| Title | : | Miss Julie and Other Plays |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0192833170 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780192833174 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 313 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1957 |
A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata, and The Dance of Death. Michael Robinson's highly performable translations are based on the authoritative texts of the new edition of Strindberg's collected works in Sweden and include the Preface to Miss Julie, Strindberg's manifesto of theatrical naturalis
Miss Julie and Other Plays Reviews
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A one-of-a kind of his kind**
(the most wonderful thing about Tiggers, natch).
((Individual reviews/rambling "thoughts" in reverse reading order as Igowent...))
Ghost Sonata (1907)
Brilliant stuff, and to my mind what happened when S. imposed a bit more...structure, shall we say (or apparent structure at least), on the possibilities opened up by the genius-level-cray-cray of A Dream Play six years earlier. Would LOVE to see this one staged, along with The Father
A Dream Play (1901)
WT unholy F was that?!
—Random snippets of dialogue from the sanitorium restaurant of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain shouted out while "The Blue Danube Waltz" played in the background?
—An Oxford Union debate between the faculties of Law, Theology, Philosophy and Medicineheld in the common room of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?
—Some automatic writing passed back-and-forth between of W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory whilst Mme. Blavatsky held a séance & channeling the battling spirits of a Stockholm borgmästare, Emile Zola, and the Krishna of the Mahabarata?
—The source documents for T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land sung to the tune of "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite"?
—A good/bad acid trip (assuming there is a difference) taken while a comunity theatre stages Bulwer Lytton in your mother's pristine, antimaccassar- and plastic-seat-cover-bedecked, unlivable living room and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome plays on the 70" TV mounted above the electric "fireplace" behind them?
Exhibit A:OFFICER. Oh, this is dreadful, really dreadful!
SCHOOLMASTER. Yes, dreadful, that’s precisely what it is when a big boy like you has no ambition…
OFFICER. [pained]. A big boy, yes, I am big, much bigger than them; I’m grown up. I’ve finished school… [as if waking up] but I’ve a doctorate… What am I doing sitting here? Haven’t I got my doctorate?
SCHOOLMASTER. Yes, of course, but you’ll sit here and mature, you see, mature… Isn’t that it?
[Redacted, to spare your sanity]
SCHOOLMASTER. No, you are still far from mature…
OFFICER. But how long will I have to sit here, then?
SCHOOLMASTER. How long? Do you think that time and space exist?… Suppose that time exists, you ought to be able to say what time is. What is time?
OFFICER. Time?… [Considers] I can’t say, but I know what it is. Ergo* I know what two times
two is, without being able to say it.—Can you tell me what time is, sir?
SCHOOLMASTER. [...] Time?— — —Let me see! [Remains standing motionless with his finger to his nose] While we are talking, time flies. Therefore time is something that flies while I talk!
A BOY [getting up]. You are talking now, and while you are talking, I’m flying, therefore I am time! [Flees]
SCHOOLMASTER. According to the laws of logic that is perfectly correct!
OFFICER. But in that case the laws of logic are absurd, because Nils can’t be time just because he flew away!
SCHOOLMASTER. That is also perfectly correct according to the laws of logic, although it remains quite absurd.
OFFICER. Then logic is absurd!
SCHOOLMASTER. It really looks that way. But if logic is absurd, then so is the whole world too… and in that case why the hell should I sit here teaching all of you such absurdities!—If someone will stand us a drink, we’ll go for a swim!
Exhibit B:LORD CHANCELLOR. What was hidden behind the door?
And so by all the powers which the heyday of European imperialism and the approaching assasination of Franz Ferdinand have invested in me, I hereby appoint myself to bestow upon this...this "play"...
GLAZIER. I can’t see anything.
LORD CHANCELLOR. He can’t see anything! No, I can believe it!— — —Deans! What was hidden behind the door?
DEAN OF THEOLOGY. Nothing! That is the solution to the riddle of the universe!— — —In the beginning God created heaven and earth out of nothing.
DEAN OF PHILOSOPHY. Nothing will come of nothing.
DEAN OF MEDICINE. Rubbish! That’s all nothing!
DEAN OF LAW. I have my doubts!… There is a fraud here somewhere. I appeal to all right-thinking people!
DAUGHTER [to the POET ]. Who are these right-thinking people?
POET. If only one could say! It usually means just the one person. Today it’s I and mine, tomorrow it’s you and yours.—You are appointed to the post, or rather, you appoint yourself.
