Three Plays

About Three Plays

Three of Strindberg’s most famous plays, including Miss Julia, the basis for the major motion picture Miss Julie, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell

The plays in this volume focus on the tumultuous relationships between men and women, whether they are father and daughter, brother and sister, or lovers. Miss Julia is a ruthlessly realistic depiction of an upper-class woman’s seduction of a servant, emphasizing the differences and the antagonism between them. In The Father a mom is brought to madness and driven out of his home by the suspicion that his daughter is not his own child, while Easter centers on a family in need of redemption for its sins and suffering, and finding forgiveness at a season of rebirth. Strindberg’s acute psychological analysis and his dramatization of naked emotion within a natrualistic domestic setting make him one of the great innovators of modern theater.

Peter Watts’s powerful translation is accompanied by an introduction and a preface to each of the dramas, which place the plays in the context of Strindberg’s life.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.