create a place
for nyanaturalism in the the theater, Strind berg felt it n ecessary in his preface to
critique the theatrical status quo : the bourg eois theater, an "outworn form" that
exist[ed] as a stag n ant provider of i l l u sory entertain m ent for the m iddle-class
aud i ences who possess[ed] a "prim itive capacity for deceivi ng them selves and letting
them selves be d eceived " ( 6 1 ) . Accord i ng to Stri nd berg , theater was not keeping pace
with the revo l ution in thought apparent i n oth er cou ntries, particularly i n England and
Germany, where d rama . . . "is dead " ( 6 1 ) " No new form has been devised for these
.
new contents, " explain s Strin d berg . " The new wine has burst the old bottl es" ( 6 1 ) . It
was in h i s two "dom estic dramas, " The Father and M i ss Julie, that Strind berg fi rst
attem pted to put theory i nto practice i n order to " m odern ize the form to m eet the
demands, w h ich m ay, I think, be m ad e o n this art today" (62).
Strind berg 's nyan atural ism , however, d id not abandon all the formal pri nciples
of n aturalism . I n h i s exhortation to abandon "feel i ngs which beco m e h armfu l and
superfluous" in favo r of a more reasoned reaction to h i s plays, Strin d berg asserts
natural ism 's em phasis on a scientific perspective of his works ( 62) . For example,
feel i ngs of pity aroused d u e to the fate of the Stri nd berg 's hero i n e, M iss J u l i e, m ay
provo ke the i nflu ence of "outside forces and powers"(Wi l l iams 334). For Stri nd berg , a
Aiello 20
member in the audience "with a bel ief i n the futu re may actually demand so me
suggestion for rem edying the evi l - i n other words som e kind of pol icy" (62). The
i m pl ication i s that an "outside force or power" i n the form of political or relig ious
ideology n eeds to be present in the play to m o l l ify any negative reactions to the d rama.
Any such attem pts to m ake h i s work less "depressi ng" were excoriated by Strindberg .
I n more or l ess a Darwinist term s, Stri nd berg responds that i n h i s dom estic dramas
the "downfall of one fam ily is the the good fortune of another . . . [and] the alternation of
risi n g and fal l i ng is one of l ife's pri nciple charm s" (62) . For Stri ndberg , to expect
theater to provide "the lovers of the com monplace" with anyt h i ng resem b l i ng the
i l l u sory "joy of l ife"(63) experience was abso lutely u ntenable. I n contrast, the
nyanaturalist perspective is to find the joy of l ife i n the " strong and cruel struggles" i n
which Strind berg finds, as he suggests t o others i n the preface, a "pleasure i n
learn ing" (63 ) .
I n Stri ndberg 's nyanatural ism , as a n expressio n of t h e n ew consciousn ess, i s
a n i n h erent belief i n the vali d ity of subj ective i nterpretatio n . The subj ective perspective
is what Stri nd berg recom mends as the proper mode of i n q u i ry with which to approach
an analysis of Miss Julie. Stri n d berg i n sists th ere is no one, sim ple i nterpretation of
the play and that each po int of view i s equally valid : " I see M iss J u l ie's trag ic fate to be
the result of many circumstances" (63 ) . The theme of Miss Julie, acco rd ing to the
playwrig ht, i s " neither excl usively physiological or psycholog ical . I h ave not put the
blame wholly o n the mother, nor on her physical condition at the time, nor o n
immoral ity. I have not even preached a moral sermon " (64) .
Stri nd berg 's most d i rect critique of the theater of the era, his "critical n atu ralism"
(Wi l l iams 81), is d i rected toward the bourgeois positivism's representation of fixed
ideas and certai nties that h ave been tran slated i nto ossified theatrical conventions.
Such rigid conventions of form , character and plot i n the theater served to reinforce a
Aiello 2 1
sense i n aud i ences of the stab i l ity and order of bou rg eois society d u ri ng the
n i n eteenth centu ry(Eag l eto n , Marxism 64) . Strind berg cites the developm e nt of the
concept of ch aracter i n this regard . He explains that the origi nal m ean i ng of the term
"character" was closer to a " domi nating trait of the sou l . . . often confused with
tem peram ent" (64) . The objectification of character i nto character types was the
responsibi l ity of bourgeois society:
Later it [character] becam e the m iddle-class term for the 'auto m ato n , '
one whose nature h ad beco me fixed or who h ad adapted h i m self to a
partic u l ar role i n l ife. I n fact, a person who had ceased to g row was call ed
a character, while one conti n ui n g to d evelop - the skillful n avigator of
l ife's river sai l i ng not with the sheets set fast, but veeri n g before the wind
to luff agai n - was cal l ed ch aracterless, i n a derogatory sense, of cou rse,
because he was so hard to catch , classify and keep track of. This m iddle­
class conception of i m m o b i l ity of the sou l was transferred to the stage
where the middle-class always ruled . A ch aracter cam e to signify a m an
fixed or fin ish ed . . . (64).
For Strindberg , any such "summ ary judg ments" of character by authors "should be
chal lenged by the N aturalists who know the richn ess of the soul" (65) . Stri nd berg
d escribes h i s own characters as "characterless, " ( 64) who , with an almost a post­
modern i st sensi b i l ity, represent a pastiche of "virtues and vices" from the " past and
present stages of civil izati o n , bits from books and n ewspapers, scraps of h u m an ity,
rags and tatters of fine clothing . . . " (65) . Strind berg's "characterless" characters who
resist classification express the world of the new con sciousn ess that surrounds the
playwrig ht. These ch aracters perso n ify a culture transform ing itself from the stasis of a
materi alist determ i n i sm of the world to the dom i n ion of the irration al unconscious . The
un pred ictabi lity of Strind berg 's characters expresses a tension that stem s from the
Aiello 22
knowledge that w h at was once certain i s no longer pred ictable. As Strindberg
explains, he fash ioned his characters as such " because they are modern characters
l iving i n a period of transition more feverishly hysterical than its pred ecessor, I have
drawn m y figures vacil lating, d isi nteg rated , a blend of old and n ew"(65)
In add ition to his stated o pposition to theater's partici pation in creating an
i l l u sory view of the world outside the theater, Strind berg i s eq ually adamantine i n h i s
desire t o rid theater o f t h e artifice present i n its past co nventions, most specifical ly t h e
concept o f the "well-made play." For Stri ndberg , t h e " modern psychological d rama"
represents an inqu iry i nto the hypostasis of l ife and seeks to fu lfil l the needs of the
modern m ind that is "no longer satisfied with seeing thi ngs happen . . . [but] m ust know
how it h appens" (69) . In an effort to better explore "the psycholog ical process",
Stri nd berg l i m its his n u m ber of m inor c haracters and focu ses the d rama on the
relationsh i p between j ust a few, since this is "what i nterests people most today" (69 ) .
