EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. II, Issue 6/ September 2014

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Life is such Stuff as Dreams are Made on:

An Interpretation of Strindberg’s The Dream Play

DR. ZEENATH MOHAMED KUNHI

Assistant Professor
Centre for Research & Advanced Studies
in English Language & Literature
Farook College, Calicut
India

Abstract:
The Dream Play, a semi-autobiographical piece by Augustus
Strindberg, written during his ‘inferno crisis’ is a metaphor for life
itself with its twists and turns and ups and downs. The play
structured in a dream mode, takes one through the intricate alleys and
by-lanes of man’s inner world of emotions and thoughts and the
unpredictability, mystery, conflict and insecurity associated with the
world outside. The Dream Play tries to successfully achieve this
mastery of dual portrayal, both thematically and structurally. The
play is probably the first of its kind in adopting a dream mode as a
genre in itself. This kind of a theatrical presentation is made possible
by the excessive use of symbols and poetic images which literally float
across the text, lending it a haunting, surreal experience. The paper is
an attempt to interpret the play with special emphasis on the symbols
and images employed by the author.

Key words: Dream Play, Strindberg, symbols, syncretism, surrealism

The Dream Play, a semi-autobiographical piece by Augustus

Strindberg, written during his ‘inferno crisis’ is a metaphor for
life itself with its twists and turns and ups and downs. The play
structured in a dream mode, takes one through the intricate

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Interpretation of Strindberg’s The Dream Play

alleys and by-lanes of man’s inner world of emotions and

thoughts and the unpredictability, mystery, conflict and
insecurity associated with the world outside. The Dream Play
tries to successfully achieve this mastery of dual portrayal, both
thematically and structurally. The scenes in the play transgress
spatio-temporal logic, and are fluid in nature, imitating the
disjointed shape of a dream, the medium in which the story
itself unfolds. This kind of a theatrical presentation is made
possible by the excessive use of symbols and poetic images
which literally float across the text, lending it a haunting,
surreal experience.
In the ‘dream,’ God Indra’s daughter reincarnated as
Agnes descends on earth to find out the rationale behind
mankind’s ceaseless complaints and also to have a firsthand
knowledge of human suffering. As the play unfurls, Agnes
witnesses the joy and depravity of human experience. When she
encounters humans undergoing different kinds of suffering, she
comes to accept and realize the fact that gods should
sympathize with humans as revealed in her oft-repeated phrase
“Men are to be pitied.” Her return to heaven signals an
awakening from the dream-like state, and a kind of niravana is
attained.
Strindberg originally wrote The Dream Play in 1901
during a personal crisis and marital breakdown. He calls this
play his “most beloved play,” the child of his “greatest pain.”
The play also reflects his own marital discord with his third
wife Harriet Bosse. Strindberg’s spouseless solitary life of forty
days pushed him to believe that life is an illusion that never
fulfils one’s dreams and the play results from this melancholia.
Freudian analysis generally states that dreams employ
symbolism to give “a disguised representation to their latent
thoughts. Among the symbols thus employed there are, of
course, many which constantly, or all but constantly, mean the
same thing” (Freud 1953, 232). In the context of this statement,
one cannot ignore Strindberg’s personal crisis which is

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recurrently referred to in the play. All the same what makes

the play extraordinary is the fact that the play is replete with
symbols and poetic images that the playwright employs to
heighten the thematic aspects of the play, leaving it universal
in its appeal.
Agnes, the Daughter of Indra - the king of the Gods, has
her name rooted in Christianity. The name alluding to one of
the Christian saints, Agnes also means ‘Lamb of God,’ again
symbolizing a female Christ who has come down to redeem
mankind. Strindberg juxtaposes two world views, one ‘Eastern’
inspired by his discovery of Buddhism, the spiritual source that
rescued him from his inferno, the second inspired by a
Christian world that lives in the shadows of Adam’s sin and
Christ’s suffering. The syncretism involved or the allusion to
two different faiths from two different worlds also hints at the
fact that suffering is universal. On Agnes’s very descent into
the earthly quarters, she experiences suffocation, an indication
of both the physical and metaphorical pollution resulting from
the capitalist, modernizing world. This asphyxiation is also
symbolic of or premonition to the miseries that she is going to
encounter during her earthly experience. The suffocation
involved in an incompatible marriage, too cannot be dismissed
in the framework of the author’s strained marital relationship.
The concept of ideal love usually undergoes a strangulating
experience when it encounters the reality of practical life and
this is a recurrent motif in his plays. She finally descends from
a cloud to a castle built on a dung-heap and surmounted by a
flower bud, a characteristic surreal image.
Her sight of a castle growing out of dung, but crowned
with a flower, at the outset symbolizes the upward striving of
man towards the ideal and the ‘beautiful,’ an oft- repeated idea
in the play. It also stands metaphorical for the eternal struggle
between flesh and spirit and the triumph of life over death, in
other words it represents the very cyclic nature of life itself

