| In his preface to the play Miss Julie, August Strindberg writes "My souls (characters) are conglomerations of past and present stages of civilization, bits from books and newspapers, scraps of humanity, rags and tatters of fine clothing, patched together as is the human soul. And I have added a little evolutionary history by making the weaker steal and repeat the words of the stronger, and by making the characters borrow ideas or "suggestions" from one another." "The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exelusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full lifetime; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable." |
August Strindberg Online Texts: August Strindberg texts in English - Strindberg Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; the Stronger
In the stately kitchen of a wealthy Count's estate, the war between the sexes is simmering to a boil. The Count's beautiful, aggressive daughter Miss Julie has set about to seduce Jean, the Count's footservant. But what begins as a manipulative flirtation soon turns into a dangerous game of passion, power and betrayal.
Buy at amazon.com Miss Julie and Other Plays that is The FatherA drama in one act by August Strindberg, written in Swedish as Fröken Julie in 1888 but staged for the first time in Sweden 18 years later due to censorship . Also called Countess Julie and Lady Julie, the play substitutes such interludes as a peasant dance and a pantomime for the conventional divisions of acts, scenes, and intermissions. The two main characters are a noble woman, Miss Julie and her father's footman, Jean. 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. Strindberg portrays Julie as a decaying aristocrat whose era has passed and Jean as an opportunistic social climber to whom the future beckons