THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES stands on a thin line between the naturalism of August Strindberg’s early works and the expressionism of his later plays. Although it lacks either the dramatic intensity and psychological complexity of the former or the poetic imagination and intellectual density of the latter, THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES shares many of the qualities of both in a most provocative manner.

The realistic side of the play resembles a typical French sexual intrigue and crime melodrama. In part stimulated by his Paris sojourn of a few years earlier, Strindberg called THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES his “boulevard play” and loosely modeled it on a contemporary potboiler, Octave Feuillet’s DALILA (1850). It contains all of the standard type characters: the honest artist (Maurice), the devoted woman (Jeanne), the femme fatale (Henriette), the faithful friend (Adolphe), the common-sense matron (Madame Catherine), and the good priest (The Abbe). The plot is also a melodramatic cliche: the innocent is lured away from his devoted lady by a designing woman; she involves him in a crime; he is charged, harassed, and finally exonerated; penitent, he returns to his first love for a happy reunion.

Thus, as an example of realism, THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES is a very thin, trite drama; but Strindberg never intended it to be judged by that criterion. What gives the play its unique interest is not its realism as such, but the way Strindberg has used a realistic context to present what is essentially a symbolic action.

When Maurice and Henriette talk about their “evil dreams” near the end of the first act, they articulate the mood and atmosphere of the play: it is like a dream which turns into a nightmare where one’s half-stated longings and subconscious desires become realities, with the dreamer instantly subjected to the practical consequences of his fantasies. The plot moves with the speed and fluidity of a dream. One moment Maurice vows fidelity to Jeanne, the next he is enamored of Henriette; one instant Adolphe loves Henriette, the next he relinquishes her to Maurice with little more than a shrug; Maurice expresses his intense devotion for his daughter, seconds later he wishes her dead. In a purely realistic drama such behavioral gyrations would be shallow and contrived, perhaps absurd, but in THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES they simply reinforce the dreamlike atmosphere.

Marion’s death is the climax of the action, and in keeping with the fantasy mood of the play, it happens offstage. At this point Strindberg’s belief that “psychic crime” is real and demands concrete punishment takes over. Maurice and Henriette realize that they are both “unpunished criminals” and are oppressed by their sense of guilt. Immediately, their crime, in Henriette’s words, sets them “outside, on the other side of life and society and my fellow beings.” This isolation leads directly to paranoia; they suspect everyone and everything in their environment—strangers, friends, and especially each other.

And, in the nightmare atmosphere of the play, real punishment instantly intensifies these psychological torments. Maurice is charged with murder, his play is closed, and his fortune negated. Henriette is verbally abused, branded a prostitute, and harassed by the police. Their “crowd” turns them out in disgrace.

And yet, in spite of these punishments, Strindberg’s final attitude toward guilt and responsibility remains ambiguous. Even while Maurice expresses his contrition, he defends himself: “But at the same time I am guiltless. What has tied this net out of which I can never escape? Guilty and guiltless, guiltless and guilty.” Everyone has committed hidden crimes, Strindberg concludes, with the implication that, if everyone is guilty,...