Plays: The Dream Play - The Link - The Dance of Death Part I and II

Book excerpt: Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. This work contains: A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AUGUST STRINDBERG'S MAIN WORKS THE DREAM PLAY THE LINK THE DANCE of DEATH, PART I THE DANCE of DEATH, PART II