ABSTRACT
After Crime and Crime Johan August Strindberg wrote a number of historical dramas in which Shakespeare’s influence is apparent. Then came Easter, his tender play of redemption, but even before his marriage to Harriet Bosse, the wheel had turned and Strindberg was once more plunged into icy gloom. Memories racked him and the old poisoned streams of hatred and suspicion demanded further violent expression. He decided to write a Dance Macabre, using Saint-Saens’ music; then, finding that the hated Ibsen had forestalled him by introducing this music in John Gabriel Borkman, Strindberg took the march, Entry of the Boyars, as theme tune for his new play, called by turn Dance Macabre, Fight with Death, Death in the Dance, The Vampire, and finally The Dance of Death. Strindberg was uncertain at first whether to make his leading character a pilot captain, a retired professor, or a doctor, but finally chose a superannuated Captain of Artillery, O.C. of an island fortress.