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which is rooted both in the very subjective ‘ugly’ and the

‘beautiful.’
As the whole plot is in the disjointed form a dream, a
linear narration of events is impossible. The central design of
The Dream Play coincides with the circular journey of Agnes.
An attempt to study the play from the symbolic aspects takes
one to the common theme of suffering among the earthlings. As
Agnes descends down she meets the Glazier near the palace,
who takes her to the imprisoned Officer. He is probably caged
within the psychological, social or even sexual barriers that
prevent him from consummating his love. He suffers from the
pangs of separation and is seen to have spent his whole life
waiting for his lady love. Here, Agnes momentarily frees the
imprisoned Officer. But the prisoner is skeptic and fears
happiness because he knows that he would have to pay for it
“with twice its measure of sorrow (30),” an autobiographical
echo being evident. There is an indication that ideal love
persists with its romantic notions as long as love is not
consummated and tied in marital bliss. The Keatsian overtones
with regard to the ‘Bold lover:’ “For ever wilt thou love, and she
be fair!” is highly relevant in the context. The Officer, after
visiting his parents, stands at the stage door of the opera,
waiting, as he has done for seven years, for his lover, Victoria to
emerge. The next scene between the mother and the father
points to a strained relationship resulting from long years of
“adjustment.” The fact that the Officer makes a reference to his
mother being dead ten years earlier keeps the readers engaged
in the dream mode of the play. However, the parents’ loveless
life stands in stark contrast to the unconsummated, ideal love
of the prisoner. The parents, thus, become universal paradigms
for incompatible partnership.
Indra’s Daughter is next seen to become the Stage-Door
Keeper, so that she can have a better understanding of human
unhappiness. She wraps herself with the “shawl of suffering”
borrowed from the Portress. The Portress is an aged woman

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who had given up her passion for ballet dancing after her lover
ditched her thirty years back, leaving herself to wallow in grief.
Moreover, she is shown to carry the burden of others’ sufferings
by listening to their woes. When the Officer, now aged from his
constant waiting, is forbidden from opening the intriguing ‘door
with a clover leaf,’ he goes to the Lawyer to seek an injunction.
The Lawyer, contaminated from years of dealing with other
people’s crimes, is denied a doctor’s degree during the
convocation ceremony. His ghastly, chalk-white face only points
to his inner blackness. Nevertheless he too is not free from
pain. His argument is that he is forced by his duty to commit
wrong. He is also constantly bugged by the fact that no good
looking girl would ever marry him. Feeling sorry for him,
Indra’s Daughter marries him. Despite his warning that he is
poor and that his dislikes may turn out to be her likes, Agnes
goes ahead optimistically with the idea of mutual
understanding in marriage and consents to the marriage. Again
one easily discerns the playwright’s personal distress in the
lawyer’s apprehension.
Agnes is soon found unhappy with the squalor and
bickering of her marriage. The Lawyer’s notion of beauty is
completely different from hers. He is thoroughly practical and
believes in orderliness, simplicity and tidiness where as her
sense of aestheticism lies in decorating the house with
expensive bric-a-brac:
THE DAUGHTER. Everything else might be borne if I could
only have some beauty in my home.
THE LAWYER. I know you are thinking of flowers . . . but a
flower costs half a dollar, which will buy us six quarts of milk
or a peck of potatoes.
THE DAUGHTER. I could gladly get along without food if I
could only have some flowers.
THE LAWYER. There is a kind of beauty that costs nothing –
but the absence of it in the home is worse than any other
torture to a man with a sense for the beautiful.(54)

