[In the following essay, Ekman critiques Abu Casems tofflor.]

Strindberg criticism seems to agree on at least one point: that his 1908 sagospel (fairy tale) in five acts, Abu Casems tofflor, is the weakest of his published dramas.¹ In the final volume of his biography of Strindberg, Gunnar Brandell goes so far as to claim that it is the only one of Strindberg's plays that could have been written by someone else.²

My purpose here is not to proclaim Abu Casems tofflor a masterpiece out of sheer contrariness. However, I believe that it is unmistakably Strindbergian and as such of great interest to those who are also interested in Strindberg's personality.

Strindberg has for once generously recounted both the origins of this drama and the source of its theme. According to a letter of 8 September 1908 to Knut Michaelson at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm, he received the impulse to write a five-act sagospel when he attended a production of his sagospel from 1882, Lycko-Pers resa, at the Östermalm Theatre in spring 1907 with his daughter, Anne-Marie. As for the theme of the mean Abu Casem, the upright boy Soliman, and Suleika, the girl who hated men, Strindberg refers on the title page to A Thousand and One Nights and an unnamed French fairy tale.

This information should afford full knowledge of the genesis of the drama, and permit its interpretation according to the author's wishes, as a simple fairy tale inspired by simple fairy tales, with its prime objective the preaching of love and generosity. This doesn't sound very Strindbergian; nor is it the whole truth about the play.

In other words, there is a case for reacting with suspicion to the author's unusual readiness to account for the play's birth and its literary impulses. One naturally wonders if some personal conflict is once again involved, and if he is leading us astray.

The oriental setting provides a clue, so long as it is not associated exclusively with A Thousand and One Nights. It was not the first time that Strindberg had recourse to such a setting. In Lycko-Pers resa a wedding is celebrated in an oriental setting; the one-acter Samum with its decadent eroticism is set in an Arabian burial chamber; and the novel Inferno describes Strindberg's meeting with a woman at a masquerade, whose Eastern attire heightened her beauty and nearly drove him mad (SS 28, p. 29). We also know that a large part of Harriet Bosse's attraction for him was her Eastern looks, and when he wrote Abu Casems tofflor, his interest in the Orient was reflected in the rugs, fabrics and other materials with Eastern designs, with which he surrounded himself. A journalist from Dagens Nyheter, who visited him on 3 October 1908, reported that his room looked like a rajah's secret apartment. For some reason this setting suited his current frame of mind.

Abu Casems tofflor was written during the first days of September 1908,³ hence shortly after Strindberg moved into Blå Tornet on 11 July 1908, after Harriet Bosse had exited from his private life and the even younger Fanny Falkner had made her entrance. The first time Strindberg saw the latter was at a rehearsal of Herr Bengts hustru, in which she was dressed in a page's costume.⁴ Female clothes made a strong impression on Strindberg, who had a clear visual memory of how his three wives were dressed when he first saw them. Harriet Bosse was dressed as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream,⁵ Frida Uhl was wearing a fatal green dress,⁶ and he would recall Siri von Essen's blue veil⁷ just as Dante remembered Beatrice's crimson dress in the Vita nuova.

Strindberg's interest in Fanny Falkner increased when they came to live in the same house, and the innocent relationship resulted in September 1909 in a short-lived engagement. Thus Strindberg was preoccupied with his love for this considerably younger woman at the time he was writing Abu Casems tofflor, and if the play is seen in this light, it is possible to discover a pattern that transforms the piece into something other than a simple fairy tale, and to see that no one but Strindberg could have written it.

Abu Casems tofflor was thus written by an adorer with a new faith in love but with his old reservations about sexuality intact. Fanny Falkner has affirmed that Strindberg's behaviour towards her was very gentlemanly: ‘Han hade ju gått ett helt år och mer och tyckt om mig hela tiden … utan att på minsta sätt lägga sina känslor i dagen genom några intimiteter’ (He had gone around liking me for a whole year and more without expressing his feelings at all in any kind of intimacy).⁸ However, an attentive reading of Abu Casems tofflor reveals that Strindberg was in fact struggling with his sexual impulses in the play. He may have concealed them from Fanny Falkner, but they surface in his drama—in the form of a pair of troublesome slippers.

