A choice of pandars

 

Saint-Maure de Touraine

John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida: or, Truth Found Too Late (1679) wasn't a very successful effort at improving Shakespeare, in Sir Walter Scott's view. He took particular exception to Dryden's Pandarus.

Mr Godwin has justly remarked, that the delicacy of Chaucer's ancient tale has suffered even in the hands of Shakespeare; but in those of Dryden it has undergone a far deeper deterioration. Whatever is coarse and naked in Shakespeare, has been dilated into ribaldry by the poet laureat of Charles the second; and the character of Pandarus, in particular, is so grossly heightened, as to disgrace even the obliging class to whom that unfortunate procurer has bequeathed his name.

From this you'll gather that Dryden's Pandarus is worth sampling. Here he is, creepily commending his niece to Troilus:  

Pandarus. I measured her with my girdle yesterday; she's not half a yard about the waist, but so taper a shape did I never see; but when I had her in my arms, Lord, thought I,—and by my troth I could not forbear sighing,—If prince Troilus had her at this advantage and I were holding of the door!—An she were a thought taller,—but as she is, she wants not an inch of Helen neither; but there's no more comparison between the women—there was wit, there was a sweet tongue! How her words melted in her mouth! Mercury would have been glad to have such a tongue in his mouth, I warrant him. I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did.

(Dryden's Troilus and Cressida, I.2)

[Pandarus.] . . . but if you had seen him, when I said to him,—Take a good heart, man, and follow me; and fear no colours, and speak your mind, man: she can never stand you; she will fall, an' 'twere a leaf in autumn,—

Cressida. Did you tell him all this, without my consent?

Pandarus. Why you did consent, your eyes consented; they blabbed, they leered, their very corners blabbed. But you'll say, your tongue said nothing. No, I warrant it: your tongue was wiser; your tongue was better bred; your tongue kept its own counsel: nay, I'll say that for you, your tongue said nothing.—Well, such a shamefaced couple did I never see, days o'my life! so 'fraid of one another; such ado to bring you to the business! . . .

. . .

Pandarus. There's all my fear, that thou art not frail: thou should'st be frail, all flesh is frail.

Cressida. Are you my uncle, and can give this counsel to your own brother's daughter?

Pandarus. If thou wert my own daughter a thousand times over, I could do no better for thee; what wouldst thou have, girl? he's a prince, and a young prince and a loving young prince! an uncle, dost thou call me? by Cupid, I am a father to thee; get thee in, get thee in, girl, I hear him coming. And do you hear, niece! I give you leave to deny a little, 'twill be decent; but take heed of obstinacy, that's a vice; no obstinacy, my dear niece.

(Dryden's Troilus and Cressida, II.2)

Yes, Dryden's Pandarus is nauseating and all too credible -- that perhaps is what really offended Scott. But as Godwin said, Shakespeare's Pandarus is well down this road.  Here he is, trying to warm up the pair that he has finally brought together: 

[Pandarus.] Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward,

we'll put you i' the fills. Why do you not speak to

her? Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your

picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend

daylight! an 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner.

So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now!

a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air

is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere

I part you. . . .

(Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, III.2)

And here he is being jolly the following morning: 

Troilus. It is your uncle.

Cressida. A pestilence on him! now will he be mocking:

I shall have such a life!

Enter Pandarus

Pandarus. How now, how now! how go maidenheads? Here, you

maid! where's my cousin Cressid?

Cressida. Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle!

You bring me to do, and then you flout me too.

Pandarus. To do what? to do what? let her say

what: what have I brought you to do?

Cressida.  Come, come, beshrew your heart! you'll ne'er be good,

Nor suffer others.

Pandarus.  Ha! ha! Alas, poor wretch! ah, poor capocchia!

hast not slept to-night? would he not, a naughty

man, let it sleep? a bugbear take him!

Cressida. Did not I tell you? Would he were knock'd i' the head!

Knocking within

Who's that at door? good uncle, go and see.

My lord, come you again into my chamber:

You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.

Troilus. Ha, ha!

Cressida. Come, you are deceived, I think of no such thing.

Knocking within

How earnestly they knock! Pray you, come in:

I would not for half Troy have you seen here.

(Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, IV.2)

I extended the quotation a little, to include Troilus' raffish "Ha, ha!" and Cressida's mundanely growsing household management. You'd think they'd been husband and wife for twenty years. 

Dryden was attempting to rework this most cynical of plays into something a bit less transgressive, a bit more classical. Probably he placed greater emphasis on Pandarus' manipulations because social prostitution was just the kind of topic that preoccupied the theatre of his time, but it may also have been because he wanted to redeem Cressida. In his version, Cressida only feigns yielding to Diomedes (a plan to effect her escape): when Troilus refuses to believe her, she stabs herself. (This tragically loyal Cressida reappeared in Dyneley Hussey's libretto for William Walton's 1954 opera.) For the rest, Dryden worked hard to restore a semblance of nobility to the Greek and Trojan heroes. Hector and Andromache are touchingly painted. Troilus and Hector quarrel magnificently over the return of Cressida (yes, it's another remake of that Brutus and Cassius scene). Dryden even saw an opportunity to commend submission to royal authority, in the unlikely forms of Agamemnon and Priam.

*

Dryden saw Shakespeare's play as crying out for "mending". In his time it was axiomatic that all Shakespeare's plots were defective. As for this particular play, it had some fine things, but was not well developed. It was "in all probability one of his first endeavours on the stage". 

For the play itself, the author seems to have begun it with some fire; the characters of Pandarus and Thersites, are promising enough; but as if he grew weary of his task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall: and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets, excursions and alarms. The chief persons, who give name to the tragedy, are left alive; Cressida is false, and is not punished. Yet, after all, because the play was Shakespeare's, and that there appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I undertook to remove that heap of rubbish under which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried.