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The lawyer hates fish which Agnes loves and she hates
cabbages which the Lawyer loves. They try to pull on and bear
the pain of adjustment for the sake of their child. This kind of
incompatibility is again reminiscent of Strindberg’s own
personal struggle in marriage and his extreme love for his own
children. Robert Brustein in his analysis refers to Strindberg’s
problems with his partners and his tendency to “accuse his
female partners of infidelity, lesbianism, careerism,
uncleanliness, sloppy bookkeeping, and trying to emasculate
him” (Brustein 2001, par. 3). His other play The Link also
revolves around the theme of an estranged husband and wife
who are “linked” by their child. But Strindberg is more
impartial in his attitude in this play towards his female
counterparts as opposed to the plays written during his pre-
inferno period where the image of the castrating female reigns
supreme. Rachel Thomas states that “A cycle of adoration,
repulsion, and paranoia repeated itself through all of
Strindberg’s turbulent relationships. Brustein reports that
Strindberg eventually realized this cycle had less to do with the
women themselves and more to do with his own psychic
disorder” (Thomas 2013, 13). Contrarily the female protagonist
in The Dream Play is portrayed to be soft-spoken, empathetic
and caring. What is to be noted here is that the idea of life
being not ideal but an illusion is oft-repeated by presenting
such frailties of conflicting relationships. Unable to cope, Agnes
leaves her husband and child and travels with the Officer to the
seashore, arriving at ‘Foulstrand’ rather than the intended
‘Fairhaven.’ The names of these places highlight the theme of
reality versus illusion or to put it more precisely reality versus
idealism. The conflict arising out of expectations and reality lies
at the root of the play. The resident Quarantine Master
fumigates an Old Dandy, a Coquette (the bride for whom the
Officer had been waiting) and an ineffectual Poet. The way
Strindberg weaves in the same character to play different roles
seamlessly holds the audience in a trance; images are sifted and

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shifted, giving out a complete chimerical experience. When the

dainty Victoria suddenly takes on the role of a Coquette, the
audience is forced to unearth more meanings and thereby
deconstruct notions of idealism.
The quarantine station stands illustrative for those
suffering from physical and mental ailments. The two
optimistic young lovers are soon disappointed by their foul
surroundings. They wish to immortalize their happiness in
death rather than endure the squalor of life. A blind man who
they come across also is burdened by the sadness of his missing
son. Most of the people suffering from illness here are the
wealthy ones. The quarantine station itself stands for the
never-ending misery that man is subjected to irrespective of his
class, race or gender and seems to echo that suffering is
democratic.
Torture and despair start right from school. Next the
Officer finds himself back at school, being disciplined by a
fearsome Schoolmaster. Strindberg makes an acidic dig at the
grinding educational system. The absurdity of logic is brought
out when the Officer tries to prove that “two times two is two.”
The four faculties, belonging to medicine, philosophy, theology
and jurisprudence are deliberately incorporated to emphasize
the irony associated with the various teaching faculties that
sling mud at each other by claiming themselves supreme,
contrary to the true motive of education. Strindberg ingeniously
satirizes the members of the academia who are resolute in
confusing the youth and spoiling their future. The pain and
struggle of learning and the atrocities of the contemporary
teaching methods are foregrounded. Educational institutions
themselves become symbols of anarchy and atrocity.
The Daughter then is found returning to her Lawyer
husband, and together they visit a beautiful beach with the
hope of reconciliation, but she learns from the Coal-Carriers at
the beach that the so-called place of bliss is also not untouched
by distress and torment. This incident runs parallel to a

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passage in Strindberg’s Occult Diaries where he comments on

the nature of ‘ideal’ relationship as opposed to a realistic one:
We are fond of each other on a higher level, but we cannot be
in the same room, and we dream of a reunion, dematerialized,
on a verdant island with only the two of us, and possibly our
child. I remember a half hour when the three of us were
actually walking hand in hand on the shore of a verdant
island, and I had the impression that this was heaven. Then
the dinner bell called and we were back on earth, and soon
afterwards in hell. (extrapris.com par. 8)