In my paper to the last Strindberg symposium in Seattle, I sought to demonstrate how Strindberg was clearly inclined to shoe and foot fetishism.⁹ My point then was not to reveal another side of Strindberg's sexuality but rather to shed light on a characteristic that he made great use of as a dramatist. J. A. Uppvall pursues a similar line in his August Strindberg. A Psychoanalytic Study of 1920. Uppval's observations are made with reference to En dåres försvarstal,¹⁰ but he fails to develop his theory by relating his observations to other texts, particularly the plays.

If we proceed from the assumption that shoes in Strindberg's work represent sexual impulses, and as such symbolize the ‘low’ side of life which he increasingly wishes to avoid, then Indra's Daughter's action at the end of Ett drömspel acquires great significance. She places her shoes on a fire, and this does not only mean that she is leaving the ‘earthly’. Her gesture also symbolically expresses Strindberg's farewell to eroticism, the eroticism that played such a fatal part in his marriage to Harriet Bosse. And giving her this gesture to perform naturally means that Strindberg also wishes to see and hear Bosse take leave of eroticism in the same way, just as in the play Kristina from the same period, where the title role was also expressly written for his wife, Strindberg shows that he wishes her to renounce her ambitions. He makes Christina burn her crown, just as Indra's Daughter burns her shoes.

Eroticism does not, however, entirely vanish from Strindberg's life with the shoe-burning in Ett drömspel. Nor do shoes disappear from his works. The story Taklagsöl, which harks back to memories from a later period of his life with Harriet Bosse, ends with a man fleeing from an island where he is spending his summer holiday, having first thrown his wife's red slippers into a tree. The following summer the man returns, this time alone, only to see the slippers hanging obscenely in the tree-top: ‘en flygande häxa med fötterna i vädret, tårna inåt; vinterns snö, regn och sol hade blekt dem, vridit dem vinda, fasliga att se på’ ([it looked like] a witch in flight with her feet in the wind, her toes pointing inwards; the winter's snow, rain and sun had bleached them, twisted them, made them frightful to behold—SV 55, p. 49). And having been burnt in Ett drömspel and thrown into the air in Taklagsöl, shoes now resurface in Abu Casems tofflor where the principal character attempts to get rid of them in the same way as Strindberg, firstly by throwing them into a lake, then by burying them, and finally by burning them.

The curtain rises on the oriental setting of a Baghdad bazaar. On the left is Casem's perfume boutique, on the right the shoemaker's. Upstage is the entrance to the baths, in the centre a fountain. This looks like the simple setting for a fairy tale, but slightly more can be perceived if it is regarded in terms of Strindberg's erotic code. The shoemaker's is, of course, linked to sexuality, as is the perfume boutique. Casem sells rose oil, and roses and their scent play an important role in Strindberg's erotic associations. In his diary for 1908 until his first meeting with Fanny Falkner, roses often figure in connection with his telepathic relationship with Harriet Bosse: ‘Hon söker mig nu med rosor i munnen, då jag står emot hennes eros’ (Harriet seeks me now with roses in her mouth, when I resist her eros), he maintains on 13 June 1908, and there is a wealth of similar examples. Roses were the attribute of the steadfast cavalier in Ett drömspel, and it is clear from Svanevit that the rose, in contrast to the shoe, stands for an aesthetic and moral element in love which ennobles mankind: ‘Rosen på bordet reser sig och öppnas. Styvmodrens och tärnornas ansikten belysas och få alla ett uttryck av skönhet, godhet och lycka’ (The rose on the table rises and opens. The faces of the step-mother and the maidens are illuminated with an expression of beauty, goodness and joy—SS 36, p. 157).

In scenic terms, therefore, the shoemaker's represents the low side of love and the perfume boutique its nobility. I do not intend to read a sexual meaning into every object on stage, but naturally it is impossible not to interpret the fountain as a phallic symbol and the entrance to the baths as a symbol of the female sexual organ.