(from Dryden's Preface to his Troilus and Cressida)

Actually, as Scott complained, Dryden threw away some of the best parts along with the rubbish. But I do have a lot of sympathy with Dryden's view of Shakespeare's problematic play. The idea that Shakespeare's heart wasn't really in it can still be seen in W.W. Lawrence (1942), who wondered if Shakespeare did his best with an unappealing assignment, e.g to re-tell a hackneyed love story, or maybe to essay a fashionable cynicism he found uncongenial. 

As for "one of his first endeavours on the stage" -- well, Dryden was writing before anyone had begun to work out the chronology of Shakespeare's plays. Troilus and Cressida [from now on this means Shakespeare's play, not Dryden's] is generally agreed to come from about 1601-1602. (Perhaps just after Hamlet and just before Othello, two of Shakespeare's most amazing plays; no wonder we're bothered by it.) The frequently clotted language ("tortive and errant") confirms that date, but Troilus and Cressida is stylistically very various, and sometimes it oddly recalls Shakespeare's earliest comedies. Naïve dramatic situations like this:

Ajax. I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.

Nestor (aside). Yet he loves himself: is't not strange?

Or repartee that wouldn't look out of place in Two Gentlemen of Verona:

Music within

[Pandarus.] What music is this?

Servant. I do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts.

Pandarus. Know you the musicians?

Servant. Wholly, sir.

Pandarus. Who play they to?

Servant. To the hearers, sir.

Pandarus. At whose pleasure, friend

Servant. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.

Pandarus. Command, I mean, friend.

Servant. Who shall I command, sir?

Pandarus. Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly and thou art too cunning.

Or what about this clumping commentary on Diomedes and Aeneas? 

Paris. This is the most despiteful gentle greeting,

The noblest hateful love, that e'er I heard of --

The "never-writer" of the 1609 Prologue puffs the play, telling us that its witty author wrote "none more witty than this" --, yet long stretches of Troilus and Cressida are characterized by a strangely rudimentary kind of wit. Ajax and Achilles are so dense that they'd be impervious to anything more ambitious. Thersites shows a quick wit now and then, but mostly he's just hurling insults. Nor do the wiser Greeks impress us greatly. Nestor seems to inertly rehash whatever he has just been told, always a step behind; the line above is almost his only effort at originality. 

Ulysses' idea of having the generals troop past Achilles while affecting to ignore him is broad comedy at best -- about the level of It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. I have difficulty imagining a discerning member of Shakespeare's audience (a prince Hamlet, say) being particularly impressed by this. It sets up, of course, the more elevated discussion between Ulysses and Achilles, yet the scene (III.3) then fizzles into Thersites doing impressions of the taciturn Ajax, and as Achilles leaves the stage we return to theatrical primitivism:

Achilles. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

(Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus)

Disappointing our expectations is commonly recognized as a recurrent feature of the play's progress. But, after all, that renders the play problematic, not just its characters and action. 

*

Like all Shakespeare's plays, Troilus and Cressida has been enormously discussed. In this case the volume of debate is partly down to admiration and partly down to perceived difficulties. 

As it happens, much of this discussion is well captured in two recent PhD theses that I've found entertaining and informative:

*

Johann Gregory describes accumulated scholarship and commentary about the cultural debate within Troilus and Cressida, its contemporary context, and especially its probing of expectation, audience, taste and social distinction (with Pierre Bourdieu in mind) :

Johann Gregory, Troilus and Cressida: audience expectation and matters of taste in relation to authorship and the book (University of Cardiff, 2013)

http://orca.cf.ac.uk/53952/

Troilus and Cressida is often considered one of Shakespeare's most literary plays, like Love's Labour's Lost i.e. less concerned with telling a good story and more concerned with contemporary cultural debate.  One background is "The Poet's War", in which Troilus and Cressida may intervene (an intervention possibly responded to by Ben Jonson in the "Apologetical Dialogue" that he appended to Poetaster). A more shadowy background is the numerous other Troy plays, especially the group composed for the Admiral's Men around 1599 by Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle, unfortunately all lost. One thing that survives is a fragmentary backstage plot for their Troilus and Cressida. This was a document for prompters and call-boys, listing the characters in each scene, their entrances and exits, alarums, etc. You can see it here: 

https://lostplays.folger.edu/Troilus_and_Cressida

It shows that Shakespeare's play followed basically the same approach as Dekker/Chettle in treating the story of Troilus and Cressida alongside the story of the war's progress (the central Homeric Hector/Achilles thread, presented as scenes of council debate and fighting). Both are large-cast plays portraying the numerous worthies who were at the siege of Troy. A reference to Cressida entering "wth Beggars" suggests that Dekker and Chettle included Cressida's tragic end as envisaged by Henryson in The Testament of Cresseid. In another scene Ajax enters carrying Patroclus on his back (presumably, the dead Patroclus); so it seems likely that Dekker and Chettle's Ajax was an unexceptionable hero. The name Thersites is conspicuously absent (though the plot is fragmentary and only covers about half the play). For what it's worth, these observations are consistent with the presumption that a Troy play by Dekker and Chettle would probably be respectful and romantic, exactly what Shakespeare's play isn't. 

*

Joanne Elizabeth Brown tells a complementary story, about the history of interpretation of the characters in Troilus and Cressida: in literary criticism, in performance and among theatre reviewers. The play had essentially no performance tradition prior to the early twentieth century, but since then it's made up for lost time. Its fitful, gappy approach to narrative has permitted widely divergent interpretations of its characters: Cressida as a game-playing tease/a mature woman/heartbroken by Troilus/a victim of war, Troilus as a youthful idealist/a self-absorbed adolescent/a roué, Ulysses as a wise authority/a clever schemer only out for himself/a pompous self-appointed expert who usually gets it wrong, Hector the essence of nobility and chivalry/just as flawed as everyone else, Helen as shallow socialite or traumatized booty. Then there are subtler questions of emphasis for a producer: should the Trojans be favourably contrasted with the Greeks; should Thersites' physical deformity be highlighted; should Achilles and Patroclus be presented chiefly as a pair of lolling slobs, or is their sexual relationship important; and what motivates Pandarus, should he be shown as sexually excited by Troilus, or by Cressida? 

