With all its apparent disregard of what is commonly called
realism, and with its occasional, but quite unblushing, use of
methods generally held superseded--such as the casual introduction
of characters at whatever moment they happen to be needed on the
stage--it has, from the start, been among the most frequently
played and most enthusiastically received of Strindberg's later
dramas. At Stockholm it was first taken up by the Royal Dramatic
Theatre, and was later seen on the tiny stage of the Intimate
Theatre, then devoted exclusively to Strindberg's works. It was
one of the earliest plays staged by Reinhardt while he was still
experimenting with his Little Theatre at Berlin, and it has also
been given in numerous German cities, as well as in Vienna.

Concerning my own version of the play I wish to add a word of
explanation. Strindberg has laid the scene in Paris. Not only the
scenery, but the people and the circumstances are French. Yet he
has made no attempt whatever to make the dialogue reflect French
manners of speaking or ways of thinking. As he has given it to us,
the play is French only in its most superficial aspect, in its
setting--and this setting he has chosen simply because he needed a
certain machinery offered him by the Catholic, but not by the
Protestant, churches. The rest of the play is purely human in its
note and wholly universal in its spirit. For this reason I have
retained the French names and titles, but have otherwise striven
to bring everything as close as possible to our own modes of
expression. Should apparent incongruities result from this manner
of treatment, I think they will disappear if only the reader will
try to remember that the characters of the play move in an
existence cunningly woven by the author out of scraps of ephemeral
reality in order that he may show us the mirage of a more enduring