5*/0*/No Rating
The Dance Of Death (1900)
Precisely like Bergman's "newly dead dancing across the hills" (as Bruce Cockburn once sang) in The Seventh Seal, except minus all traces of love or humanity, i.e. minus the Knight and the Squire and the martyred girl and the fortunate circus family. Only the murderous, avaricious defrocked priest remains, except he's also the lifeless, life-denying pastor from Fanny and Alexander who's now married not to F&A's widowed actress-mother, but a female version of himself (also an actress), who when you so much as blink is now the antimatter version of the superannuated hero of Wild Strawberries after he and all the berries are long, long dead. It's the six-hour-longScenes from a Marriage though the clock sez less than two, and where what's done is done and cannot be undone, to bed, to bed, to bed, but the dream contains just another couple of bad actors in a musical medley of Beckett's Happy Daze/Endgame, except both trashcan Sinatras hum the "March of the Boyars" as they go to war with each other, animus vs anima, except this psychomachia is just all to the tune of me me me me me, maestro.
4*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFXUw...
Miss Julie (1888)
You've seen this all before (these class and gender wars) ((though to be fair late 19C Europe hadn't, or overmuch))...a ho-hum, journeyman
3*
The Father (1887)
Connubial contraflow mendacity + misogyny + misandry = a clearly masterful, near miraculous miasma of misanthropy from which there can be no escape. Strindberg needed just the right amount of insanity to imagineer this out of nada-ville, and achieves a perfect balancing act here.
6 gobsmacked stars out of 5.
**You really, really might not want to click on this spoiler of an explanation to the above:
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Troubled by feelings of excessive cheerfulness? Worried that you're treading a little to closely to the edge of hope? Have no fear! The bleak works of Strindberg are guaranteed to slather a new coat of tarry blackness across the bare cinder-block walls of your soul. Enjoy!
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In this compilation, I enjoyed “The Father,” “Miss Julie,” and “The Dance of Death,” most.
When Strindberg is good, he is great.
Lot’s going on in the spaces between the written lines.
The problem with these cleverly packaged compendiums of an author’s oeuvre of works is that the quality of the finished product will vary. -
Quite the Soap Opera, yet I had to read to the end to find out what was to become of the headstrong and immoral Julie.
Good commentary on the caste system between the Title Aristocracy and their servants. -
Inbetween a 2 and a 3, really... good stuff, but not always to my taste. Reality doesn't always have to be dismal, I feel. Interesting commentaries on society. Strindberg really hated women in his plays, though.
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At times very strange as it pushes the bounds of realism well into the modern era, but dang is this a good play.
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One of the best books of literary art I have read in last few years.
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Review on my blog:
https://classicsconsidered.com/2020/1... -
A very uneven collection of plays, which I read in a 1917 translation available on the Internet Archive.
Miss Julie(1888) clearly towers over the rest of the plays in this collection. Claustrophobic and fascinating in its penetrating depiction of some very dark and morbid places in the psyche, it compresses gender and social conflict and alienation and has become a key modern play. The language is deceptively simple but it is a hard play to read and appreciate. I would recommend complementing its reading by watching a good theatre or film version such as the 1987 BBC television production directed by Michael Simpson, in which Janet McTeer plays the title role.
The Creditor(1889) is the only other play comparable in length to Miss Julie in this collection, and has some excellent moments about what could be termed the Pygmalion power play between the sexes and psychic "cannibalism", in which the woman becomes a kind of succubus, draining the man of his (apparent) energy and initiative and showing the petty, feeble and childish creature within. It was originally written as a substitute for Miss Julie when this play was banned by the censor.
The rest of the plays are much shorter. In The Stronger Woman(1888-1889), an older, married actress ultimately triumphs over her younger colleague who has been having an affair with her husband. It is a well written monologue (the younger actress never actually speaks) and should work well on the stage.
Motherly Love(1892)is a short study in the smothering power of a mother who uses her daughter as a pawn in her struggle against her daughter´s father. It has too many twists and turns to be credible and winds up as a sort of dark melodrama.
The last two plays, both written in 1889 are influenced by Edgar Allen Poe´s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Paria(1889) and particularly Simoon, are weak and very unconvincing; the first is a sort of psychological thriller in which what turn out to be two criminals are pitted against each other while the second is an orientalist nightmare, a terribly unrealistic delirium of a french soldier dying of thirst as part of some dark, magical revenge by another of Strindberg´s demon female lover, a desert native, who mocks and betrays him. -
"Human beings are to be pitied!" (196)
That human beings are to be pitied is the thread that runs through this collection of five of Strindberg's plays: The Father, Miss Julie, The Dance of Death I, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata. I have reviewed the plays individually, so I will not go into detail again here. This edition included a great introduction (to each play and to Strindberg and his art more generally, including his relation to others like Ibsen, Freud, etc.) as well as elaborate notes which were very helpful. My favorite among the plays was definitely A Dream Play. I think that the challenge with Strindberg is (or at least, I found that it was for me) to see the beauty, complexity, creativity, allusiveness, and conviction of his plays, without being too viscerally affected by their contents.