Joanne Elizabeth Brown, Reinterpreting Troilus and Cressida: changing perceptions in literary criticism and British performance (University of Birmingham, 2016)

https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7359/1/Brown17PhD.pdf

*

Like, or find fault . . .

The Prologue of Troilus and Cressida is unnervingly reminiscent of the Chorus of Henry V, especially Act III. Here's another tale of a ship-born invasion. But the patriotic spirit of the earlier play has evaporated. If the invading Greeks have a kind of case, this armed Prologue presents it with a studied coldness. He does not identify with either side, only with the state of human beings in warfare. 

We've come long way from Dryden's view of Troilus and Cressida; David Bevington, the latest Arden editor, calls it "an amazing play". I truly wish I shared his enthusiasm. 

My central difficulty, I think, is the distanced way in which it tells its story. Though much of the play seems to be occupied with actions that are trivial and go nowhere in particular, it does after all have a story. Take that central event, Cressida's abandonment of Troilus and moving on to Diomede. You might assume that a certain perplexity would precede this momentous development. Compare Measure for Measure: Angelo gives us two perplexed soliloquies before he makes his infamous proposal, and Isabella has one straight afterwards, in which we see her perplexity. Cressida's soliloquies, in contrast, express no perplexity; they tell us what she has already decided or done (I.2, V.2 -- both are in rhymed verse). Nor are we shown anything of Diomede's presumed wooing (Chaucer had done it brilliantly). You could say that Shakespeare cuts straight from Cressida's anguished parting with Troilus to Diomedes impatiently pressing for fulfilment of what, he claims, she has already committed to. In between comes the kissing scene with the Greek leaders; it feels relevant in a symbolic way, but again we are given no real access to Cressida's thoughts, only the external judgements of Ulysses. It can be played in radically different ways. 

Here's her post-betrayal soliloquy:

Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee

But with my heart the other eye doth see.

Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,

The error of our eye directs our mind:

What error leads must err; O, then conclude

Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.

Cressida tells us only that her eye has betrayed her. Nothing about the war or her difficult circumstances or her need of a protector, just her erring eye. As if, basically, she just fancied a bit of Diomedes. 

But this rhymed soliloquy has an emblematic quality, as if Cressida is talking more about herself as a pattern of female frailty than about her specific circumstances. It's the same as in the earlier scene where she describes the hypothetical proverb "as false as Cressid" in response to "as true as Troilus". Not, for example, a hypothetical "as constant as Cressid".  It seems her character has stepped out of narrative time and holds up a signboard. Elsewhere Cressida's emotions and hesitations can be witnessed (e.g. in the parting scene, and in the yes-no-yes of the eavesdropping scene) but Troilus and Cressida goes beyond Hamlet in its scepticism about whether people can be known, even by themselves. And a scepticism about whether people can be known easily slides into a cynicism about what people say. Cressida's final communication in the play isn't even heard by us: Troilus dismisses it as "words, words, mere words" (V.3). 

I can appreciate there's a certain thrill in seeing verbal performance disengaged from revelation of character. It's a drama of cubist scintillations; no other Shakespeare play switches modes so incessantly. The buffoon Ajax can suddenly become the courtly Ajax of later scenes; the dim Achilles can suddenly talk philosophy with Ulysses; Troilus himself can switch from fervent lover to unsentimental pragmatist (as Cressida predicted) and then back to outraged idealist again. Pandarus can transform from a starstruck courtier into a pox-ridden bawd. Ulysses can be anything Shakespeare requires him for. Even Nestor can step up when the author requires a three-man chorus to describe what's going on in the battle (V.5). 

But the feeling that Shakespeare's not really that inspired by the story, that his eye is roaming over the mass of material and fitfully developing small ideas while tossing away the big ones ... I find that feeling hard to resist. 

*

Troilus. Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be,

Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do. 

(Act I Scene 1)

This is a bit confusing. 

In the context of the scene, and in a general way, we understand Troilus as meaning that he's been more patient than Patience herself. Maybe we hear the comic overtones of a Basil Fawlty or Edmund Blackadder or some other typically impatient comic character, exploding "it would try the patience of a saint!"

But what he actually says tends to imply that he's less patient than Patience herself. 

Perhaps he's trying to say that Patience has never had to suffer as much waiting around as he has. 

But then he also wants to introduce the image of turning pale with frustration. 

And so he ends up saying that Patience does not turn pale as often as he does, which can have two different explanations: 1. she does not have so much occasion; she is not tried as much as Troilus is. 2. she is, in fact, patient; and Troilus isn't. 

Has Troilus in fact been patient, shy, an ideal courtly lover? Or is he comically ignorant of himself, totally impatient and self-centred, someone whose perception of his own long-suffering cannot be taken seriously? 

Saint-Maure de Touraine

Saint-Maure de Touraine may be the birthplace of  Benoît de Sainte-Maure, author of Le Roman de Troie (c. 1155-1160), in which the story of Troilus and Briseida [=Cressida] appears for the first time. 

These notes on Shakespeare: full list

permanent temporariness

 

Finally tidying seven years of emails, I came across a forgotten Amazon token for £10 (I must have done a survey or something), and since it was about to expire, I hastily spent it on the first modern poetry book that came to mind. Well, not quite the first -- the first two or three turned out to be not available or too expensive -- but then I struck lucky with Donna Stonecipher's Model City, so that's the gleaming new addition to my bookcase, and I'm very pleased with it. I can even forgive the square format, though it inconveniently sticks out of the shelf, stealing precious footprint from a room not over-blest with it. 

I'm a bit over half-way through reading it, and it certainly is a poetry book that I think most people would want to read in that straight-through just like a novel way -- not that the order of the poems necessarily matters, but there's just no obvious reason for doing anything else, because all the poems look very alike.  