On the surface, what happens in the play is that Caliph Harun tests the mean Abu Casem by placing his tattered slippers outside his shop. Casem takes the bait, picks up the slippers, and immediately becomes a laughing stock. Street urchins run after him shouting ‘Casems tofflor! Kom och se’ (Casem's slippers, come and see!—SS 51, p. 112). Then the police chief appears and enters the baths, having taken off his slippers, as does Casem. The street urchins appear and kick away his slippers so that when Casem comes out of the baths, he sees only one pair of slippers, the police chief's, which he believes are a gift from his beautiful daughter, Suleika. Meanwhile Soliman, the shoemaker Hassan's son, returns after winning Casem's old slippers back from the street urchins. Casem is caught wearing the police chief's slippers and is led off stage. At the end of Act One, he realises that the slippers he has acquired only bring bad luck:

Fördömda gåva, olycksgåva, tofflor I, som bringat mig oskyldige betala böter; nu kastar jag er ut i floden.

(You damned slippers are an accursed gift, you caused me to be fined although I'm innocent; I'll throw you in the rive)

—p. 126

He cannot, however, get rid of them that easily. Two fishermen appear, unseen by Casem, with ripped nets and the slippers. They throw the slippers into his shop. The sound of breaking glass is heard as Casem's bottles of rose oil shatter. As the scene demonstrates, shoes and roses do not mix, just as twenty-five years earlier, in Herr Bengts hustru, Strindberg had employed another dualism to illustrate the discrepancy between realism and idealism: roast veal and roses.

In Act Two we meet the Prince, who is pining with love for Suleika. Due to a misunderstanding, however, she entertains suspicions about the opposite sex. The character of love in this act is platonic, and its symbolism requires some comment, though not before I have outlined the remainder of the action of a play that is generally ignored by even the most informed of Strindberg's critics. In Act Three we encounter Suleika and her father Abu Casem, who still believes that his slippers are lying at the bottom of the lake. They discuss Suleika's distrust of men. The Caliph enters and in a conversation with young Soliman he speaks highly of the elevated side of love as represented by Suleika. The lovesick Prince also appears. Towards the end of the act an ominous note is introduced when the fountain ceases to flow, for the fountain is associated with the ability to love. Casem says: ‘Vad är det här? Fontänen stannat! Har källan sinat, eller drives spel av andra makter som förbannat när du välsignad älskog slog ihjäl!’ (What is this? The fountain has stopped! Has the source dried up, or is it driven by other powers that have cursed when you killed blessed love!—p. 159). But he is at once presented with a more logical explanation: all the fountains in the town have run dry, and he believes that this is because his slippers have blocked a water pipe. (He is of course unaware that the fishermen have dragged them up.) The audience, on the other hand, is once again reminded of this at the end of the act when ‘Apan synes ute på gatan med Casems tofflor’ (The Monkey can be seen out in the street with Casem's slippers—p. 160).

Act Four begins with Casem burying the slippers, which he seems to have got back from the Monkey. No sooner has he done this, however, than the Monkey appears, digs them up again, and puts a coin in their place, causing Casem to be accused of burying treasure on illegal ground in the final act. The act ends when the Monkey takes the slippers and leaves (p. 168).

In the final act, Casem achieves redemption. We discover that his meanness stemmed from a desire to give his daughter a large dowry. He comes downstage and explains that he has now burnt the slippers: ‘De äro brända ibland stadens sopor’ (They are burnt amongst the refuse of the town—p. 175). However, the Monkey reappears, this time on Casem's roof, from where he throws the slippers at the Nurse, though without hitting her. The Caliph gets his slippers back and the Prince marries Suleika. Abu Casem's soul is set at rest and he arranges a feast for his daughter and her bridegroom. In the eyes of the audience, he has been transformed from a miserly slipper thief into a generous father.

Thus the slippers can be seen as a symbol of the sexual urge, and what is characteristic for them in the play is the obstinacy with which they keep reappearing, despite several attempts to get rid of them in water, earth and fire: just as in Ett drömspel, Strindberg seems consciously to have worked here with elemental symbolism.¹¹ To draw a parallel with the present, it could be maintained that Strindberg's use of these recalcitrant objects anticipates something that becomes a convention in the drama of the absurd.