Trad ition al developm ent o f plot is abandoned b y Strindberg , which h e feels d isrupts
the flow of the play as well as the concentration of the aud ience, in favor of his
experi mental one-act form. Stri ndberg also i ntroduces other " art forms" i nto naturalist
theater: the mono log ue, m i m e and dance - to disorder not o n ly the audience's
preconceived expectations for d ram a, but also to allow for more of an "org an ic"
con n ection between the actors and scri pt through im provised movem ent and
d i alog u e ( 70 ) .
Furthermore, Strindberg e m p h atically o pposes a n y theatrical artifice i n acting,
such as the contrived d ialog ue, exh i bited i n "well-made" plays, for its "sym metrical ,
m athematical construction" that often consists of characters asking "stu pid questions i n
order t o el icit a sm art rep ly" (68, 69) . Agai n , Stri nd berg 's insistence o n fluidity o f
speech patterns b y letting his ch aracters speak a s "i rreg ularly . . . a s they do i n real
life" (69) exposes the ossified speech patterns of popular theater as i l l u sory. Naturalism
Aiello 23
i n acting technique i n the form of less "playing with the audience" i n favor of more
"playi ng to the audience" is another goal of Strind berg's dram aturgy; for Strind berg ,
not h i ng would pl ease h i m more than to " see an acto r's back t h roug hout a critical
scene" (72) . S i m i larly, he stridently exhorts the rejection of theatrical d evices l ike
excessive make-up and footl ig hts that distort the actor's natural i m age i nto somethi ng
created for a more styl ized , "theatrical" periorm ance(72) . As for scenic desig n ,
Strindberg favors the "asym metry" and "economy" of form exh i bited i n the works of
im pressionist pai nters that "strengthens the i l l usio n " ( 7 1 ) . Attem pts to ach i eve stage
reali sm are futi le, accordi n g to Strin d berg , because of the i n h erent problem s with the
construction of stage wal ls and doors that shake and move u pon contact (71 ). It is
i nteresti ng to n ote than when i l l u sion is used to d eceive or si m ply to entertain i n the
theater, Stri ndberg o pposes its use ; however, when i l l usion serves the n ew
consciousness by "arousing the i m ag i n ation " ( 7 1 ) he is very m uch its propo n ent. What
the revolution i n tho ught and practice that Strindberg 's preface represents is a
blueprint from which Strindberg hoped "a n ew dramatic art m i g ht arise " ( 73) .
Daug hter. Continuing the Poet's bitter words.
"And then the journey's course begins,
over thistles, thorns and stones.
If it should touch a beaten track,
comes at once the cry: 'Keep off!'
Pluck a flower. straight you'll find
the bloom you picked to be another's.
If cornfields lie across your path
and you must pursue your way,
trampling on another's crops,
Aiello 24
others then will trample yours
that your loss may equal theirs.
Every pleasure you enjoy
brings to all your fellows sorrow,
yet your sorrow gives no gladness.
So sorrow, sorrow upon sorrow
on your way until you 're dead
and then, alas, give others bread.
I l l . Nyanatural ism i n Strindberg 's A Dream Play
It is one of those rare "cu ltu ral coi ncidences" that w h i l e S i g m un d Freud was
writ i n g The Interpretation of Dreams, Strind berg was experim enting with the d ream as
content and form for several of h is plays( G i l m an 1 1 0) . I n A Dream Play, the form of the
dream itself is Stri nd berg 's attem pt to release the artistic i m ag i n ation from the
restrai nts of bourgeo i s order and reason reflected in the convention s of popular
theater. As Strind berg explai ns i n the two-parag raph Author' s Note fo r A Dream Play,
the d ream has its own "logical form " i n which "anything can happen; everyt h i ng is
possible" ( 1 93) . T h i s form is delim ited o n ly by the d ream er's u nconscio us and the
Freud i an su pereg o ; the dreamer freely associates between the products of the
imag ination and fee l i ngs of consci ence co ntrived by the "social" self. As Stri nd berg
explai n s i n the Author's Note, sleep, the transm itter of dream s, can act as either a
"li berato r" or "to rturer, " and more often than not, produces " more pain than
pleasu re"( 1 93) for the dreamer.
The i nterrelated n ess of the d ream elem ents in A Dream Play orig inates from a
"si ng l e co n sciousness (th at] holds sway" ( 1 93 ) ; however, with i n the context of the
Aiello 25
dream , the freedom of form that Wil liams describes as an " early expressionism "
merges with the n aturalistic content of the dream itself in a manifestation of
Strind berg's "nyan aturalism . " The subj ective form of the d ream , evidenced by its
"external distortion " ( Williams 339) , defies any traditional sense of the theatrical unities
of time and place (Gil m an 1 08 ) . The fluidity of the form and the rando m ness of
associations are uninterrupted by the theatrical contrivances of acts and scenes. One
setting "dissolves" into the n ext or sim ply "blacks out, " while other locales "vanish" or
"disappear. " Settings and props also transmorgrify : the "Growing Castle" is
transformed into the Officer's room , which in turn changes into his parents' living room .
The lime tree that g rows outside the clover-leaf door in the opera's corridor becomes a
coat and hat stand in the Lawyer's office and later a candelabra in the c h u rch. The
dream imagination expresses itself in a aesthetic variety of fantastical elements often
em blazoned in bri l liant co lors: a giant ch rysanth em u m , boats sh aped like dragons,
and a ghost ship . Similarly, characters in the subjectivity of the d ream world "split,
double, and m u ltiply; they evaporate, crystal lize , scatter, and converg e" ( 1 93) . The
theater crowd that waits for the clover-leaf door to open becomes the the crowd of
clients waiting fo r service at the Lawyer's office. The Officer himself appears
throug hout the d ream , not o n ly in the context of his life but also in the context of the
lives of the Lawyer and Po et as wel l . All these elem ents col l ectively express one
consciousness freed by the form of the dream to explore, imagine and create.
However, Strind berg 's n atu ralist perspective, the "internal reality" of A Dream
Play,
explores more earthly concerns, specifical ly the n u m erous contradictio ns of
living in the modern worl d . Trapped within these many contradictions, h u m an kind is
seen as alienated from whatever is necessary to find spiritual fu lfil l ment. This
alienation is exem plified by the separation of the universe into two wo rlds: the world of
spiritual lig ht (new consciousness) , represented by the Hindu god , I nd ra and his
Aiello 26
Daug hter; and the world of m aterial d arkn ess (bourgeois soci ety) experienced by
those on eart h . I n her journey to eart h , the Daug hter will attem pt to merg e these
worlds. H er spiritual quest is to prove to her skeptical father that h u m an s are simply
"victims of soci ety" (Zola qtd . i n Styan 6) whose " l am entatio n s and com plaint are
justitied " ( 1 98) . The Daug hter's journey is in one sense a "test , " ( 1 99 ) as her father
descri bes it, (in almost Zol aist "laboratory" sense) in which the Daug hter, a pure,
rarefied exam ple of consciousn ess, u n su l l ied by any of the " i ntections"(228) of the
material world will attem pt to em pathize with those who "live o n the border l i n e of folly
and i nsanity" ( 1 99) .