Last time I wrote about Donna Stonecipher I quoted Model City [1] :

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/06/donna-stonecipher.html

Today I wanted to quote another poem in full, so I looked about on the internet for one that was already out there, and came up with this: 

Model City [17]

It was like watching the city slowly powdered over with snow from your bedroom window, the molecular makeup of the city slowly altered through powdery intimations of ossification.

*

It was like watching the snow slowly powder over the construction site across the street, which will one day be a hotel, the snow filling in the space temporarily where one day there will be permanent temporariness.

*

It was like slowly coming to think of the snow as permanent, the construction site as permanent, the grand opening of the hotel permanently postponed, the spring postponed, the grand opening of the crocuses.

*

It was like feeling powdered over with snow oneself, as one is part of the city; apart from it, watching it from the window, to be sure; but a part of it, a powdered-over temporary part. 

[Source]

The only time I was in Berlin, it was April and the city was snowy, not a powder but a soft wet snow that fell continually, and melted at nearly the same rate. 

The city in Model City is mainly Berlin, often recognizably Berlin, but that begs the question. These poems are about the city only in an indirect sense; what they are directly about is the imagined city, the conceived city, the contemplated city. It's a city seen from a musing, moony distance. As far as I've read, the contemplated city hasn't much traffic (though a delivery truck just turned up in Model City [42] ), or working life, or family life, or energy infrastructure or economics or laundry or day-care or markets. The poetry contemplates a stillness. It's drawn to empty real estate, blank billboards, clean sea-shells, historic bullet holes, snow-powdered construction sites in which no-one is doing any constructing. 

And yet for all the stillness in the poetry the city has its teeming crowds, its crowds busy and moving, as on escalators in a silent movie, inferred but unquestionably there. There's an inaudible buzz of chatter.

It was like standing in the midst of a city park with a friend who shows you that if you stare too long at the artificial waterfall, then look away, the waterfall will suddenly start to rush not down, but up. 

(from Model City [24])

It was like trying to find a café that was not a Starbucks or Balzac or Einstein in an unknown city known for its coffeehouses, and finally giving up and ordering a tall skinny latte with the familiar chaste mermaid on the cup.

(from Model City [30])

I wanted to illustrate this post with a photo from that time I visited Berlin (it was 2013, my stepdaughter Kyli was living there), but I couldn't track down those photos in my storage and began to wonder if I'd lost them all, those snowy Berlin buildings and just before that the loud fireworks in Valencia. 

It was like the start of a poem in the manner of a poet you've been immersed in for long enough to start expressing what you believe are your own thoughts in the manner of that poet. 

Prince Hat Under the Ground

Prince Hat Under the Ground

Once (a long, long time ago) there was a king who had three daughters, and they were all so lovely that you would never find anyone lovelier, look where you might. But the youngest of the princesses was held the first, both for her beauty and, still more, for her goodness and tender heart. So the people grew to love her, and the king himself loved her more than his other daughters. 

Now one autumn day there happened to be a market in a town not very far from the king's castle, and the king himself planned to go there with his retinue. When he was about to set off, he asked his daughters what each of them would like as a gift from the market. The two eldest princesses at once began to make lists of every sort of precious article. One of them would have this, and the other would have that... But the youngest princess didn't ask for anything at all. The king wondered at this, so he asked her, wouldn't she too like to have some little knick-knack or finery? She answered that she already had more than enough of gold and valuables. But at last she said, in response to the king's eager queries:

"I do know of one thing that I would gladly have, if I only dared ask for it!"

"What can it be?" asked the king. "Just name it, and if it lies within my power then you shall have it!"

"Well," said the princess, "I have heard people speak of the three singing leaves, and I would rather have them than anything else in the world."

Now the king smiled, because he considered this a paltry request, and he said:

"Well, no-one can say that you're too demanding! To be honest I had rather you had asked me for some greater gift. But you shall have your wish, even if it costs me half my land and kingdom." 

And with that he bade a hearty farewell to his daughters, leapt on his horse and rode off with his followers. 

Now when he got to the town where the market was being held, a crowd had gathered from all parts, and there were many foreign traders who offered their goods for sale in the streets and squares. Thus there was no lack of gold, silver and other precious articles. There was all one could wish for, and the king shopped liberally for his daughters. But though he visited every booth, and though he combed through every shelf, and though he asked traders from the east and traders from the west, there was no-one who knew anything about the three singing leaves that he had promised his youngest daughter. 

He was very sorry about this, because he wished to bring her the same happiness he was bringing to the others. But when there was no help for it and dusk was falling, he saddled his horse, gathered his men together and set off home in an ill humour.  

Just as he was travelling along the road, deep in thought, he suddenly heard a sound as of harps and stringed instruments, and it was so marvellously beautiful that he had never heard anything like it in his whole life. He wondered greatly at this, so he reined in his horse and sat listening, and the longer he listened the lovelier the song became.

But the evening was dark, so he couldn't see where the sound was coming from. So he hesitated no longer but rode in to a large green meadow from which the music seemed to issue, and the further he rode the clearer and lovelier the song became. 

When he had advanced some little way he saw a hazel bush, and on the crown of the bush there were three golden leaves that moved hither and thither, and as they moved there came forth a sound and a melody that none may describe.  

Now the king was very glad, for he realized that these were the three singing leaves that his daughter had spoken of. So he went to break them off, but as soon as he reached out his hand they drew away from him, and a loud voice came from underneath the bush: 

"Let my leaves alone!"

The king was much astonished at first, but he soon collected himself and asked who it was that spoke, and whether he might not buy the leaves for gold or for good words.

"I am Prince Hat Under the Ground," replied the voice, "and you cannot have my leaves, either for evil or for good, except on this one condition: that you promise me the first life you meet with when you return to your domain."

The king thought this a strange request, but he remembered the promise he made to his daughter, so he agreed to the prince's terms. 

Now the leaf-shoots no longer pulled away, and he was able to snap them off. Then he started gladly for home and for his loved ones. But the whole time he rode the leaves continued to sing, and the horses danced for joy, and the king's homecoming resembled a victory march more than a market trip. 