The important thing about the slippers is to a great extent the way in which they are linked to the Monkey. In the list of characters the Monkey is unambiguously described as an ‘evil spirit’, and Soliman declares in Act Five: ‘apan är ej något djur, det är en djävul!’ (the monkey's no animal, it's a devil!—p. 172). In En blå bok it is easy to find evidence for Strindberg's dislike of monkeys. For example, in the article ‘Tass eller hand’ (Paw or Hand), they are called ‘de sämsta av alla djur, bara gjorda av laster och brott’ (the worst of all animals, consisting only of vices and crimes—SS 46, p. 301). Strindberg's dislike of monkeys stems, of course, from his distrust of Darwinism. Or it may be the other way round: the thought that the monkey could be his ancestor makes him reject Darwinism. In the play, the Monkey is made to symbolize the animal side of man. Its interest in the slippers therefore appears entirely logical.

It has been argued that Abu Casems tofflor is about two kinds of love: the sublime, as represented by the Prince and Suleika, and the physical, as represented by the Monkey, and it is into the latter sphere that Abu Casem is drawn when he becomes interested in slippers instead of rose oil. And it is the Monkey who is the real schemer in the play: this is clear from a stage direction where the Vizier gets the fatal idea of placing his slippers outside Casem's shop: ‘Apan synes här och spelar som om han ingav de andra tankarna’ (The Monkey can be seen here acting as if he inspired the others' thoughts—p. 107).

During the Prince's languishing soliloquy on love in Act Two, the Monkey is occasionally visible, but outside the window. In Act Three, set in Suleika's rooms, it is clearly present and turns off the tap to stop the water in the fountain. When the shoemaker Hassan enters, the Monkey hides and listens, grimacing. The shoemaker measures Suleika's feet, and an awareness of Strindberg's particular view of feet, his erotic code, is undoubtedly necessary for this scene to be meaningful:

Se här min fot, tag måttet nätt,
din marockin den ger sig ut i fukten—
Hassan kittlar henne under foten … Apan härmar Hassan; tar
mått på Ali, Slavinnan och slutligen på Hassan.
(Here is my foot, measure it neatly,
your moccasin will be going out in the wet—
Hassan tickles the soles of her feet … The Monkey imitates
Hassan; measures Ali, the Slave Girl, and finally Hassan)

—p. 150

In the same act, Soliman comes upon the Monkey in a scene in which the two kinds of love confront each other:

Apan härmar en kärlekssjuk.
Soliman (slår honom en örfil och sätter käringknep för honom):
Respekt, din hund! Där mänskohjärtat talar,
där tige djuret!
The Monkey imitates a lovesick man.
Soliman (boxes him on the ear and trips him up):
Respect, you dog! When the human heart speaks,
the animal remains silent!

—p. 156

In Act Four, it is the Monkey that digs up the slippers and then informs on Casem in sign language. Being a monkey he has to mime, but we also know that Strindberg's key scenes in his post-Inferno dramas (for example in Till Damaskus, Ett drömspel, Dödsdansen, and Svarta handsken) are often dumb shows.

Strindberg has thus given the Monkey a substantial if silent role in the play. It is clear from the original manuscript that this role became increasingly important: on several occasions Strindberg enlarged the Monkey's part, inserting additions in the margin.¹² The Monkey directs people's destinies not as fate but as an evil power. It seems to embody the lower side of man and largely acts in a world of instinct; it is hardly evil in a metaphysical sense. It is clearly coupled in the play with footwear, which in Strindberg's works is generally a symbol of sexuality. On its final appearance, the Monkey is seated on the roof, throwing the slippers at the Nurse:

VEZIREN:
Se där, se apan, mördarn, och se tofflorna!
CASEM:
O ve! Den olycksgåvan lever än?
(THE Vizier:
Look, there's the monkey, the murderer, and the slippers!
CASEM:
Alas! The gift of ill-omen lives on?)

—p. 177

The gift of ill-omen (the slippers, or sexuality) is regained at the end of the play by the Caliph, which is a prerequisite for its happy ending.

