August Strindberg, a rival to Henrik Ibsen and his naturalistic style of writing, became known as one of the frontrunners of what we today think of as Expressionistic theatre. In A Dream Play Strindberg is right on the brink of Expressionism without realizing it fully, yet hr is held back by symbolism and biographical drama running rampant throughout.
In A Dream Play, Strindberg attempts to imitate the logical form of a dream. Time and space are not important in the dramaturgy, the characters split, all thoughts and perceptions emanate from a single individual's unconscious: the dreamer's, for him there are no secrets, no scruples, no laws. Here we as an audience "dream" of Indra's/Agnes" journey. Behind the luminous protagonist, Daughter of Indra, who descends to earth, was the young actress Harriet Bosse, who became the author's third wife. "We are now convinced that our union will be a lasting one, for we are living in complete harmony," he wrote in his diary on 25 June 1901. The following day she left him - "without saying goodbye, without saying where she was going." She returned to him in August, pregnant, but left again the same month. He later wrote of the incident: "People are not born wicked, but life makes them wicked. So life cannot be an education, nor can it be a punishment (which improves); it is simply an evil." In October Harriet returned to him, three months pregnant. Such was the background against which, over the next six and a half weeks, he composed A Dream Play.
Combat was Strindberg's way of sustaining his self-esteem and stimulating his creativity. He hated his rivals (not only Ibsen, but also Shakespeare), and he despised most ethnic groups: the Swedes, of course, but also the Germans, the French, the English and above all the Jews. "My writing," he complained in the standard idiom of anti-semitism, "is sucked dry by the Jews, who have squeezed the brain and blood from my body.