Links to reviews:
The Father
Miss Julie
The Dance of Death I
A Dream Play
The Ghost Sonata -
Miss Julie was excellent, a bit better than Doll House. The Father was also good, but it had a bit of Strindberg's misogyny. I liked Dance of Death, it was kind of absurd. I gave up with Dream Play however, too much meaningless abstraction.
Strindberg is difficult, he's a bit of an odd duck, the Scandinavian artists of all sorts are a little bit off, I think it's the incredibly short days in the winter. -
Crisp translations, but this volume is let down by the editor's decision to leave out 'Dance of Death' part II.
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Miss Julie seemed like a very werid play in the beginning. I did not quite understand it first since everything felt scattered. But gradually, the plot began to take shape especially when Jean talked about his struggles of coming from a lower class. I think this play is based around class divide and social norms. Jean feels like a charcater who is constantly scared of being caught and word of their affair getting spread but on the other hand he is also determined to change his stautus from a commoner to an elite. Jean looks down on Miss Julie as he coniders her to be 'spolilt' or 'immature' who has not seen any struggles that he has been through in his life. He is right to an extent where Miss Julie starts talking about running somehwere to Switzerland and starting a new life and expecting everything to work out in her favour. Miss Julie's character is portrayed as a priviledged one when she says 'we can always come back home' which is unrealistic in a situation where she runs away with her servants. The ending of the play felt unecessary because Miss Julie did not necessarily have to die but I think I can understand why she did so. Persoanlly, I see that Jean wanted to get rid of Miss Julie because his Lord being back home he no longer wanted to risk anything even if it meant Miss Julie has to die. The ending is only logical in Jean's perspective as his burden of Miss Julienis now wiped off and he can continue with his life as he had planned by marrying Kristin of moving somehwere new once he gathers enough money. For Miss Julie, it cost her life to liberate her from her constant feeling of confinement and her ideal ideas of liberty and love which could never be achieved by her in any sense.
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Full-length drama in one act by August Strindberg, published in Swedish as Fröken Julie in 1888 and performed in 1889. The play substitutes such interludes as a peasant dance and a pantomime for the conventional divisions of acts, scenes, and intermissions.
Julie, an aristocratic young woman, has a brief affair with Jean, her father’s valet. After the sexual thrill has dissipated, they realize that they have little or nothing in common. Heredity, combined with social and psychological factors, has determined their futures. Strindberg portrays Julie as an aristocrat whose era has passed and Jean as an opportunistic social climber to whom the future beckons. -
Excellent collection of Strindberg's plays. Naturalist in presenting psychologically realistic characters, depicting the dream state. Married couples locked together in conflict; misery, cruelty, death. Generally, a justified depiction of how horrible people are, and how backwards society is. Strindberg also doesn't seem to like women very much, so be prepared for some misogyny.
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Swedish CYNICISM! -& an ACID TONGUE as well. this grim Humanity proceeds "mind games;" & they're plenty of gaslighting & mental TRAP here! WATCH OUT for British translators who will fill these charming (horrific) Swedish hamlets into LOT, CHEEKY, BLOKE & allthat: all part of the British Empire, i'm sure ..
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I loved reading Strindberg. One of the very few theater authors I like. I enjoyed the way his sadistic and gullible characters fall with each other, if you do not mind a few little deviations.
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read all but one of these (the dance of death) for class so am logging this bc it’s easier than logging them individually. really enjoyed the father and miss julie
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It was unfortunate that they placed The Father at the start, it was all downhill from there.
