GUSTAV. Why, she really must have loved _him_, too!--Poor creature!

(Curtain.)




PARIAH

INTRODUCTION


Both "Creditors" and "Pariah" were written in the winter of 1888-
89 at Holte, near Copenhagen, where Strindberg, assisted by his
first wife, was then engaged in starting what he called a
"Scandinavian Experimental Theatre." In March, 1889, the two plays
were given by students from the University of Copenhagen, and with
Mrs. von Essen Strindberg as _Tekla_. A couple of weeks later the
performance was repeated across the Sound, in the Swedish city of
Malmö, on which occasion the writer of this introduction, then a
young actor, assisted in the stage management. One of the actors
was Gustav Wied, a Danish playwright and novelist, whose exquisite
art since then has won him European fame. In the audience was Ola
Hansson, a Swedish novelist and poet who had just published a
short story from which Strindberg, according to his own
acknowledgment on playbill and title-page, had taken the name and
the theme of "Pariah."

Mr. Hansson has printed a number of letters (_Tilskueren_,
Copenhagen, July, 1912) written to him by Strindberg about that