Product Review

The second volume in the series of authoritative Methuen editions of Strindberg's Collected Plays

This volume contains two of Strindberg's best-known plays from the years following his mental breakdown: the expressionist masterpiece A Dream Play (1901), which he described as 'my most beloved play, child of my greatest pain'; and both parts of The Dance of Death (1900), a terrifying analysis of a tormented marriage: 'it leaves an astonishing, an almost unaccountable, impression of genius . . . as a beggar's cloak full of holes may have a kind of majestic beauty when the wind fills it, so this broken drama, having unmistakably the winds of vision in it, has beauty and dignity and power' (The Times, 1928). Also included is his earlier short play The Stronger (1889), a fascinating study of the power of personality. "Michael Meyer is the translator most actors turn to when seeking a definitive text" (Sunday Times)