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“In the ’80’s the new time began to extend its demands for reform to the stage also. Zola declared war against the French comedy, with its Brussels carpets, its patent-leather shoes and patent-leather themes, and its dialogue reminding one of the questions and answers of the Catechism. In 1887 Antoine opened his Theatre Libre at Paris, and ‘Therese Raquin,’ although nothing but an adapted novel, became the dominant model. It was the powerful theme and the concentrated form that showed innovation, although the unity of time was not yet observed, and curtain falls were retained. It was then I wrote my dramas: ‘Miss Julia,’ ‘The Father,’ and ‘Creditors.’

“‘Miss Julia,’ which was equipped with a now well-known preface, was staged by Antoine, but not until 1892 or 1893, having previously been played by the Students’ Association of the Copenhagen University in 1888 or 1889. In the spring of 1893 ‘Creditors’ was put on at the Theatre L’OEuvre, in Paris, and in the fall of the same year ‘The Father’ was given at the same theatre, with Philippe Garnier in the title part.

“But as early as 1889 the Freie Buehne had been started at Berlin, and before 1893 all three of my dramas had been performed. ‘Miss Julia’ was preceded by a lecture given by Paul Schlenther, now director of the Hofburg Theater at Vienna. The principal parts were played by Rosa Bertens, Emanuel Reicher, Rittner and Jarno. And Sigismund Lautenburg, director of the Residenz Theater, gave more than one hundred performances of ‘Creditors.’

“Then followed a period of comparative silence, and the drama sank back into the old ruts, until, with the beginning of the new century, Reinhardt opened his Kleines Theater. There I was played from the start, being represented by the long one-act drama ‘The Link,’ as well as by ‘Miss Julia’ (with Eysoldt in the title part), and ‘There Are Crimes and Crimes.'”

He went on to tell how one European city after another had got its “Little,” or “Free,” or “Intimate” theatre. And had he known of it, he might have added that the promising venture started by Mr. Winthrop Ames at New York comes as near as any one of its earlier rivals in the faithful embodiment of those theories which, with Promethean rashness, he had flung at the head of a startled world in 1888. For the usual thing has happened: what a quarter-century ago seemed almost ludicrous in its radicalism belongs to-day to the established traditions of every progressive stage.

Had Strindberg been content with his position of 1888, many honours now withheld might have fallen to his share. But like Ibsen, he was first and last–and to the very last!–an innovator, a leader of human thought and human endeavour. And so it happened that when the rest thought to have overtaken him, he had already hurried on to a more advanced position, heedless of the scorn poured on him by those to whom “consistency” is the foremost of all human virtues. Three years before his death we find him writing as follows in another pamphlet “An Open Letter to the Intimate Theatre,” Stockholm, 1909–of the position once assumed so proudly and so confidently by himself:

“As the Intimate Theatre counts its inception from the successful performance of ‘Miss Julia’ in 1900, it was quite natural that the young director (August Falck) should feel the influence of the Preface, which recommended a search for actuality. But that was twenty years ago, and although I do not feel the need of attacking myself in this connection, I cannot but regard all that pottering with stage properties as useless.”

It has been customary in this country to speak of the play now presented to the public as “Countess Julie.” The noble title is, of course, picturesque, but incorrect and unwarranted. It is, I fear, another outcome of that tendency to exploit the most sensational elements in Strindberg’s art which has caused somebody to translate the name of his first great novel as “The Scarlet Room,”–instead of simply “The Red Room,”–thus hoping to connect it in the reader’s mind with the scarlet woman of the Bible.