During the time the king had been absent the princesses had been sitting all day and sewing at their frames and talking of nothing but the precious gifts their father would be carrying with him from the market. Towards evening the youngest princess asked if they mightn't walk out on the road along which their father would approach.

"No," her sisters replied, "why should we do that? It's already late, and the night dew would damage our silk stockings."

But the youngest princess didn't care about her silk stockings, so she said they could stay put, for she could go alone to meet her father. She put on her coat and went out along the road. But she hadn't walked very far, when she heard the tramping of horses and the din of men and weapons and, in the midst of all this, the loveliest of songs. 

Then she was very glad, for she realized it was her father approaching, and that he had the three singing leaves she had asked him for. Now she ran up to him and swung herself into his arms and bade him welcome. 

But when the king saw who it was he was utterly horrified, for he thought about the promise he had sworn to Prince Hat, and how he had now sworn away his own child. He could neither speak nor answer for a long while, though the princess begged and implored him to tell her the cause of his sorrow.

At last he told her what had taken place, and how he had promised to give away the first life that met him within his domain. Now there was lamentation and sorrow beyond any other, and the king was the most sorry of all, but the end of it was that he went back to the meadow and left his daughter beside the hazel bush. And he thought now that the loss he suffered could never be made good. 

Now the abandoned princess sat alone by the bush and wept bitterly. But she hadn't been sitting there long before the ground suddenly opened, and she came down into a grand room under the ground, and this room was far more splendid than any she had seen, and was decorated with both gold and silver. But no person appeared. 

The princess almost forgot her sorrow when she saw all this magnificence, and when at last she grew tired she laid herself down to rest in a bed whose cover and hangings were whiter than snow. 

But she had not been lying there long before the door opened and there entered a man who walked right up to the bed and gave her a friendly and warm welcome. It was he who ruled over this room, for he was Prince Hat. He told her that a spell had been cast on him by a wicked troll-woman, which meant he could never show himself to any person. Therefore he could only visit her in the night when it was dark. But if she would be loyal to him, it would all turn out well in the end. He stayed with her right through till sunrise. Then he went away, and didn't come again until late in the evening. 

And so it went on for a long time afterwards. The princess sat in the lovely room every day, and if she felt sad, she only had to listen to the singing leaves to feel glad again. 

Before a year was past she had a little boy child, and now she felt that her life was good. All day she nursed and played with her little son and longed for her husband. 

But one evening he came home later than usual. She asked him anxiously where he had been so long. 

"Well," he said, "I've come from your father's castle, and now I have something notable to tell you, for the king has found himself a new queen, and if you like, you can go home for the wedding and take our little boy with you." 

She wanted to go very much, and she thanked him sincerely. 

"But one thing you must promise me," he said, "that you never let yourself be tempted to betray your loyalty to me."

Yes, she promised him that. 

The next morning the princess put on fine clothes and splendid jewels for attending the wedding. When everything was ready, there came forth a gilded coach, and she sat herself in it with her little son. Then it drove off over mountains and dales, and she hardly had time to speak another word before they arrived at their destination. 

Now when the princess stepped into the wedding hall where the guests were already assembled, you can imagine what happiness there was. The king got up from his seat of honour and gathered her in his arms with great joy. Thus also did his consort and the two princesses, and everyone bade her a hearty welcome to her land again. 

Now when the first greetings were over, both the king and the queen began to ask the princess of this and that. But above all the queen wished to know about Prince Hat, who he was, and what her life with him was like. But the princess replied little to this, and it was easy to see that she didn't want to talk about it. But now the queen became all the more curious. Finally the king became vexed and said:

"My dear love, what has it got to do with us? It's enough that my daughter is content and happy."

Then the queen was silent, but as soon as the king turned his back she carried on with her persistent questions. 

Now when the wedding had lasted many days, the princess started to yearn for home again. At once the coach came forth again, and after she had said farewell to her relatives she went on her way with her little son over mountains and dales, until she came to the green bush. Then she stepped out and so came down into the house under the ground. And the leaves played so beautifully, and she thought it was much better under the ground than in the king's castle. And she became still more glad in the evening,  when Prince Hat came home, and told her how his thoughts never left her, either by night or day. 

Some time thereafter the princess gave birth to another little son. Now she felt that she was yet more happy than before, and every day she played with her little ones. One evening the prince came home later than usual, and when the princess asked him anxiously why he'd been delayed so long, he replied:

"Well, I've come from your father's castle and can now tell you that your eldest sister's going to get married to a foreign prince, and if you like, you can go home for the wedding and take our children with you."

The princess wanted to go very much, and she thanked him sincerely. 

"But one thing you must promise me," he said, "that you never let yourself be tempted to betray your loyalty to me."

The princess promised him. 

The next morning she took her children with her and went to the king's castle. When she stepped into the wedding hall, where the guests were already gathered, there was much gladness. Everyone embraced her and welcomed her and there was no end to their expressions of joy at seeing her again. 

Now the queen once more began to question her stepdaughter about her husband and how she got on at home, but the princess did not say much in response to her questions, and in the end the king had to ask her to leave the princess in peace, since she was content and happy, and the rest was no concern of others, he said.  

When the wedding was over, the princess yearned for home again. So she took her little ones and went away. And she was so glad and happy, when she stood once more in the house under the ground, and she was still happier in the evening, when Prince Hat came home, and when he said how all his thoughts were of her. 

Some time afterwards the princess gave birth to a little daughter, the loveliest baby one could ever see. Now the princess considered her happiness so great that scarcely anything was wanting. One evening, when the prince came home later than usual, he told her how he had been to her father's castle and that her other sister was now to be married to a foreign king's son. 

"If you wish," he said, "you can go home and take the children with you."

The princess thanked her husband for always thinking of her happiness. Then the prince answered:

"But one thing you must promise me, not to betray your loyalty to me, for that would bring great unhappiness to both of us."

The princess promised.

 

The next day she travelled with her three little children to the king's castle, and when she came into the king's hall the guests were assembled and the wedding celebrations were already in full swing. There was great joy when she stepped in, and all bade her a hearty welcome. 

