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    Miss. Julie
    Miss. Julie
    Miss. Julie
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    Miss. Julie

    By August Strindberg

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    On Midsummer’s Eve, Miss Julie, a young noblewoman enters into an illicit affair with her father’s valet, Jean. Worldly and cultured, Jean by turns spurns and encourages Miss Julie’s flirtation, eventually initiating a relationship with disastrous consequences for her.

    August Strindberg’s naturalistic play Miss Julie (Miss Julia) was the premiere production of the Scandinavian Naturalistic Theatre. While initially censored for content, the play has since become one of the most successful naturalistic dramas written, and has been performed on stages around the world each year since its premiere in 1888. Miss Julie has also been adapted numerous times for film, most recently by Liv Ullman with Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell in the roles of Miss Julie and Jean.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9781443441599
    Miss. Julie
    Author

    August Strindberg

    Renowned Swedish writer, playwright and painter August Strindberg is known as one of the fathers of modern theatre. Born in Sweden in 1849, August Strindberg was raised in poverty. A multi-faceted artist given to extremes, he battled depression and emotional turmoils throughout his life. Strindberg was actively involved in the trade union movement and was especially admired by the working class of his time as a radical writer who zealously attacked social ills and hypocrisies in his work. After Strindberg was overlooked by the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1909, a grass-roots petition campaign was launched in protest, which resulted in a large sum of money raised to compensate the cherished writer. Strindberg’s early plays were written in the Naturalistic style, the best known of which is Miss Julie, one of the most studied and performed dramas in the world to this day. When he broke with Naturalism, the versatile Strindberg found equal success in producing works informed by Symbolism. He proceeded to become one of the pioneers of the modern European stage and Expressionism. Strindberg’s most engaging dramas deal with the constant and consuming battle for power between the sexes, bound together in perverse and complex relationships in which desire is mingled with scorn, and negotiated within the strictures imposed on class and gender roles by social conventions. Strindberg continued to write of the alienated modern man, who is desperate and alone in a forsaken universe, until his death in 1912.

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    Reviews for Miss. Julie

    3.5/5

    162 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Tight, complex, brilliant, disturbing. Good theatre.
    • 4/5
      A tragedy in the traditional sense, despite Strindberg's being a modern playwright. I didn't have much sympathy for the title character at first... She makes some very foolish choices under the influence of alcohol and hormones which have terrible consequences. My initial reaction was 'how could she be so stupid?' but as I thought about the play I realized that while her actions were stupid, they were also not uncommon (especially for someone in late teens/early twenties). One aspect of Miss Julia's behaviour that I really didn't like was when she kept asking the manservant Jean to tell her what to do. Perhaps that rang true in 1888 but it didn't seem to fit in with her character.
    • 3/5
      I would've rated this 1.5 stars last night as I finished and turned off the light. I didn't feel great, was disappointed with a classical program on NPR and found this play a touch hysterical. During the cold darkness of early morning I reflected on some of the subtle touches, the yellow label and the ill fated bird. The condensed nature of the action was difficult to believe. The pastoral passages by comparison were beautiful.

      That said I would afford the Author's Preface five stars as a validation of Naturalism. Strindberg is wonderful in his exposition.

      I am still not a fan of the play but would read it again.
    • 3/5
      I had to read it for my Scandinavian Historical and Cultural Topics class, thought it was alright I guess? Not a huge fan of Strindberg.

    Book preview

    Miss. Julie - August Strindberg

    hpc_strindberg_miss_julie_resized.jpg

    MISS JULIE

    August Strindberg

    Translated with Introduction by Edwin Björkman

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    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Author’s Preface

    Persons

    Miss Julie

    About the Author

    About the Series

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Introduction

    The volume containing the translation of There Are Crimes and Crimes had barely reached the public when word came across the ocean that August Strindberg had ended his long fight with life. His family had long suspected some serious organic trouble. Early in the year, when he had just recovered from an illness of temporary character, their worst fears became confirmed. An examination disclosed a case of cancer in the stomach, and the disease progressed so rapidly that soon all hope of recovery was out of the question. On May 14, 1912, Strindberg died.

    With his death peace came in more senses than one. All the fear and hatred which he had incurred by what was best as well as worst in him seemed to be laid at rest with his own worn-out body. The love and the admiration which he had won in far greater measure were granted unchecked expression. His burial, otherwise as simple as he himself had prescribed, was a truly national event. At the grave of the arch-rebel appeared a royal prince as official representative of the reigning house, the entire cabinet, and numerous members of the Riksdag. Thousands of men and women representing the best of Sweden’s intellectual and artistic life went to the cemetery, though the hour of the funeral was eight o’clock in the morning. It was an event in which the masses and the classes shared a common sorrow, the standards of student organizations mingling with the banners of labour unions. And not only the capital, but the whole country, observed the day as one of mourning.

    A thought frequently recurring in the comment passed on Strindberg’s death by the European press was that, in some mysterious manner, he, more than any other writer, appeared to be the incarnation of the past century, with its nervous striving after truth, its fear of being duped, and its fretting dread that evolution and progress might prove antagonistic terms. And at that simple grave in Stockholm more than one bareheaded spectator must have heard the gravel rattle on the coffin lid with a feeling that not only a great individual, but a whole human period—great in spite of all its weaknesses—was being laid away forever.

    Among more than half a hundred plays produced by Strindberg during his lifetime, none has won such widespread attention as Miss Julia, both on account of its masterful construction and its gripping theme. Whether liking or disliking it, critics have repeatedly compared it with Ibsen’s Ghosts, and not always to the advantage of the latter work. It represents, first of all, its author’s most determined and most daring endeavour to win the modern stage for Naturalism. If he failed in this effort, it must be recalled to his honour that he was among the first to proclaim his own failure and to advocate the seeking of new paths. When the work was still hot from his hands, however, he believed in it with all the fervour of which his spirit was capable, and to bring home its lesson the more forcibly, he added a preface, a sort of dramatic creed, explaining just what he had tried to do, and why. This preface, which has become hardly less famous than the play itself, is here, as I believe, for the first time rendered into English. The acuteness and exhaustiveness of its analysis serves not only to make it a psychological document of rare value, but also to save me much of the comment which without it might be deemed needful.

    Years later, while engaged in conducting a theatre for the exclusive performance of his own plays at Stockholm, Strindberg formulated a new dramatic creed—that of his mystical period, in which he was wont to sign himself "the author of Gustavus Vasa, ‘The Dream Play,’ ‘The Last Knight,’ etc. It took the form of a pamphlet entitled A Memorandum to the Members of the Intimate Theatre from the Stage Director" (Stockholm, 1908). There he gave the following data concerning Miss Julia, and the movement which that play helped to start:

    "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 Théâtre Libre at Paris, and Thérèse 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 Théâtre 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 Bühne 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

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