As the Daug hter leaves one setting o n earth and enters another,
altern ating i n persona from the goddess, I ndra's Daug hter, to her h u m an form , Agnes,
she learns from the men who accom pany her on h er journey the n ature of l ife on earth.
Her fi rst d esire i s to tree the Officer, whom she finds i m priso n ed i n a " G rowing Castle. "
The Officer, a person ification of a "trapped con sciousn ess, " exem plifies the h u man
need for i l l usion as a remedy tor the alienation of the h u m an spirit. The Officer's priso n
is h is room i n t h e G rowing Castle, a metaphor fo r modern civilization. This castle I
fortress has separated itself from the n atural world by rising above the "forest of g iant
hollyhocks in bloo m " that exist beyond its wal ls, and the prim itive m ud comprised of
"straw" and "stable m uck" that surrounds the foundation of the castle ( 1 99) . The ideals
of c ivil ized society are bran d i sh ed with i n the cast l e : the g i lded roof sign ifyi ng its
materi al ism , and a fecund flower bud "that crowns its su m m i t" ( 1 99) sym bolizing the
elevation of l i bidinal en ergy from its prim itive state to that of civi l ized love. S i m i l arly,
the Officer is d ivorced from his own tru e nature.The Officer's priso n , however, is far
more t han j u st the castle, but rather h i s dependence on i l lusions. Upo n m eeting the
Officer, I ndra's Daug hter offers to free h i m from his room ( 200) . For the Officer, who
bel ieves he "has been waiting for this" ( 200) , the real ity of freedom is a th reatening
Aiello 27
prospect :
Daug hter. The castle is strong-it h as seven wal l - but it shall be done. Do
you want to be be set free-or not?
Officer. To tell yo u the truth, I don 't know. Either way l ''will suffer. Every
joy has to be paid twice over with sorrow. It's wretch ed h ere, but I 'd have
to endure three times the agony for the joys of freedom ( 200) .
The Officer's self- i m prisonment is that of social m an who, i m prisoned i n the castle of
civil ized society with its rules and restrictions to h i s freedom , learns to accept the
i l lusion of secu rity the castle provides rather than face the prospect of a free self
u n bounded by society's walls.
The Officer's room d i ssolves i nto his parents' l iving room , reveal i ng another
source of the Officer's i l l u sory self-im priso n m ent. Set agai n st h i s M other's disclosure
that she m ust face the real ity of her death, the Officer h as concluded that l ife i s unfair
sim ply because he was fal sely accused of taking som e money as a child. The Officer is
unable to free his con sciousn ess from the confl icting feel ings of revenge and g u i lt over
the i ncident, which he descri bes as "that piece of injustice [that] gave a twi st to my
whole l ife" ( 202) . Only the M oth er, guided by her closeness to death , is able to see
through the i l l usion of such a singu lar judgment of l ife . She attributes the Officer's
conclusion that l ife is never fair to the workings of "small m inds," urg ing her son to
cease " harping" on it . . . spo i l i ng the best of you r l ife" over the incident, and "to never
quarrel with God" (202, 203 ) .
" A h , t h i s l ife ! " exclaims t h e Mother to t h e Daug hter, w h o has observed the
i ncident. To which I ndra's Daug hter responds, " H u m an beings are to be p itied" (203 ) .
What t h e Daug hter proffers the Officer a s a n alternative t o the false con sciousness of
i l l usions is h er absolute bel i ef that love can solve the problems of m a n k i nd : " Yes, l ife is
hard , " explai ns the Daug hter. " But love conquers everyt h i n g . Co m e and see"(203 ) .
Aiello 28
However, as the Dau g hter appears i n a corridor outsid e the stage door of the
opera house, she witnesses love as a force that alienates and h arms rather than one
that un ites and h eals. I nstead of l i berating h u m ans by "conq uering everyth i n g , " love
traps them in its i l l usions.The real ity of love's disappoi ntm ents is echoed throug hout
the corridor scene. For the Doorkeeper, who sits with her shawl of suffering over her
head , crocheting her l ife away, love h as separated her past self from the present. "She
was the pri m a balleri na," the Bi llsticker explains, " but when he went away, it seem s he
took h er dancing with h i m . . . so she never got any parts" ( 204) . . Wh i l e the Doorkeeper
futilely conti nues to crochet a star-patterned coverlet in the hope h er lover will return ,
the Singer, who the Doorkeeper notes was not "engag ed " for the n ext season by the
opera, cries i nto her h and kerchief as she faces the real ity h er d ream i s over(205 ) . The
sad irony of the Bi llsticker, who waits fifty years to possess his beloved "fishnet and
green box" only to realize that the fishnet was " n ot q u ite what I h ad in m i nd"( 209) is
reflected in the Officer's patient waiti ng at the stage door for h is ideal wom an, h i s
fiance, M iss Victoria, a singer with the opera. As the season s pass for the Officer, and
he gets o lder and o lder, eventually to becom e young again and restart the cycle, he
rests assured in h is fantasy that Victoria h asn 't left the opera yet without him " because
she loves me"(21 1 ) . For the Officer and the oth ers waiting i n the o pera corridor, the
i l l u sion of love i s a way of escaping l ife's i n evitabl e disappo i ntm ents : " noth i n g ever is
as one i m ag i ned it - because one's m i n d goes fu rther than the act, goes beyond the
object"( 209) . Thus, without such i l lusions, mankind is left with o n ly the u nforgiving
real ization of who they are, as opposed to who they wish to be. As the Quarantine
M aster explains to the Officer when h e visits Fo ulstrand, there is self-protection i n
h id i ng beh ind i l l u sions: " I s o often wish I could forg et - especial l y myself. That 's w h y I
go i n for m asquerades, fancy dress, and th eatricals" (225) .
As the vo ice of ill usion i n A Dream Play, the Officer presents d ream s and
Aiello 29
fantasies as a mode of escape from the cond itions suffered by h u m ankind for whom
I ndra's Daug hter feels that life is pitiable. After receiving his Doctor's degree from the
Chancel lor and the fo ur Deans of the Faculties - Phi losophy, Theology, M edicine and
Law, the Officer trusts that he now has control over his own l ife : "All paths are o pen to
me. I h ave set foot on Parnassu s, the laurels are won . I m mortality, fam e are all
m ine" ( 222) . His futu re plans are far more pedestrian , however. The Officer desires to
take a teaching position, where he ostensibly will find security teaching boys "the
sam e lessons I learnt all through my m an hood . . . u ntil I g et a pension and h ave
nothing to do but wait for m eals and newspapers, until in the end I 'm carried out to the
crem ato rium and burnt to ashes" (229). He proposes to the Daug hter to accom pany
him on a trip to Fairhaven, "where it is sum m er, and the sun is sh i n i n g . Youth is there,
chi ldren and flowers, singing and d anci n g , feasting and merrym aking"(222 ) .