Once again her stepmother began questioning her about her husband, but when she saw that the princess was on her guard, she tried a trick to get at what she wanted to know. So she began to speak of the princess's three small children playing on the hall floor, saying how nice they were, and how happy she must be to have such children. They must surely take after their father, she added, and Prince Hat must be a very handsome young man. 

Well, they carried on talking, and the princess was enticed by this false speech into finally letting slip that she didn't know if the prince was handsome or ugly, for she had never seen him. 

The queen clapped her hands together in surprise, and loudly lamented the prince, and that he should keep any secret from his wife. 

"And," she said, "I must say you're very different from other women, since you haven't found out the truth of it."

Now the princess forgot all about her husband's warning and told everything she knew, and asked her stepmother for her advice, and how she might contrive to see her husband. Then the queen promised to think of some means before they parted from each other.  

When the wedding was over and the princess was about to go home, her stepmother took her aside and said:

"I'm giving you this ring, and a fire-steel with a flint, and a candle. If you want to see what your husband looks like, get up in the night, make a flame through the ring and light the candle. But be very careful not to wake him."

The princess thanked her very much for the gift and promised to do as her stepmother advised. Then she went on her way. Now when she came home she felt ill at ease, no matter how the leaves played and how beautiful everything was.

Late in the evening the prince came home, and now there was great joy, and he told her how he had longed for her. When they lay down and the prince was asleep, the princess got up, struck a flame through the ring and slowly drew near to the bed to see her beloved. And how glad she was, when she saw how handsome he was! She gazed and gazed, and forgot about everything else as she gazed at him.

But just as she was leaning over him, it chanced that a drop of hot wax ran down from the candle and fell on his breast, so that he stirred. Now the princess grew frightened and instantly tried to blow out the candle -- but it was too late, for the prince awoke, sprang up in terror and saw what she had done.

In the same moment the three singing leaves fell silent, the beautiful room was transformed into a den of snakes and toads, and the prince and princess remained alone with their small children in the darkness of the night. And Prince Hat was -- blind. 

Now the princess bitterly regretted what she had done, and she fell down on her knees and begged him, weeping, to forgive her. Then the prince answered:

"Poorly have you repaid all the love I cherished for you. I forgive you in any case, and now you must decide for yourself if you will follow your blind husband, or return once more to your father."

At these words the princess became still more distressed, and wept so that her tears trickled down upon the earth. 

"You have not forgiven me in your heart," she said, "if you can ask whether I will go with you, because as long as I live in this world I will follow you."

With that she took him by the hand, and they went away from the place that had been their home. Now the princess wandered with her three children and her blind husband, and tried to find a way through the bewildering wood. 

When they had been wandering a long time, they finally came upon a green path that went onward through the wilderness. Then the prince asked:

"My heart's desire, do you see anything?"

"No," answered the princess, "I see nothing, only woodland and green trees."

They went on a while. Then the prince asked again, if she saw anything.

"No," she answered as before. "Only the green wood."

After a while the prince asked for the third time, if she still did not see anything. 

"Why, yes," she answered, "I think I see a large house, and its roof gleams as if it were made of copper."

"Then we have arrived at my elder sister's farm," he said. "Now you must go in and greet her from me, and beg her to take our eldest son and foster him until he comes of age. But I myself must not come under her roof, and nor must you let her come out to see me, for then we would be parted for ever."

The princess went into the farm and carried out her errand, though it stabbed her heart when she had to leave her little son behind. Then she parted from her sister-in-law. And though the prince's sister was eager to meet her brother, the princess didn't dare go against his word, so she had to say no. 

Now the prince and princess continued their journey across wood and waste, until they found a green path leading through the wilds. Then the prince asked, as before, whether she saw anything, and twice she could only reply that she saw nothing other than forest and green trees. But the third time she answered:

"Why yes, I think I see a large house, and its roof gleams, as if it were made of silver."

"Then we have arrived at my second sister's farm," he said. "Go in now and greet her from me, and ask her to take charge of our second son and to foster him until he has grown to manhood. But I myself must not come under her roof, and neither must you let her come here and meet me, for then we would be parted for ever."

The princess did as he said, and left her child, though it stabbed her heart to do it. And however much her sister-in-law begged to come out to her brother, the princess dared not let her. 

Now they continued on their way, until they came once more to a little green path that went through the wood. The prince asked now, as before, whether she saw anything, but it was only when he asked for the third time that she replied:

"Why yes, I seem to see a grand house, and its roof shines like pure gold."

"Then we have come to my youngest sister's farm," said the prince. "Now you must go in, greet her from me and ask her to receive our little daughter and foster her. But I myself must not come under her roof, nor must she come out to me, for then we should be parted for ever."

Now the princess did as he said, and was given a friendly welcome by her sister-in-law. But when the time came to leave the last of her children, it seemed to her that her heart would burst with sorrow, and she forgot the prince's prohibition and everything else in her utter wretchedness. Now her sister-in-law followed after her, without the princess remembering that she was supposed to prevent it. 

When they came out to the prince, his sister fell into his arms and wept bitterly. But when the prince understood that the princess had once more broken her promise to him, he turned pale as a corpse and burst out:

"My heart's desire! This you should not have done."

In the same moment a cloud dropped down from the sky, and the prince disappeared into the air, just as when a bird flies away.

Now the princess and her sister-in-law were beside themselves with despair. The princess wrung her hands and would not let herself be comforted, for now she had lost everything that she held dear in this world. And the prince's sister grieved almost as much.

After a while they began to discuss how they might find him again, for the princess intended to search the whole world for him.

"I can't give you any advice," said his sister, "unless it is to walk to that great mountain you can see behind the woods. Up there lives an old troll-crone whose name is Berta. She is wise in many things, and perhaps she can tell you something."

Now the princess parted from her sister-in-law and started on her lone journey. 

