written a mighty and capitvating work. It is one of the few dramas
that have had the power to stir me to the depths."

Of his choice of theme in "Countess Julie," Strindberg says: "When
I took this motive from life, as it was related to me a few years
ago, it made a strong impression on me. I found it suitable for
tragedy, and it still makes a sorrowful impression on me to see an
individual to whom happiness has been allotted go under, much more,
to see a line become extinct." And in defence of his realism he has
said further in his preface to "Countess Julie": "The theatre has
for a long time seemed to me the Biblia pauperum in the fine arts,
a bible with pictures for those who can neither read nor write, and
the dramatist is the revivalist, and the revivalist dishes tap the
ideas of the day in popular form, so popular that the middle class,
of whom the bulk of theatre-goers is comprised, can without
burdening their brains understand what it is all about. The theatre
therefore has always been a grammar school for the young, the
half-educated, and women, who still possess the primitive power of
being able to delude themselves and of allowing themselves to be
deluded, that is to say, receive illusions and accept suggestions
from the dramatist. *** Some people have accused my tragedy, 'The
Father' of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy.
People call authoritatively for the 'Joy of Life' and theatrical
managers call for farces, as though the Joy of Life lay in being
foolish, and in describing people who each and every one are
suffering from St. Vitus' dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life
in the powerful, terrible struggles of life; and the capability of
experiencing something, of learning something, is a pleasure to me.
And therefore I have chosen an unusual but instructive subject; in
other words, an exception, but a great exception, that will