Tulane Drama Review: Volume 4 -

The Esthetic Fault of Strindberg's "Dream Plays"
John R. Milton
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

23 November 2021, pp. 108-116
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Although August Strindberg is frequently considered to be the father of modern drama, contemporary criticism has not yet approached his expressionistic “Dream plays” with confidence. One group of critics maintains that the difficulty is due to the autobiographical nature of the plays; another asserts that it lies in dealing with a unique talent which cannot be judged according to traditional standards; and a third believes it resides in the esthetic of the dream-art relationship. It is this third category which I wish to examine in an attempt to locate the source of the difficulty and ultimate esthetic failure of the dream plays.
Strindberg, successful in at least two notable instances with the drama of naturalism, abandoned these conventions shortly after his severe mental illness, better known as his “Inferno Experience.” It is easy to suggest that the plays that followed were direct results of this illness and that they are difficult to understand chiefly because they are products of a sick mind.

Eugène Labiche
Emile Augier, Mary Douglas Dirks
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

23 November 2021, pp. 163-165
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I was visiting my friend Labiche at his princely estate in Sologne, which is so unlike our cheerful countryside of Seine-et-Oise. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself very much there with my old friend's delightful family, surrounded by the bustling activity of rural pursuits so new to me. A simple flower gardener myself, I derived great pleasure from following this tiller of the soil across the extensive fields which he had reclaimed from sand and briar and replenished with wheat, pine trees, cattle and sheep. And in the presence of this splendid yeoman who strode along the roadways, hobnailed stick in hand, his legs encased in leather gaiters, master of all he surveyed, I found myself completely forgetting the author of so many merry caprices, the grand master of laughter, our first producer of laughing gas.

TDR