One further passage may be quoted in support of the theory that shoes and slippers articulate the secret desires of the subconscious. In Act Two the Nurse comes to the Prince with a letter she claims has been written by Suleika. The Prince is not completely awake and associates freely around the object that he, half-asleep, sees, and which is in fact a large white letter with a red and green seal:

Vad ser jag nu i mörkret, vad?
En ruta vit som golvets marmor,
där liten fot i röda skor, nej gröna,
det är båd rött och grönt,
och det betyder kärlek, hopp!
(What is it I see in the darkness? A white square, like a
marble floor, there a little foot in red shoes, no, green, both
red and green, and that means love and hope!)

—p. 131

The Prince's first and slightly far-fetched association (if one is unaware of Strindberg's erotic code) is a pair of shoes. Before he finally recognizes the letter as a letter he has two further associations: ‘en duk, en vit, nej, det är ingen duk … Reser sig … att torka tårar med, en svetteduk det är, att hölja likets anlet när som den döde dödens ångest har bestått—den är för mig, ty jag är visserligen död!’ (A handkerchief, a white, no, it's not a handkerchief … He gets up … with which to dry tears, it's a shroud to cover a corpse's face when the agony of death remains, like the dead—it's for me, since I am surely dead!—p. 132)

These associations are also interesting. Following the shoes, he sees things that recall the symbols of suffering in Ett drömspel and Påsk. Both Elis' winter coat in Påsk and the Concierge's shawl in Ett drömspel function as a shroud.¹³ In a sketch for the staging of Till Damaskus in 1908, Strindberg expressly related the Lady's embroidery to Veronica's shroud.¹⁴ This is one of the motifs that preoccupied him in the early years of the century, and is coupled with the idea of a ‘satisfactio vicaria’. In the dream sequence in Abu Casems tofflor, in which Strindberg probably gave his own associations free rein, the shoe is confronted with the shroud, love with sorrow, in images of great relevance, at least for Strindberg himself. The problem with this private symbolism is that it generally fails to find its way over the footlights. In other words, it is inaccessible to semiotic analysis, and requires some sort of psychological analysis.

In no other Strindberg play is footwear given such a clearly defined role as in Abu Casems tofflor; it is, after all, named in the title. Strindberg could afford to do this since he was able to maintain that the plot was borrowed from a given source, and had not risen spontaneously out of his own, inner self. It is in fact a case of a story which Strindberg had known for a long time. Amongst the books that he left behind in Sweden in 1883 was S. A. Hägg's Fotbeklädnadens, skomakeriets och namnkunniga skomakares historia från äldsta till närvarande tid (The History of Footwear, Shoemaking and Celebrated Shoemakers, Past and Present, 1873).¹⁵ This lavishly illustrated history of shoes relates the story of Abu Casem from A Thousand and One Nights, as does a German grammar with which Strindberg was also familiar,¹⁶ but in retelling it, he alters and adds to it. In the original version, Abu Casem owns the slippers from the beginning; the action does not have the character of a test, nor does he have to return the slippers to anyone. In the story, Abu Casem also twice throws the slippers into water. The first time, as in Strindberg's play, the fishermen emerge with their damaged nets, but the second time the slippers get stuck in a pipe, causing the town's water supply to be cut off. Strindberg only retains the latter, as something ominous and associated with the ability to love. The Monkey is almost totally Strindberg's invention. A dog makes a brief appearance in the story, dropping the slippers from a roof as does the Monkey in the play, but Strindberg not only changes the dog into a monkey, he also substantially increases its role while the story of Suleika, the Prince and Soliman is taken from other sources. Nevertheless, it is the history of a pair of slippers that inspires him to write this play about the way in which base, animal love is vanquished by sublime love.

The play was sent to the Royal Theatre on 8 September 1908. The theatre took time replying so on the 16th Strindberg promised it to August Falck and the Intimate Theatre if the Royal Theatre would release it, which eventually they did. Towards the end of the month he showered Falck with letters, which indicated his eagerness to get the play staged. He told Falck that he had purchased some expensive oriental fabrics and wished to be present at its casting, and recommended several shops in Stockholm, such as the Oriental Shop and the Indian Bazaar, for the purchase of properties.