When it grew late and she could walk no further, she saw a little light twinkling on the fellside. Then she quite forgot her tiredness and made her way forward over stocks and stones, until she found a cave high on the mountain, and the cave's door stood open. Within she could see how a whole crowd of small trolls, both men and women, were gathered round the fire, and at the very front sat an old, old woman tinkering with some small thing. She was frightful to behold, low of stature and very aged. The princess realized that she was the old Berta the prince's sister had spoken of. She hesitated no longer, but stepped into the cave and meekly greeted her:

"Good evening, dear mother!"

Then all the small trolls leapt up, for they were very astonished to see a Christian. But the old woman looked up in a friendly way and answered:

"Good evening to you! And who may you be, who comes and brings me such a fair greeting? I have been sitting here for a full five hundred years, but you are the first to do me the honour of calling me 'dear mother'."

Now the princess explained her business, and asked the old woman if she knew anything about a prince called "Prince Hat Under the Ground"? 

"No," answered the troll-crone, "That I don't know. But as you have honoured me by calling me 'dear mother', I will help you nevertheless, for you must know that I have a sister who is twice as old as I am, and maybe she knows something." 

The princess thanked her heartily for her friendliness, and now she stayed in the mountain over night. 

The following morning, at sunrise, the princess did not delay in setting forth once more, and one of mother Berta's pixies went with her to show her the way.

When she took her leave of the old woman, the latter said:

"Good luck with your journey, and I wish you all good things. And as you have done me the honour of calling me 'dear mother', I pray that you will take this spinning-wheel as a memento. So long as you have it you will suffer no want, because it spins as much yarn on its own as any nine others."

The princess thanked her sincerely for the gift, and well she might, for it was made of solid gold. So she parted from the old woman and journeyed all that day. 

Late in the evening they came again to a high fell, and towards the top there glimmered a light like a little star. 

Then the pixie said:

"Now I have shown you the way, as I promised, for here lives grandma's sister. And now it's time for me to go home again." And with that he sprinted off. 

But the princess made her way forward over stocks and stones, until she got up on the fellside and found a cave whose door stood open, so that the light of the fire shone red through the darkness. 

Without hesitating she went into the mountain dwelling and saw that a great crowd of trolls, both men and women, were gathered round the fire. But at the very front sat an old, old woman, who seemed to rule over them all. She was low in stature, ugly to look at and so old that her head rocked back and forth. 

The princess went straight up to the old woman, who she could see was mother Berta's sister, and greeted her politely:

"Good evening, dear mother!"

The trolls sprang up, shocked at seeing a Christian, but the old crone looked at her in a friendly way and answered:

"Good evening to you! Who may you be, who comes with so fair a greeting? I have been sitting here for fully a thousand years, yet no-one before you has ever done me the honour of calling me 'dear mother'."

Now the princess told her business, but the old woman could give her no information. But as the princess had called her 'dear mother' she wished to help her, and would therefore direct her to a sister of hers, who was twice as old as she was. 

The princess thanked her for her friendliness and so stayed the night in the mountain.

The next day, when the princess was to go on her way, the old woman wished her luck on her journey and, in gratitude for calling her 'dear mother', gave her a yarn-winder of purest gold as a friendship gift. 

"And," said the old woman, "as long as you have this yarn-winder you need suffer no scarcity, for on its own it will skein up all the yarn that you spin on your spinning-wheel."

The princess thanked her warmly for the precious gift and went on her way. And one of the old woman's pixies went with her to show her the way. 

Late in the evening they came to a high fell, and on the top sparkled a light like a little clear star. Then the pixie said:

"Now it's time for me to go home again, for up there lives grandma's sister, and now you can find the way yourself." 

With that he disappeared. But the princess continued, until she reached the top and found a dwelling in the mountain. 

As the door stood open she walked straight in, and then she could see how a great crowd of trolls were gathered round the fire, and right at the front sat an old, old woman. She was hideous to look at, with a long, long nose that met her chin, and so old that her head nodded back and forth. 

"Good evening, dear mother!" said the princess politely. 

The trolls sprang up in fright, but the old woman greeted her in a friendly way. 

"Good evening to you! Who may you be, who comes here and greets me so nicely? I have been sitting here for fully two thousand years, and yet no-one has ever done me the honour of calling me 'dear mother!'"

Now the princess asked, if she knew anything about a bewitched prince, who was called Prince Hat Under the Ground?

Then the old woman became very grave and pondered for a long time. In the end she said:

"Yes, I have heard him spoken of, and I can tell you where he is, but it is not very likely you will ever get him back, for he lies under a spell and has forgotten you as well as everything else. But as you have done me the honour of calling me 'dear mother', I will help you as much as I can. Stay here for the night, and then we can talk about it in the morning."

The princess stayed over night, and the next morning when she was about to go on her way, the old woman said:

"Now from here you must walk straight towards the sun, and you will come in the end to a big castle. There you must go in and do everything I tell you, for there dwells the prince."

Then she gave her much good advice about how she should act,  wished her good luck on the journey, and gave her as a memento and friendship-gift a splendid silk purse that was embroidered throughout with the reddest gold. 

"But," she said, "this is not a common purse, for this purse is always full of silver coins, no matter how much you take out of it. 

The princess thanked her sincerely for the gift, and so she wandered on further through many great forests, until she came to a big, big castle, which was so grand that she had never seen its like. Now she felt very glad to be so near to her dearest one, and she went in. But just as she opened the castle door, she saw a stately woman come walking towards her, and from the splendid clothes the princess knew that here was the queen who ruled over this domain. 

"Who are you, and where do you come from?" she asked the princess. 

"I am no other than a poor foreigner, who comes here to seek work," replied the princess.

"I see," replied the troll, "and I suppose you think that I have work for each and everyone who comes and goes! Not a bit of it, be off at once!"

And when she said this the old witch looked so grim that the princess was afraid. 

"If it is so," she said humbly, "I must be content. But I beg for lodging for a few days, so I can rest after my long journey."

"Yes, you can have that," said the troll. "You can lie in the goose-house. That's a fitting lodging for people like you." 