What they find when the Officer and the D aug hter appear i n their n ew
desti nation is that the path to the parad isical Fairh aven ( il l usio n ) , with its " beautifu l
wooded shore . . . [and] l ittl e ltalianesq u e vi llas, pavil ions, kiosks, and m arble
statues" (223) is accessed o n ly by gain ing entrance through its apparent o pposite
( real ity) : the sulfury inferno, Fou lstrand , wh ere the sick and g l uttonous rich dwell along
with those "who have so me m i sery to hide"(224) , and young lovers and their roses wi lt
in the noxious atmosphere. As the Officer and the Daug hter flee Foulstrand for
Fairhaven, they l earn that the " peace and happin ess" they h ad expected to find there
really do not exist. At the dance at the Assem bly R oom , the Daug hter notices a girl,
Edith , who " buries her face in h er hands" because she realizes her ugli n ess kept her
"sitting there for three hours without a dance. " "What cruel pleasure, " o bserves the
Daughter(230) . They encou nter the Blind M an who is " the most envied m an in the
place, " fo r he is the "owner of hu ndreds of Ital ian vi llas . . . bays and creeks and shores
and wood s" (235) . For all h i s wealth, the Blind M an loses what he loves the most, his
Aiello 30
son , who d rowns while on a voyage. Apprehensive that Fai rhaven i s a c h i m era, the
Daug hter beseeches the Officer : " I sn 't there one h appy person in this parad ise?" (235) .
T h e Officer suggests t h e apparently bl issful Newlywed Couple. For t h e Newlyweds,
however, happin ess is threaten i n g . They are adam ant in their d esire "to d i e together,
now at once" since they "fear h appiness, the d eceiver . . .
(who] i n the m idst of
happi ness g rows a seed of u n h appiness" (235) .
For the Officer, Fairhaven also is a d estroyer of his dream s . I n a flash back to his
experie nces as a boy i n school , the Officer real izes his d ream of a l ife i n education is
"dreadf u l , real ly d readful" ( 232) . Wh ile under the stern g aze and b adgering of the
Schoo l m aster, the Young Officer, confidence shaken , attem pts to apply sim pl e logic to
answer a pro blem i n arith metic. The School m aster uses the opport u n ity to berate the
Young Officer contin ually for being i m m ature, an o p i n ion wh ich the Young Officer
beg i n s to i nternalize. The Yo ung Officer and the boys join in revolt again st their
teacher and d efy the Schoolm aster to explain the concept of "ti m e , " wh ich he can not
do. Backed i nto a phi losoph ical corner by his students, the School m aster m ust adm it
that the Officer's explanation is "quite correct accord ing to the laws of logic, although it
i s absurd" ( 234) . "Then logic is absurd , " concl udes the Officer(234), who " m atures" in
realizing that for the Schoo lm aster and others l i ke h i m , their absu rd world which is
" back to front" (234) is the tru ly i l l usory one.
Strindberg ' s sym bol of i l l usion for all i n A Dream Play i s the clover-leaf door
wh ich sits in the corridor of the opera house . The excitement exh ibited by all the
characters at the opera house who gather as soon as they l earn that "the door is going
to be opened " ( 2 1 1 ) represents their desire to u ncover a secret and g reater meaning to
l ife. Wh i l e they await the door's open i n g , the Officer stresses its sign ificance, for "a
m o m ent such as this does not recur i n a l ifetime" ( 2 1 1 ). Wh en the secret of the door is
about to be revealed , a po l icem an i ntervenes, and " i n the n ame of the law, " ( 2 1 2)
Aiello 3 1
forbids the open ing of the door. I n doi ng so , h e em bodies society's wish to keep the
characters "with i n the castle" by mai ntai n i ng the i l l usion of hope. Fi nal ly, before her
assent to h eaven, the Daughter su m m ons al l to too see "the answer to the riddle of the
universe [th at] is locked up in there" (250) . The bel i ef that there is any m ean i ng to l ife in
the world of A Dream Play is exposed as self-delud i ng when all that is visible behind
the clover-leaf door to the g athered ch aracters i s noth ingness.
The hopelessness of i l l usions as a means of escap i n g reality that the Daughter
experiences with the Officer reflects a si m ilar despai r that she real izes in h er
relati o n sh i p to the Lawyer. T h e Lawyer, i n h i s practice as the mediator of h u m an
antagon isms, el ides the i l l usions of l ife for reality. Portrayed by the the Daughter as
Ch rist-l i ke (she puts a crown of thorns on h i s head ) , the Lawyer exh ibits the suffering
he has "absorbed from others . . . the vices, swi nd l es, slanders, l i bel . . . o n his chalk­
white, fu rrowed and purple-shadowed" face that " m i rrors all the cri m e and vice with
which through h i s profession he has been i nvolved " (2 1 2). In his offer to burn the shawl
of suffering that the Daug hter i n herited from the Doorkeeper, as well as in h is
advocacy for those who "scrape along so mehow by the skin of their teeth u ntil they
d i e" ( 2 1 3 ) , the Lawyer represents the idealist who u n selfishly and hero ical ly acts on the
behalf of others. It i s the Lawyer, who recogn izes the al ienation of the m aterial body of
h umankind, their actual l iving con d itions and their spiritual consciousness that makes
it "a m isery to be h u m an " (2 1 3) . As he explains to the Daughter,
Lawyer: And what people l ive on is a mystery to me. They m arry with an
i nco me of two thousand crowns when they need four. They borrow, to be
sure, they all borrow . . . [but] who has to pay in the end? Tell me that !
Daughter: He who feeds the birds.
Lawyer: Wel l , if he who feeds the bird s would come down to earth and
see the plight of the unfortunate c h i ldren of m e n , perhaps He would have
Aiello 3 2
som e com passio n ( 2 1 3 ) .
T h e observation o f t h e Daughter that " it is a m ad world " ( 2 1 6) upo n realizing that t h e
Lawyer was "discred ited" before t h e fo ur Deans o f t h e Faculties a n d den i ed h i s
"lau rels" because he "defended t h e poo r, said a good word fo r the sinner, eased the
burden of the g u i lty, [and] obtai n ed a repri eve for the condem n ed" ( 2 1 5) d escri bes the
contrad ictory world of A Dream Play. As both the Daug hter and the Lawyer concl ude, a
world i n which the " Law [serves] all but its servants" and "Justice" i s reserved for the
"just unj u st" ( 2 1 6) is the inverted copy of the natural one.