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Just read Miss Julie and I loved it ♥️
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The Father
The play “The Father” represents a turn from Strindberg’s earliest satirical works with sociopolitical subjects toward the naturalistic dissection of the characters, convincingly based on reality; he creates a mosaic work from his and other people’s lives. In “The Father” he presents his own frustrations and insecurities that he faced during his unsuccessful marriage with Siri von Essen. The main thought that drives the protagonist insane is the insecurity about his own fathership, while women are represented in a very negative light as cunning, manipulative, untrustworthy and vindictive, therefore 2 ⭐
Miss Julie
Miss Julie is a tragic play about a relationship between Julie, daughter of an aristocrat, and Jean, his servant. Each character has their motive to start a relationship: Julie is guided by her natural instincts, but weighed down by her snug life as an aristocrat, she is fragile and naïve; while Jean has strong motives to climb the social ladder: he utilizes the weaknesses of Miss Julie, he’s remorseful and as only the fittest survive he accomplishes his goal and leaves Julie in ruins. 3⭐
The Dance of Death I
“The Dance of Death” is written under the strong influence of Nietzsche’s nihilism. As the main theme “The Dance of Death” has the hell of marital ennui. Everyday life of a long time married couple is portrayed very realistically as their feelings shift from hatred, to indifference, to love and care as an act of desperation, only for their relationship to worsen again and end up in this vicious circle that anew lights the flame of pure hatred. 4⭐
A Dream Play
"A Dream Play" represents author’s interest in Freud’s psychoanalysis as well as in Buddhism. A fictional Vedic goddess Agnes ventures down to Earth to see how big the sufferings of humans really are. Characteristics of a dream play make it possible to show her travel across the Earth by swiftly changing sceneries and by making impossible possible, all by following logic of dreams. The play is shaped by dramatist’s concern to depict his pessimistic vision of the world in the guise of the dream it appears to him to be. 3⭐
The Ghost Sonata
“The Ghost Sonata” is mostly inspired by Christian and Eastern religions. Strindberg sees the real world as a symbolism of the spiritual world, whereby the real world is covered by a veil of illusions that prevents us from discovering the truth. As a main subject we once again come by Strindberg’s pessimism and his view of the family as a dysfunctional system of which he could never be a part. Arkenholz, a young student, meets a mysterious old man that shows him the realities of family life that flows between lies and truth, illusions and reality and conversations and silence as Strindberg takes a pessimistic attitude towards the language and sees it as a main tool people use to cover the truth. The young student realizes that the life on Earth is actually Hell, through which we need to go, in order to get redemption. 3⭐ -
5 stars for Miss Julie, 4 stars for A Dream Play, and an uncertain 3 stars for The Father, Dance of Death, and A Ghost Sonata.
I actually consider myself quite good at reading plays, they often play out quite well in the theater of my imagination. My inner director takes the suggestions of the writer into consideration, but ultimately does her own thing. For example, August Strindberg, in his prologue to Miss Julie, seems to think I should portray the title character as the poster-child of all things wrong with the fairer sex. I'm sorry, Mr. Strindberg, but in my production, the troubled, naive heiress comes across as a multi-faceted individual with deeply personal issues, not some broad brush-stroke symbol meant to stand in for all womankind. The twisted, ever-reversing relationship between Julie and her father's footman Jean is compelling in its own right, but I never for a moment imagined it as shorthand for ALL relationships between men and women everywhere. Because I believe that's what you intended, from your prologue? No matter. Hollywood writers know that once a script is written, it's out your hands for the director to do as she sees fit.
I suppose I should spare a few words for the other plays (though if you just read one, make it Miss Julie). Strindberg likes to write from life, and the man of troubled marriages makes the troubled marriage and the wars of Mars and Venus a main focus of his work. He also likes the "vampire" theme--in this case, a character who sucks joy and energy from the people around him. The surrealA Dream Play, serves as a reprieve from the usual bleak, claustrophobic atmosphere and shows instead god Indra's daughter descending to earth to learn about human misery. Despite this, I found it quite playful and even comical at times, what with the mystery of the locked door, the verbal sparring of the four Deans of knowledge, and the Lawyer who argues that one can never be happy, because one is always hungover and guilt-ridden the morning after. -
It was good to read (finally!) the Strindberg play which critics and historians agree ushered in naturalism & a change to theater. I was put off it for so long by a stellar but disturbing 1999 film adaptation in which an off-stage coupling was rendered more like rape on screen. Returning to the source I found myself pleasantly surprised although I wanted to raise a sadistic hand against Strindberg for his portrayal of Froken Julie (and all women) as an animal in heat and as a degenerate. His misogyny can be hard for contemporary women to take but the tense 90 minute drama fully held my attention until Miss Julie's last exit.
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Strindberg is essential reading for anyone interested in the modern theatre, so another assignment for you - of course if you'd taken my theatre class you would have read it..you WouLD have, right? Miss Julie is very short and not very sweet, but brilliant.
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This play is really very depressing, but it's also quite wonderful. The characters are interesting, and their interactions are intense but fun to watch.