The vast expanse of the beach initially comes across as a source

of consolation and peace but the idea of everlasting happiness is
soon subverted as the sea itself stands for the ebb and flow of
life.
The idea of class division and the torture inflicted by the
materialistic world is evident in this part of the “dream.” The
catchphrase is that the ones “who work hardest, get the least
food.” The coal-heavers suffer so that the wealthy can enjoy:
FIRST HEAVER. And yet we are the foundations of society. If
the coal is not unloaded, then there will be no fire in the
kitchen stove, in the parlour grate, or in the factory furnace;
then the light will go out in streets and shops and homes; then
darkness and cold will descend upon you – and, therefore, we
have to sweat as in hell so that the black coals may be had.”
(80)

This in fact can be related to the palace growing on dung shown

in the opening scene. The dung-palace image underlines the
parasitic tendencies of a capitalist society. There are also
constant references to Christ who died for the redemption of
others’ sins. The Lawyer echoes similar thoughts when he
states that people who try to improve their lot end in prison or
the madhouse. Visiting Fingal's Cave with the Poet, Indra's
Daughter sees how the sea has taken the lives of many and
wonders if she has dreamt everything as in a dream.
Implication of a ‘metadream,’ again emphasizes the notion of all
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pervading ‘Maya’. The Poet’s verses on human suffering only

accentuate the perennial nature of human misery operating on
the earthly canvas, but at the same time his announcement:
“Love conquers all” turns out to be a mockery of the idealist’s
notions of life. Poetry according to Agnes is “Not reality, but
more than reality-not dreaming, but daylight dreams” (86).
Water too serves as a multi-forked symbol. Water is
shown to be a sign of redemption as well as destruction. But
then, again death can be taken to be the final Redeemer.
Moreover both Agnes and the poet experience a sense of déjà
vu, once again reinforcing the dream-like structure of the play.
Symbols in this play like the dream sequence is never constant.
Meanings are evasive.
It could be argued that The Dream Play was probably the
first drama to employ the oxymoron dream-reality as a genre in
itself. There have been plays that have included dream
sequences as a part of the plot, but no play was ever made with
its entire plot woven into a dream sequence. By incorporating
such a method Strindberg thematically and structurally
heightens the mission of the play. Strindberg abandons
conventional perceptions of time and space and of stage realism
in the hope of discovering what “is concealed behind the door.”
He had reduced his original theme, of the man waiting
unsuccessfully for the ever elusive lover to a sub plot; his chief
character now being Indra’s Daughter who comes down to earth
to live among mortals. After experiencing and enduring the
tragic predicaments of the earth bound, she sheds her mortal
flesh and returns to her father. This powerful theatrical trope of
the circular journey, in fact represents Strindberg’s own
wholesome journey from despair to enlightenment. All the
symbols point to the flux of human predicament, the perpetual
existential angst man is subjected to and the hopes and
challenges that keep mankind alive and going. The play is a
kind of stoic acceptance of the pitfalls of existence that holds a
huge share of what one calls life.

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The Dream Play, Strindberg’s most innovative work is

widely regarded to have had a huge influence on later
modernist drama. The play is also an important precursor to
dramatic movements like Existentialism, Expressionism and
Absurdism. Martin Lamm called him “the boldest [-]
experimenter in modern drama” (Lamm 1953, 1925). The play
is also naturalistic in the sense that it addresses realistic
concerns such as love, marriage, materialism, class struggle,
faulty educational system, gender role struggle, confrontations
with physical disease and suffering. The kaleidoscopic nature
Agnes’ experiences contribute to the expressionist design and
include images from earthbound Hell and Heaven. Moreover
the dream-like format accommodates his fullest exploration of
expressionism, in which haunting staccato-like characters
heighten the emotional appeal. Styan states that Strindberg’s
fervent desire to “strip the soul naked, uncover its illusions and
at the same time make his meaning as transparent as possible”
is what led him to adopt the methods of symbolism and
expressionism (Styan 1968, 118). Absurdist philosophy of
boredom is echoed when the lawyer sadly states “All life is
nothing but doing things over again” (75). Existential ideas
dominate the play as ‘Life’ itself remains at its core. The pangs
of living and loving; the pull between conscience and desire;
idealistic pursuits versus realistic concerns; clash between the
bodily and the spiritual; thoughts of being and belonging –
these are all conflicts that mark human existence. Strindberg’s
existential ideas seem to be rooted in suffering and remorse as
stated by the Lawyer, “ What is pleasant is sin” and “If I have
had a pleasant day or night, then I suffer infernal pangs and a
bad conscience the next day” (75). When the Poet questions
Agnes from what she suffered most during her earthly sojourn,
she quips: “From- being: to feel my vision weekend by an eye,
my hearing blunted by an ear, and my thought, my bright and
buoyant thought, bound in labyrinthine coils of fat” (102). The
characters’ search for the meaning of life is evident and the

