The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy

Strindberg's great trilogy _The Road to Damascus_ presents many mysteries to the uninitiated. Its peculiar changes of mood, its gallery of half unreal characters, its bizarre ep...

THE STRANGER Francis James THE LADY Wanda Rotha THE BEGGAR Alexander Sarner FIRST MOURNER George Cormack SECOND MOURNER Kenneth Bell THIRD MOURNER Peter Bennett FOURTH MOURNER B...

[Street Corner with a seat under a tree; the side-door of a small Gothic Church nearby; also a post office and a cafe with chairs outside it. Both post office and cafe are shut....

[Courtyard enclosed on three sides by a single-storied house with a tiled roof. Small windows in all three facades. Right, verandah with glass doors. Left, climbing roses and be...

STRANGER. I don't wonder! Thrown out of hotels, because we're not married, and pestered by the police, we're forced to come to this place, the last I'd have wished. To this very...

[A hut on a cliff by the sea. Outside it a table with chairs. The STRANGER and the LADY are dressed in less sombre clothing and look younger than in the previous scene. The LADY...

[A landscape with hills; a chapel, right, in the far distance on a rise. The road, flanked by fruit trees, winds across the background. Between the trees hills can be seen on wh...

[Entrance to a ravine between steep cliffs covered with pines. In the foreground a wooden shanty, a broom by the door with a ramshorn hanging from its handle. Left, a smithy, a...

[A large kitchen with whitewashed walls. Three windows in the corner, right, so arranged that two are at the back and one in the right wall. The windows are small and deeply rec...

[A simple, pleasantly furnished room in the forester's house. The walls are colour-washed in red; the curtains are of thin rose-coloured muslin. In the small latticed windows th...

[The refectory of an ancient convent, resembling a simple whitewashed Romanesque church. There are damp patches on the walls, looking like strange figures. A long table with bow...

[The curtains have been taken down. The windows gape into the darkness outside. The furniture has been covered in brown loose-covers and pulled forward. The flowers have been ta...

[It is dark, but the moon outside throws moving shadows of the window lattices on to the floor, as the storm clouds race by. In the corner, right, under the crucifix, where the...

[The same landscape as before, but in autumn colouring. The trees have lost their leaves. Work is going on at the smithy and the mill. The SMITH stands, left, in the doorway; th...

[The same landscape as before; but autumn. The BEGGAR is sitting outside a chapel with a lime twig and a bird cage, in which is a starling. The STRANGER enters wearing the same...

[The same landscape as before, but now winter. The sea is dark blue, and on the horizon great clouds take on the shapes of huge heads. In the distance three bare masts of a wrec...

STRANGER. Yes. I can no longer listen to singing, or look at anything beautiful. During the day I hear the mill and see that great panorama now expanding to embrace the universe...

[The scene is more or less as before. But half the wood-pile has been taken away. On a seat near the verandah surgical instruments, knives, saws, forceps, etc. The DOCTOR is eng...

STRANGER. Where we began... at the street corner, between the inn, the church and the post office. By the way... isn't there a registered letter for me there, that I never fetched?

[On the right a terrace, on which the house stands. Below it a road runs towards the back, where there is a thick pine wood with heights beyond, whose outlines intersect. On the...

[A Garden Pavilion in rococo style with high windows. In the middle of the room there is a large writing desk on which are various pieces of chemical and physical apparatus. Two...

[A room with rose-coloured walls; it has small windows with iron lattices and plants in pots. The curtains are rose red; the furniture is white and red. In the background a door...

[Room in a hotel prepared for a banquet. There are long tables laden with flowers and candelabra. Dishes with peacocks, pheasants in full plumage, boars' heads, entire lobsters,...

[On the right a door; and above it a barred opening, through which a ray of sunlight is shining, throwing a patch of light on the left-hand wall, where a large crucifix hangs.]

[The same scene as Act I. The kneeling Sisters of Mercy are now reading their prayer books, '... exules filii Evae; Ad to suspiramus et flentes In hac lacrymarum aalle.' The MOT...

[The room in which the banquet took place in Act III. It is dirty, and furnished with unpainted wooden tables. Beggars, scavengers and loose women. Cripples are seated here and...

[A ravine with a stream in the middle, which is crossed by a foot-bridge. In the foreground a smithy and a mill, both of which are in ruins. Fallen trees choke the stream. In th...

[The LADY, dressed in white, is sitting by the cradle doing crochet work. The green dress is hanging up by the door on the right. The STRANGER comes in, and looks round in aston...

[The foreground represents the bank of a large river. On the right a projecting tongue of land covered with old willow trees. Farther up stage the river can be seen flowing quie...

[A cross-roads high up in the mountains. On the right, huts. On the left a small pool, round which invalids are sitting. Their clothes are blue and their hands cinnabar-red. Fro...

[A Terrace on the mountain on which the Monastery stands. On the right a rocky cliff and a similar one on the left. In the far background a bird's-eye view of a river landscape...

[Higher up the mountain; among the clouds a rocky landscape with a bog round it. The MOTHER on a rock, climbing until she disappears into the cloud. The STRANGER stops, bewilder...

[A pleasant, panelled dining-room, with a tiled stove of majolica. On the dining-table, which is in the middle of the room, stand vases filled with flowers; also two candelabra...

[A Gothic chapter house. In the background arcades lead to the cloisters and the courtyard of the monastery. In the middle of the courtyard there is a well with a statue of the...

MELCHER. Exactly. Then near the station of Amsteg on the Gotthard railway you've seen a tower, called Zwing-Uri, sung of by Schiller in his _Wilhelm Tell_. It stands there as a...

[Choir of the Monastery Chapel. An open coffin with a bier cloth and two burning candles. The CONFESSOR leads in the STRANGER by the hand. The STRANGER is dressed in the white s...