Within the new setting of a M editerranean resort, the Lawyer attem pts to explain
to the Daug hter the ineq u itable m aterial conditions and rancorous attitudes i n society
that have created such an i nversion of the world . " M en have an i n stinctive d read of
another man 's good fo rtu n e , " explains the Lawyer. "They feel it's u nj u st that that fate
sho u ld favor any one man, so they try to restore order by rol l ing bou lders across his
path" (238 ) . I n juxtaposition t o the vil las, casi no and orchard s o f the resort, descri bed
by the Daug hter as "parad i se, " is a " h uge h eap of coal and two wheel barrows, " the
"hell" of the coal h eavers who work there. The l ives of the coal h eavers exem plify the
alienated worker who is trapped wit h i n the conf i n es of "th e system " (242). For these
coal heavers, who con sider their labor as "the foundation of society, " ( 24 1 ) the system
appears as an obj ectified power over which they have no contro l . Within this society,
as the Lawyer expl ains, " noth i n g is free ; everything is owned" (240), wh ich applies to
the coal heavers them selves. U n able to enjoy for fear of arrest the barest of luxuries, a
simple swim i n the sea to escape the heat , or fruit of a tree, the coal h eavers find
themselves chained to their labor by m e re fact that they "were born of poor and pretty
bad parents" ( 240) . The o n ly criterion that u n ites all the classes, observes the Lawyer,
is the w i l l to "sin"(237) agai nst the system :
Daug hter : Do you mean that everyone at som e time or other deserves
Aiello 3 3
i m pri so n m ent?
Lawyer : Yes.
Daug hter: Even you ?
Lawyer : Yes. ( 240)
The separation o f t h i s system from its hum an ity is visi ble i n its rejection o f those,
l i ke the Lawyer, who try to reform it by "all the rig hteous, all the respectable" (241 ). For
such reformers, accord ing to the Lawyer, th ere are o n ly two alternatives: being sent to
priso n by the powerfu l , or bei ng driven to the m adhouse " by their own despair when
they see the hopelessness of the struggle" (241 ). As the Lawyer further explains, for
those that do not revolt, however, there is another kind of i m priso n m ent: the system
becomes i n ternal ized in the form of a cod ified set of expectations and behaviors. Life,
as the Lawyer d escri bes it, is reduced si m ply to "duties," ( 237) a m an ifestation of the
real ity principle2 for which all i nd ivid u al pursuit of pleasure I happiness i s
subord i n ated t o the needs o f t h e real ity o f work :
Daughter: What are they [duties] ?
Lawyer : Everything you abo m i n ate. Everything you l east want to do and
m ust. They are to abstain and renounce, to go without, to l eave beh i n d .
They are everything that is d isagreeable, repulsive, painfu l .
Daughter: Are there n o pleasant duties?
Lawyer: They beco m e pleasant when they are done (237) .
Efforts to rebel against the system resu lt are futile. What one enjoys, according to the
Lawyer, when the d uties are done, is co nsidered sinful and is policed psycholog ical ly
by the su perego. "The n ext day" , states the Lawyer,
"
I h ave a bad conscience and go
through the torm ents of hell" (237) . For the Lawyer, "the worst thing of al l " ( 237) is the
cycl ical n ature of existence (the Officer's endless pursuit of Victoria) , which mai ntai n s
2
from Sigmund Freud's concept o f the reality and pleasure principles in Civilization and its Discontents.
Aiello 34
itself through endless "repetitions [and] reiteratio n s" ( 237) .
I n the natural setting of the grotto , the Daug hter proposes to the Lawyer that
they "joi n their destin i es" i n marriag e and " put it to the test" to see if their love, as the
Daughter believes, can transcend the corrosive i nfl uence of the world . The Lawyer,
although w i l l i n g , is more skeptical ; however, the Daug hter firmly bel i eves that even
though the Lawyer's " antipathies m ay be [her] . . . sym pathies, " such conflicts can be
" bal anced " (2 1 7). The Daug hter expresses the apotheosis of m arriag e :
Lawyer : S u pposi ng w e tire?
Daug hter : C h i l d ren will com e , bri ng i n g ever new i nterests.
Lawyer: You ? You will take me poor, ugly, d espised , discredited ?
Daug hter : Yes . . . (21 7 ) .
A s the g rotto d issolves i nto a room adj o i n i ng t h e Lawyer's office, a n d the
Daug hter I goddess becom es, Agnes, the eart h ly wife of the Lawyer, the spi ritual
sense of what a m arri age can be that the Daughter and the Lawyer d i scuss in the
grotto contrasts with the " u n n atural" real ity of their marriage. The maid's " pasting" all
the cracks around the wi ndows so as to keep fresh air out of the home is a m etaphor
for the absence of any natural l ife-giving forces in this marriage. T h e m arriag e
between the Lawyer a n d Ag n es i s d o m i n ated b y t h e i r material a n d eco n o m ic l iving
conditions which corrupt the "conscio usness" of the relationship itself. The idealist
Lawyer is transformed i nto the h u sband as economic head of his household who
val ues Ag nes for h er abil ity to stop their child's scream ing because it "frightens away
customers" (21 8 ) . S i m i larly, the m aids pasting of the cracks in the walls, even though it
creates a suffocating atmosphere for Ag nes, is valuable since it prevents the warmth
from escapi ng.
The con d itions of poverty u nder which the Lawyer and Agnes live crush her
spirit under their weig ht l i ke a " poor l ittl e flower, without l i g ht, without air" (2 1 9). The
Aiello 3 5
harm onic balance o f their antin o m i c poi nts of vi ew toward m arriag e , " anti pathy and
sym pathy" erodes i nto a d i sson ant polarity, "one's pleasu re is the oth er's pai n" as their
" l ife together [becom es] torm ent" (220) . What the real ity of their m arriage reveals is that
love alon e can 't transcend the m ateri al conditions that form consciousness. Usi ng one
of Agnes' hairpins as a m etaphor, the Lawyer describes marriage as the u n ion of
parallel l i nes, the two prongs of the hai rpi n . The m arriage, therefore, is the synthesis of
that d ialectic formed by the i nd ivid u al partners; however, when vit i ated by the external
world, as the Lawyer d escri bes, the h airpin m ay be bent i nto a straig ht l i n e , resulting i n
a loss o f i n d ivid uality, o r broken i n two , effecti n g the polarization o f both h u sband and
wife.
Where the Daughter's experiences of the contrad ictions of h u m an experience
finally l ead h er is to the embod im ent of the artistic i m ag in ation in the Poet. It is through
art that the Poet and Daug hter real ize the artistic i m ag in ation as a m eta - real ity that
tran scends the need for i l l usion and the real ity of m aterial co nditio n s :
Lawyer: Of these t h i n g s [the Daug hter's experiences] I o nce m ad e poetry.
