Between Stage and Screen: Strindberg’s Spöksonaten/The Ghost Sonata (1907)

Abstract

Unlike Macbeth and A Doll’s House, August Strindberg’s chamber play Spöksonaten, usually rendered as The Ghost Sonata in English, is hardly intelligible at a literal surface level. When interpreted on a metaphorical level, i.e. when the bewildering signifiants are ‘translated’ into meaningful and coherent signifiés, it may be seen as ‘the first great absurdist drama’.¹ With his conviction that ‘the motif determines the form’,² Strindberg in The Ghost Sonata has created a drama which is more theme- than plot-centred. Like A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata is a norm-breaking drama, more epic and more subjective than Macbeth and A Doll’s House. How can a drama of this sophisticated kind be transposed for the screen mass media, accustomed as they are to more immediately intelligible, realistic fare?