It is clear from Falck's account that opinions differed as to the play's quality: ‘Jag tyckte aldrig att Abu Casems tofflor var lämplig för Intiman. Trots Strindbergs olika uppsättningsförslag var den svår att sätta i scen; var gång jag kom med en invändning gjorde han ivrigt ett nytt förslag, men när jag till slut i svaga ögonblick var på väg att ge med mig, var det han som ångrade sig’ (I never thought that Abu Casems tofflor was suitable for the Intimate Theatre. Despite Strindberg's various suggestions about staging, it was difficult to put on; every time I made an objection, he eagerly made a new proposal, but when I finally weakened and was on the point of giving in, it was he who had misgivings).¹⁸ But Strindberg was also in two minds about the play. ‘Lägg undan Casem! Jag är rädd för den!’ (Put Casem aside! I'm afraid of it), he wrote, on 4 January 1909 while after rereading it he observed, on the 17th: ‘Då jag läste Casem om i kväll, fann jag ingen sak mot den!’ (When I reread Casem this evening, I could find nothing against it). The play was never performed at the Intimate Theatre. The fact that Falck regarded it coolly and that Strindberg was in two minds was a poor starting point for a successful production, though towards the end of 1909, Strindberg did renew his efforts, though again to no avail. In any case, by then Karin Swanström had given the play its Swedish première at Gävle, on 28 December 1908.¹⁹ It toured the country under her direction and earned its author 2,000 kronor, which he spent (if Falck may be believed) on a new decor for Blå Tornet.²⁰ The oriental adventure was over.

But as with all stories, we are bound to ask: ‘What happened next?’ Are shoes finished with in Strindberg's works? The answer is that they surface one last time, but with a new function, in Svarta handsken. Strindberg initially gave this play the appropriate subtitle ‘Lyrisk fantasi (för scenen)’ (Lyrical Fantasy (for the stage)—SS 45, p. 281) but then made it Opus 5 of the Chamber Plays, where it certainly does not belong. Oväder, Brända tomten, Spöksonaten and Pelikanen form a single unit due to their having been written in rapid succession. They also have a deeply misanthropic tone in common: this begins as melancholy in Oväder and ascends to a crescendo of total pessimism in Pelikanen. Svarta handsken, however, is more a morality play, ending happily on Christmas Eve itself, with a ‘Tomte’ blowing kisses to the mother and child. The first four plays were published in one volume in 1907 by Ljus. Svarta handsken was written a year and a half later, by which time Strindberg had written several other plays of a different nature, like Bjälbojarlen and Siste riddaren. He also undertook in his contract with Ljus to let them have the rights to any new chamber plays, and received an advance of 1,000 kronor.²¹ It seems, therefore, that Strindberg's rechristening of his lyrical fantasy as Opus 5 was largely a result of his already having spent the advance. Both textual and factual criteria show that the play should not be counted one of the chamber plays. Strindberg's relationship to genres is complex and fascinating.

However designated, Svarta handsken is a play about redemption. It demonstrates that, in Strindberg's eyes, redemption can only occur once a woman has ceased to be a wife and lover and become solely a mother and/or daughter. Similarly, the woman must be brought to submission, and this can only happen once she has experienced loss. Perhaps Strindberg's grandest portrayal of this motif is to be found in the poem ‘Chrysaëtos’ (1902), which describes how a man loses his mind at the sight of his wife's coat in a cloakroom. A pair of galosches also figures in a draft of the poem.²² This draft could, however, do equally well for Svarta handsken in which both items, coat and galosches, are to be found. The great difference is that in the play it is no longer a woman's garment but a little girl's. Strindberg has resolutely placed the woman in the man's role of the bereaved. She expresses her loss in the short second act in a long soliloquy but is otherwise silent in the presence of the lost child's garment; ‘faller ner på knä vid stolen, och döljer ansiktet i den lilla barnkappan som hon smeker och kramar’ (She falls to her knees by the chair and hides her face in the little child's coat which she caresses and embraces—p. 298). She also touches the child's galosches. Here, Strindberg gives the woman a taste of her own medicine. At the same time the old curator is sitting in an attic surrounded by mementos of his wedding. Strindberg himself preserved similar mementos.²³ What is happening here, if we compare it with his previous plays, is that clothes have ceased to be the objects of fetishism and become souvenirs. At this point, in Strindberg's penultimate play, the atmosphere becomes less dramatic and the tone more elegiac.