Daughter: You know then what poetry is?
Lawyer: I know what d reams are. What is poetry?
Daughter: Not reality, but more than reality. Not dreams, but waking
dream s.
Lawyer: Yet the c h ildren of men believe that poets m erely play - i nvent
and fabricate.
Daughter: It is j ust as wel l , my friend, or else the world wou ld be l aid
waste from l ack of endeavor (245 ) .
The ro le o f t h e artistic i m ag i nation within t h e world is exempl ified i n the Poet's " petition
from mankind to the ruler of the u n iverse, drawn up by a d ream er" ( 246 ) , an endeavor
which is facil itated by h i s relationsh i p to I ndra's Daughter. The petition , at fi rst, appeals
Aiel lo 3 6
to God for a n explanation of h u m ankind's conflicts with their own n atu re : "Why with
ang uish are you born ?" " Why are we born l i ke an i m als?" ( 246 ) . The Poet then
questions man 's social exi stence:
Pluck a flower, straig ht you ' l l find the bloom you picked to be another's. If
cornfi elds lie across your path and you m u st pursue you r way, tram p l i ng
on another's cro ps, others will then tram ple yours that you r loss m ay
eq ual theirs(247) .
However, the h i story of man , explains the Poet, reveals man 's lack of d esire to be free
from these conflicts. Christ, as the m ed i ator of man's sufferin g , was crucified by "all
righteous men . . . because H e wished to set men free"(248, 249).
The hegemony of the "rig hteous" that makes h u mankind fear its freedom is
expressed i n the trial of the Daug hter by the Deans of the Fou r Faculties. These fou r
"Deans" : M edicine, Theo logy, Law, a n d Phi losophy, w h o su pposedly represent the
order and reason of i ntellectual t hought, expose i n their fight for m utual exclusivity the
chaos that bel ies the assurances of trad itional ideologies. For their contrad ictions, the
Daughter accuses them "of sow ing the seeds of doubt and d i ssension in the m i nds of
the young"(253) :
Phi losophy: The truth is never dangerous.
M edicine: What is truth?
Law : Whatever can be proved by two witn esses.
Theology : Anyth ing can be proved by two witnesses if you are a
pettifogger.
P h i losopher: Truth is wisd o m , and wisdom and k nowled g e are
phil oso phy itself. P h i losophy is the science of sci ences, the knowledge of
knowledge. All other sci ences are its servants.
M ed i c i n e : The o n l y science is n atural sci ence. Ph ilosophy is not sci ence.
Aiello 3 7
It i s mere em pty speculation (253 ) .
The Chancellor, a s representative o f t h e state, h as no opi n ions o n such a debate. The
Chancellor is " m erely appoi nted" to mai ntai n the ideo log ical status quo by preventing
the four Deans fro m "breaking each other's arm s and l eg s i n the Senate. " "Opinions,"
he explains, "I take good care not to h ave any. I had a few once, but they were soon
explod ed" ( 252) .
The cond emnation of the Daug hter by the ideologies of the wo rld for
challeng i n g their authority sym bol izes the alienation of the Daug hter fro m h u man k i nd
for whom she feels nothing but pity : "to be mortal is not easy"( 257) . As the
perso n ification of a spiritual con sciou sness, the Daughter attem pts to free her
consciousness from the "m ud" of earth and to flee with the Poet " i nto the
wi ldern ess" (256). H er last confl ict i s with the i nternal restraint, the " pangs of
conscience" im posed on h er by the Lawyer, representing the voice of soci ety, the
"righteous, " for n eg l ecti ng her "d uty" to their child. But as the Poet rem i nd s her, for the
Daughter, as for the artistic i m ag i n ation, there is a "vocation . . . the h ig hest duty of
al l "(256). As she shakes "the dust from her feet, the earth, this clay"(259) i n reaching
for h eaven, the Daug hter un ites with her h u m an com panio ns as they free themselves
from the objects that signify their bonds to the world and the alienation of their spirit :
the Doo rkeeper burns her shawl ; the Officer h i s roses for Victo ria; Edith , h er ug l in ess ;
the Lawyer, the report of the proceed ings of the H i g h Court ; and the Poet, A Book of
M artyrs, for whom " sufferi ng [was] rede m ption and d eath deliverance" (259 , 260) . As
she enters the Castle, it burns reveal ing civil ization as "a wall of h u m an faces,
questioning, mourn i n g , despai ring"(261 ) . R eleased from the restrai nts of the Castle,
the forces of l ife reassert themselves ; l i bidinal, l ife-prod ucing energy bursts forth as the
flower-bud bloo m s i nto a giant ch rysanthem u m .
Aiello 3 8
Daug hter. The parting time has come; the end draws near.
Farewell, you child of man, dreamer,
poet, who knows best the way to live.
Above the earth you hover,
plunging at times to graze the dust,
but not to be submerged.
I V. Conclusio n : Strind berg as The Poet
The final word s of the D aug hter to the Poet as she e nters the burn i ng Castle
echoes the voice of Strind berg in regard to the relationsh i p between the new
consciousness and the society from which it sought to separate itself at the turn of the
n i n eteenth century. Altho ugh many critics, i nclud ing one of Stri ndberg ' s biog raphers,
Elizabeth Sprigg e, bel ieve that Strind berg represented h i m self in each of the main
male characters of A Dream Play, as wel l as a" fem al e" self i n the D aug hter, clearly the
Poet is the central perso n ification of h i s artistic i m ag i n ation , or as S prigge d escribes it,
"the earthly self that was closest to the heavens" (201 ) . For Stri nd berg , the poet as
dream er fulfi l l ed several of his personal and artistic n eeds: the dream afforded h i s
artistic self the " best way t o l ive. " H i s dreams were h i s "wings" that allowed
Stri nd berg 's i m ag i n ation to "hover above the earth" that g rounded his l iterary
i m ag i nation with conventional th eater's and even n aturalism 's fetters.
M o reover, the dream as form , manifest in h i s A Dream Play , also enabled
Stri nd berg to show the world as he believed it existed i n 1 90 1 . It propounds the
human experie nce as a frag m entary "confl ict of opposites" resulting i n the alienation of
man's m aterial l ife from his consciousn ess, his spiritual self from his earthly existence.
Aiello 3 9
A Dream Play
represents a world that was so u n real , un pred ictable a n d transitory to
Strind berg and others during that era that they felt it could o n ly be understood cl early
as " a m i rage, a reflectio n , a d ream i m age" (257 ) . Thus, through the su bj ective freedom
real ized in d ream s, the u nconscious, irrational ity, and the artistic i m ag i n atio n , the new
con sciou sness broke free of its earthly bounds allowing Stri ndberg and the rebel l ious
young i ntel lectuals of the g en eration of 1 900 to soar above the positivi sm , materi alistic
val ues, and fai l ed pol itical ideolog ies of their forefathers, albeit briefly, before the
horrors of m ass d estruction i n the Great War caused them to tum ble to earth once
aga i n .
