Plays by August Strindberg, Third Series

SWANWHITE SIMOOM DEBIT AND CREDIT ADVENT THE THUNDERSTORM AFTER THE FIRE
The collection of plays contained in this volume is unusually representative, giving what might be called a cross-section of Strindberg's development as a dramatist from his naturalistic revolt in the middle eighties, to his final arrival at resigned mysticism and Swedenborgian symbolism.
Swanwhite was written in the spring of 1901, about the time when Strindberg was courting and marrying his third wife, the gifted Swedish actress Harriet Bosse. In the fall of 1902 the play appeared in book form, together with The Crown Bride and The Dream Play, all of them being issued simultaneously, at Berlin, in a German translation made by Emil Schering.
Schering, who at that time was in close correspondence with Strindberg, says that the figure of Swanwhite had been drawn with direct reference to Miss Bosse, who had first attracted the attention of Strindberg by her spirited interpretation of Biskra in Simoom. And Schering adds that it was Strindberg's bride who had a little previously introduced him to the work of Maeterlinck, thereby furnishing one more of the factors determining the play.
Concerning the influence exerted upon him by the Belgian playwright-philosopher, Strindberg himself wrote in a pamphlet named Open Letters to the Intimate Theatre (Stockholm, 1909):
I had long had in mind skimming the cream of our most beautiful folk-ballads in order to turn them into a picture for the stage. Then Maeterlinck came across my path, and under the influence of his puppet-plays, which are not meant for the regular stage, I wrote my Swedish scenic spectacle, 'Swanwhite.' It is impossible either to steal or to borrow from Maeterlinck. It is even difficult to become his pupil, for there are no free passes that give entrance to his world of beauty. But one may be urged by his example into searching one's own dross-heaps for gold—and it is in that sense I acknowledge my debt to the master.