The theme of redemption can only resound fully once the woman has been given a new role, and it emerges as wholly appropriate that the woman in this play is the Curator's daughter. She is punished like a child. The Curator and the ‘Tomte’ act firstly as punishers, and then as forgiving fates. The demonic Monkey in Abu Casems tofflor has been replaced by kind old men. The function of shoes and other garments has been reworked, and their demonic power is past.

After completing both these plays, Strindberg proposed to Fanny Falkner in September 1909. The engagement was short-lived and the nature of their relationship remains mysterious. Fanny Falkner herself was most mystified by his strange engagement present. Strindberg gave her, to her great surprise, a pair of coarse, brown-striped sports socks, which he wished her to wear so that she would not freeze.

Notes

1. See for instance Martin Lamm, Strindbergs dramer, II (Stockholm, 1926), p. 422, and Sven Rinman, ‘August Strindberg’, in Ny illustrerad svensk litteraturhistoria, IV (Stockholm, 1967), pp. 136-137.

2. Gunnar Brandell, Strindberg—ett författarliv, IV (Stockholm, 1989), p. 360.

3. He had completed it by 7 September. See Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik (Stockholm, 1982), p. 564.

4. Fanny Falkner, August Strindberg i Blå Tornet (Stockholm, 1921), p. 9.

5. Brandell, Strindberg—ett författarliv, IV, p. 144.

6. See August Strindberg, Klostret, ed. C.G. Bjurström (Stockholm, 1966), pp. 39-42, and Frida Strindberg, Strindberg och hans andra hustru, I (Stockholm, 1933), p. 117.

7. See the poem ‘Segling’ in Dikter, SS 13, p. 107.

8. Fanny Falkner, Strindberg in Blå Tornet, p. 101.

9. Hans-Göran Ekman, ‘Strindberg's Use of Costume in Carl XII and Christina’, manuscript. See also Klädernas magi. En Strindbergsstudie (Stockholm, 1991).

10. Axel Johan Uppvall, August Strindberg. A Psychoanalytic Study with Special Reference to the Oedipus Complex (Boston, 1920), pp. 71-72.

11. See Sven Delblanc, ‘Ett drömspel’, in Stormhatten. Tre Strindbergsstudier (Stockholm, 1979), pp. 63-109.

12. Manuscript of Abu Casems tofflor, in Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm, pp. 4, 38, 40, 74.

13. SS 33, p. 39. Cf. Göran Stockenström, Ismael i öknen. Strindberg som mystiker, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Historia Litterarum 5, (Uppsala, 1972) p. 532, n.109.

14. In a letter to August Falck, 26 September 1909. Kungliga Biblioteket, T 36:8.

15. See Hans Lindström, Strindberg och böckerna, Skrifter utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet 36 (Uppsala, 1977), p. 34.

16. See Gunnar Ollén's introduction to his edition of the play in Samlade Verk, forthcoming. Ollén points out that Strindberg's library contained both the German grammar, J. E. Lyth, Tysk språklära, 3rd ed, and an edition of A Thousand and One Nights.

17. Extracts from the letters are in August Falck, Fem år med Strindberg (Stockholm, 1935), pp. 187-189.

18. Falck, Fem år med Strindberg, p. 185.

19. Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik, p. 565.

20. Falck, Fem år med Strindberg, p. 187.

21. See Johan Svedjedal, ‘Henrik Koppel, Ljus förlag och enkronasböckerna’, Samlaren, 1988, pp. 21-22.

22. Kungliga Biblioteket, SgNM 8:9, 17.

23. See Strindberg's letter to Harriet Bosse, 3 May 1908, XVI, p. 289ff.