V . A Dream Play i n
Perform ance : Production Notes
Fig u re #1 ( n ext page) is of Max Rein hardt's sem inal prod uction of A Dream
Play,
perform ed i n 1 92 1 i n Stockho l m , Swed e n . R e i n h ardt's stag ing of the play i s
considered one o f t h e most i n novative for its i nterpretation o f t h e dream effect.
Because of the structure of the play, with its m any fantastical settings that merge and
dissolve i nto each other, A Dream Play was consid ered " u n stageable" and was not
produced until five years after it was fi rst published in 1 902 (Styan 28) . A lthough it has
been prod uced a m u ltitude of t i m es si nce its fi rst production i n 1 907, fou r productions
represent sig n ificant i nterpretations of the stag i n g of Strind berg 's A Dream Play.
Strind berg was d i rectly i n volved with the i n itial production , which was performed at his
own I ntimate Theatre. The play, which ran for over three hours i n performance, was
critically well received after its first performance, but "taxing" for audi ences because of
its length and complexity. The play "closed" after j u st twelve perform ances ( M eyer
482) . The second production, pictu red in figure#1 , was performed at the Royal
Dram atic Theatre i n Stockholm and was far more successfully received , as were the
Aiello 40
su bseq uent five productio ns of Olaf Molander in 1 935 thro u g h 1 955. In 1 970 film
d irector, I n g m ar Berg man, creatively adapted and redesigned A Dream Play for a very
successful prod uction perfo rm ed on Swedish television.
Fig u re #1 represents the goal of all of these productions to present on stage the
atmosphere and mood of the dream which is so explicitly woven i nto the text and
i m agery of Strin dberg 's play. Of the three modern productions, there was unan i m ity in
their use of the almost total absence of color i n favor of black, wh ite and g ray as the
most appro priate "color scheme" to express properly the fee l i ng of a d ream . Color was
considered far more representatio n al of " real ity" than the u n real strangeness of the
Aiello 4 1
black and wh ite schema. Molander, however, d id m ake use of "occasion al to uches of
g lowi ng colors" in order to stress the sign ificance of certai n pro perties in the dream
( Holm 252) .
The dream effect was sought i n other techn ical areas as wel l . I n h i s production
of the play, R e i n h ardt used a variety of atmospheric "dream " sou n d effects; however,
he i nsisted that his actors wear th ick felt pads on their shoes to e l i m i n ate any n atural
sounds that may occur from their movement (Tornqvist 257) . Bui l d i ng on the d ream
effect of reappeari ng props ( e . g . the Officer's closet and the clover-leaf door) that
Stri ndberg i nd icated i n his stage d i rections, Molander used the sam e props from
scene to scene to add to the estrangem ent of the d ream . As Eg i l Tornqvist notes i n
Staging 'A Dream Play ',
" a l l the objects g radually becam e fam i liar - they were
recogn ized as som et h i ng that h ad been seen before , som ething k n own and, for that
very reaso n , pecul iar- looking i n thei r n ew su rrou ndin gs" ( 252).
Figure#2 (n ext page) is a rendering of the Prologue, the Daughter's descent
from heaven to earth, done by Carl Grabow for the 1 907 Castegren productio n . How to
stage the Prolog ue, wh ich Stri nd berg added to the origin al text of the play five years
after it was written to "stress the metaphysical d i m ension" (Tornqvist 258) of the play,
was cau se for concern for all who produced the play. The i m m ed i ate question was
whether it should be included at al l . D i rectors and prod ucers handled the Prologue i n
very different ways. Castegre n , i n the 1 907 prod uction i ncl uded the Prologue but
sh ifted the em phasis away from the Daughter to the audience as the dream er of the
action by su rrounding the apron of the stage with " red poppi es, the sym bol of
sleep" (To rnqvist 258) . Mo lander and R e i n h ardt si m i larly i ncluded the Prologue;
however, R e i n h ardt used the spotlight to h i g h l ig ht the Daughter i n "crucial moments" of
the play, such as the Prologue, where the "goddess" aspect of her character needed
Aiel lo 42
to be emphasized ( Holm 25) . Th us, when bathed i n l i g ht, the Daughter was seen as
"sent from the God s" ; when i n norm al stage l i g hting, she was more easily perceived as
Agn es ( Ho l m 25) . The G rabow sketch in figure#2, which depicts t h e l an d scape of the
Prologue, uses l i g ht and darkness to em phasize h eaven and eart h . The Daug hter
em erges from the aura of l ight and descends into w h at are cou l d be assum ed as either
thunder clouds or rock fo rmations on earth (Tornqvist 260). Molander, who
em phasized a "dream y landscape of the Su rrealists" over l ig hting effects for the
Prologue, obviated the staging problem of the Daughter's descent to earth by sim ply
chan g i n g the D aug hter's d i alogue to a voice-over sim i lar to I n d ra's (Tornqvist 264).
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F i g u re#3
Fig ure#3 is a scene from the 1 970 production i n which I ng m ar Berg m an
relocated the Prologue to just before the opera corridor scene. The Poet i s on stage
with Ag nes while I n d ra and h i s Daug hter appear o n an el evated stage beh i n d them . .
Berg m an presented the Prologue as "theatrical i llusion" with I nd ra and the D aughter
assu m i n g the roles as perform ers rather than Gods.Their presentation of the Prologue
Aiello 44
received applause d u ring the play.
Berg m an 's i nterpretation of the P rologue shifts the e m p h asis from the
metaphysical side of the A Dream Play to the artistic, which i s em bod ied by the Poet.
Moreover, Berg m an 's adaptation extends the phi losophical d i m en sions of the play to
include even more of the synthesis of art, phi loso phy and spirituality that is consistent
with the "new consciousness" of the era in which the play was written.
Figu re#4.
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Figu re#4 is a renderi ng of the Growi ng Castle scene desig n ed by Carl G rabow
for the i n itial production of A Dream Play at Stri nd berg 's I ntimate Theatre in 1 907. The
origi nal d esig n was to inco rporate sl ide projections rather than conventional
backdrops and free-standing scen ery to facil itate sm oother transitions between
scenes. Stri nd berg m ai ntai ned that a f l u id paci ng was n ecessary to ach i eve a d ream
Aiello 45
effect (Styan 28) . Because of tech n ical d ifficulties, the projections were abandoned i n
favor o f trad itio nal stag i n g . After t h e play's open i n g , Stri nd berg felt that the scene
changes cau sed by the use of conventio nal scenery and too m uch "vi sual decoration"
made the prod uction seem too "slow and sol i d " ( Styan 28) . Molander, who used si m i l ar
stag i n g , (although projections were used i n his prod uctio ns) kept the action flowing
through the use of a spotlight on characters to " iso late a episode" while the stage was
darkened for set changes. The use of the spotlight for such transitional scenes
enabled the action to flow m uch more smoothly.