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answer obviously seems to be concealed behind the mystifying

door.
The closed door appears to be a mystery in the world of
misery from the very beginning. On Agnes’s return to the opera
house, she commands that the anonymity behind the closed
door be finally exposed: “For there is a suspicion that the
solution of the world-riddle may be hidden behind it” (92).
When the door is finally opened after much debate, there is
mass disappointment in finding nothing there. The essence of
existence amounts to nothing. All the deans and the so called
“right-minded people” accuse Agnes of cheating. Agnes, having
experienced pain and suffering by being half a mortal, wishes to
shed her mortal life in the burning flames of the palace. In
spite of all her attempts to appease suffering and solve the
mystery of life, she is threatened with flogging. She bids adieu
to the earthlings and goes back to the rising castle, where the
chrysanthemum has started to bloom emphatically. As she
takes leave of the Poet and the other characters, Agnes
reassures them that she would make a mention of their sorrow
to Indra, her father. Even then she is not very hopeful of the
human predicament and comes to the pessimistic conclusion
that life is a “tragic contradiction, a struggle between
irreconcilable opposites such as spirit and matter, love and
hate, the male and female principles. These are the conflicts
that split the human heart in two, forming the basis for her
repeated perception” (Brustein 2013, par. 5) that “Men are to be
pitied.” This for Strindberg was the answer to the riddle of life.
Man survives by way of the energy that transpires between the
conflicting entities: “Craving for suffering comes into conflict
with craving for enjoyment” (100). Indra’s daughter explains:
“Conflict between opposites produces energy, as fire and water
give the power of steam” (101). It is perhaps upto man to
establish equilibrium between the earthly and the spiritual.
Agnes refuses to further explain the riddle and leaves it to the

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discretion of mankind to keep the world alive through the

energy derived from such contradictory forces.
Before her return to Indra, Agnes also enlightens the
poet about the sinful seduction of Brahman (the divine primal
force) by Maya (the worldly) resulting in their offsprings,
products of their sin. Thus, she says “world, existence,
mankind, are nothing but a phantom, an appearance, a dream
image” (100). Perhaps she indicates that salvation could be
achieved only through self-denial and suffering, despite man’s
desperate race for earthly cares. The wall of human faces
questioning, grieving and despairing at the end of the play
against the backdrop of the burning castle seems to accentuate
the fact that life is an illusion, a phantom, perhaps even
meaningless, but the bud on the roof opening into a gigantic
chrysanthemum flower signifies the cyclic nature of life itself
and the accompanying hope- the spirit that keeps man going
and this is the stuff of which dreams are made.

WORKS CITED

Brustein, Robert. “Dreaming a Dream Play.” New Republic. 01-

15-2001. Accessed on 20-10-2013.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams (1953). Trans.
A.A. Brill. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd.,
1997.
Lamm, Martin. Strindbergs dramer. 2 Vols. Stockholm:
Bonnier, 1953.
Rachel, Thomas. “Strindberg and Women” August Strindberg’s
Creditors Field Guide, Remy Bumppo, created by
Spencer Ryan Diedrick, April 2013. Accessed on 20-06-
2014.
Strindberg, August. The Dream Play in Plays by August
Strindberg. Trans. Edwin Björkman. New York:
Scribner, 1912.

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_______. A Blue Book- extrapis.com.

http://www.extrapris.com/blue.html
Styan, J.L. The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern
Comic Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press: 1968.

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