Scene shift problems h ave been a concern of all prod uctio n s of A Dream Play.
The Berg m an production i n 1 970 (see figu re#8) resolved the d ifficulties i n a fash ion
closest to what Strind berg h i m self sugg ested . Strind berg felt that almost a bare stage
and a m i n i mal amount of "visual d ecoration" would best represent the world of the
play. Fu rthermo re, simple props could be used sym bol ical ly to suggest locales: sea
shells tor the sea, or a hym n board for the church . Strindberg also bel ieved that slide
projections and l i g hting effects would g reatly en hance the d ream atmosphere of the
play ( Styan 29) .
Fig u res#5, 6 , and 7 ( n ext two pages) i l l u strate simply t h e d ifferences i n
i nterpretation of three prod uctions. T h e two rend eri ngs and o n e photo are of the opera
corridor scene, Figure #5 is the Carl G rabow sketch for the 1 907 Casteg ren
prod uction . What the renderi ng reveal s is the em phasis on realism g iven by that
prod uction. M etapho rical objects, such as the lemon tree and the d i lapidated wall are
rendered w ithout any of the sym bolic m ean ing that Stri nd berg explicitly g ave them i n
h i s stage d i rections. Only t h e open i n g i n t h e door that com bi n es t h e clover-leaf with a
crucifix as a sym bo l of hope, as Stri ndberg suggested , was retain ed (Tornqvist 266).
Figure#6 i s the renderi ng of Franz Dworsky of the opera corridor for the R ei n hardt
Aiello 46
productio n in 1 92 1 . The Dworsky renderi ng exh i bits th e " excessively g loomy and
somber" mood that ch aracterized that production ( Styan 29) . Lastly, figure#? is a photo
of the opera corridor from the set designed by Sven Skawo n i u s for the M o l ander
prod uction i n 1 935 . This scen e is d isti n g uished by its resem blance to the old opera
house i n Stockhol m , a l i keness that Tornqvist i nd i cates would h ave been easily
recogn izable to audi ences (267) . The M o l ander production was h eavi ly based on the
biography of Stri ndberg ; the actor playing the Poet was even mad e u p to resemble
Stri ndberg (Styan 30). As i n the case of recurring props on stage, Molander felt that
the fam i l i arity of the local scenes i n the context of the i m ag i n ary events of the play
enhanced the dream effect (Tornqvist 268) .
Figu re#5 .
Fig u res 6 & 7.
Aiel lo 4?
Aiello 48
Figu re#S.
Figure#S is the Fai rhaven set d esig ned by Len nart Mork for the 1 970 Berg m an
production. U n like most prod uctions of A Dream Play , Berg m an and M o rk separated
the i m ag es of Fai rhaven and Foulstrand that usually appeared s i m u ltaneously on
stage as i nd icated in Stri ndberg 's stage d i rectio n s . I n the Berg m an prod uction, the
movement from Fou l strand to Fairhaven was acco m pl i sh ed by chan g i n g the entire set
and costum i n g from black to wh ite. Only the Poet, the dream er i n the Berg m an
productio n , rem ained i n conventional costu m ing (Tornqvist 271 )
.
Figu res 9 & 1 0.
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Aiel lo 50
Figu res#9& 1 0 are of the Coal heavers' scene from the Casteg ren and R e i n h ardt
prod uctions respectively. Tornqvist poi nts out that the Coal h eavers' scene i s often
om itted from prod uctions of A Dream Play si nce its setting i n a specific locale, a
M ed iterranean resort and the social context of the scene do not "seem wholly
i ntegrated in the play" (271 ). The real istic renderings of the scene in figu res#9 & 1 0
support Strindberg 's naturalist perspective of the social issues raised i n the scene.
Berg man i ncorporated the Coal heavers' scene i nto the Fou lstrand I Fairhaven scene,
as the " bl ackened" Coalh eavers easi ly conform ed with the black and w hite desi g n in
the 1 970 prod uctio n (Tornqvist 273).
Fig ure#1 1 ( next page) is the Lawyer i n the Church scene from the 1 92 1
Reinhardt production . By placing t h e Lawyer on t h e cross, i n add ition t o the crown of
thorns placed on the Lawyer's head as ind icated in th e stage d i rections, R ei n h ardt
em phasized a religious d i m ension of A Dream Play , which Molander extended i n both
of his prod uctio n s in 1 935 and 1 947.
Figure#1 1
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Aiello 52
F i g u re#1 2 .
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Figu re#1 2 i s of the fi nal scene of the Berg m an prod uction i n 1 970. The ending
of Berg m a n ' s prod uction contrasted sharply with the disti nctly rel igious m ean ing of the
final scene as i nterpreted by Olaf Molander. I nstead of the g iant Ch rysanthemum
bursting i nto bloom above the burn i ng G rowing Castle, Molander placed an altar with
Aiello 53
two can d l es i n fro nt of a proj ection of the Castle which dissolved i nto "a col l age of
human faces of d ifferent sizes (Tornqvist 277) . The 1 94 7 Molander prod uction red uced
the metaphysical aspects of the play for a post-war context ( Ho l m 253 ) . M o l ander used
the sam e projectio n s ; however, for this version the wal l of h u m an faces was
transfo rm ed i nto "the black ru ins of houses, rem i n iscent of those found i n European
cities bom bed d u ring World War I I " (Tornqvist 277) . The Poet was l eft on stage in front
of a large wooden cross. Styan feels that such a shift in em phasis from a more
metaphysical or prim itive ending to a m o re rel igious one turned the play away from its
i ntended m eani n g i nto a more " predictable . . . lesson in Christ ian faith" (30).
The Berg m an prod uction was d i stinctive from the others i n its i n novative
revision of the fi n al scene. Berg man abandoned the representation al sets of the
burning Castle for a sym bolic treatment of fire through sym bol ic red d esigns on a
screen . The final focus was altered from that of the Daug hter to the Poet, who "spoke
the fi nal l i n es about the sch izophrenic pred icam ent of h u m an ity : the desire to l eave
and to stay"(Tornqvist 280) . As the lights d i m o n the Poet, attention shifts to Agnes,
weari ng her shawl of sufferin g , sitti ng alone on stage with her head i n her h ands, a
pose that is "clearly a real istic und erstatement of Strind berg 's 'wall of h u m an faces . . .
asking, sorrowi ng, despairing"(Tornqvist 280) . Thus, Berg m an fused a m etaphysical
perspective and a co ncern for hum an ity i nto a powerful expression of August
Stri nd berg 's nyan aturalism .
Aiello 54
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