And so it was. Now when the princess was alone she did as the old woman of the mountain had advised her. First she scoured and polished and swept every cranny, so it became really nice. Then she took out her spinning-wheel, and spun the most splendid of yarns, both gold and silk, and then she skeined them, and then she wove them, and thus at last she clad the whole room with golden cloths and with the magnificent tapestries she had woven. Now the goose-house was for a while transformed into the most splendid room in the whole castle. 

Then she took out her silk purse, and went out and bought food and mead and wine, and everything else that money could buy, and then she cooked and roasted and set forth such a banquet as none of us has ever tasted. 

Afterwards she went up to the castle and asked to speak with the queen. The witch received her in a friendly manner and asked what she wanted. 

"Well," said the princess, "my business is, I want to beg you and your daughter to do me the great honour of being my guests this evening." 

This appealed to the old witch very much, for she had been informed of all the preparations that were going on down in the goose-house. So she promised to come. 

In the evening, when the queen and her stepdaughter came down to the goose-house, they were received with much politeness. While they sat at table and ate and drank and made merry, the princess took out her golden spinning-wheel and began to spin. Then the witch was much astonished, and she thought it a far greater treasure than any she had seen before. So she asked if she might not purchase the spinning-wheel. 

"No," said the princess, "I will not sell it for money, and neither will I give it to you for free. But I will give it up on one condition."

"What condition is that, then?" asked the old witch eagerly. 

"Well," the princess replied, "It's this: that I meet with your beloved at night."

The witch thought this over for a good while, but by now she wanted the spinning-wheel at any cost, and since she was full of deceit she thought she could go along with it this time. So she had the spinning-wheel. 

Now the old witch returned to the castle and thought of nothing else but how to arrange it so that the prince and the foreign woman wouldn't be able to talk to each other. Accordingly she ordered her stepdaughter to remain secretly in the prince's bedroom to hear what the foreign woman had to say. 

Then she filled a goblet with mead, mixed strong herbs into the drink and offered it to the prince, with the result that, as soon as he drained the goblet, he sank into a trance and neither heard nor saw anything. Then the witch laughed within her false heart, and brought the princess into the bedchamber, thinking that now she might talk with the prince just as much as she wished.

When the princess was alone with the prince she ran up to him, fell upon his neck and said how happy she was that she had finally found him. But the prince did not wake up. Then she grew very sad, and told with many loving words how she had wandered through the whole world in search of him. When he still did nothing but sleep, she could only suppose he no longer cared for her. So she fell upon her knees and begged him, weeping bitterly, to forgive her for all her offences. But the sleeping draught was so strong that the prince still didn't stir. However, the witch's stepdaughter heard every word, and she felt so sorry for the foreign woman that she hadn't the heart to betray her to her wicked stepmother. 

Early in the morning the witch came to the prince's chamber to learn how matters stood. Now the princess had no choice but to return to the goose-house, and there she sat with her head in her hands and wept. 

But when the old witch saw that her device had been successful she was very pleased, and she sat spinning all day at the golden spinning-wheel. 

Towards evening the princess dried her tears and prepared a banquet that was even more splendid than the last. Then she went up to the castle and invited the old witch and her daughter.  

Now while they sat and ate and drank that evening, the princess took out her gold yarn-winder and began skeining yarn. The witch was astonished and thought she had never seen such a treasure. So she asked, if she could buy the yarn-winder? But the princess replied that she would neither sell it nor give it away -- except on one condition, and that was, that she should meet with the prince this night as well. The witch agreed to this at once, because she thought she would surely find some means by which the prince and the foreign woman wouldn't be able to talk together. 

Now the witch went home again and told her stepdaughter, just as she had the night before, to hide in the prince's bedchamber and take careful note of what the foreign woman said. Then she filled a goblet with mead, mixed powerful herbs into it and bade the prince drink it. And scarcely had he emptied the goblet than he fell down in a dead faint and could neither hear nor see. Then the witch rejoiced in her false heart, and brought the princess into the prince's room. 

When the old witch had gone away, the princess ran to the prince, fell upon his neck and spoke of all that had happened and how she had sought him over the whole wide world. But no matter how she wept and pleaded he heard nothing -- he just went on sleeping. The witch's daughter, who heard and saw her limitless sorrow, felt such pity for her and the prince, that she began to ponder how she might free them from the power of her stepmother. 

In the morning the princess had to return to the goose-house, and there she sat all day and wept. But the troll-witch was so pleased at how well it had turned out that she did nothing all day but sit skeining yarn with her golden yarn-winder. 

When it was getting towards evening the princess dried her tears and began to prepare a banquet even more magnificent than the previous ones, and then she went up and invited the witch and her daughter.

While they were eating and drinking the princess took out her silk purse and showed how it was always full of money, no matter how much you took out. The witch was utterly amazed and thought that the purse was the greatest treasure she had ever seen, and she asked if she could buy it. But the princess replied that she would neither sell it nor give it away except on one condition, namely that she might speak to the prince at night one more time. 

The witch promised that, and she ordered her stepdaughter to hide as before in the prince's chamber and listen carefully to everything that was said. 

Then she filled a goblet with mead and bade the prince drink. But when he took hold of the goblet he saw the witch's stepdaughter motioning him to be careful. Then he recalled the strange sleep that usually overcame him after one of the witch's drinks. So he raised the goblet and pretended to drink from it, but he secretly threw away the contents when the witch had her back turned. Then he slumped backwards, as if fallen into a deep sleep. 

The witch laughed within her false heart, and now she brought the princess into the room and thought that she was quite welcome to talk with the prince. He wouldn't be able to hear her. 

When the princess was alone with the prince, she fell upon his neck and said how truly glad she was to be able to see him again. But the prince was so bewildered and bound by spells that he didn't understand what she was saying, and he pretended to be asleep. Now the princess became utterly desperate, she wrung her hands and in tears begged his forgiveness for what she had done. And she spoke of their former love, and of all she had to endure while seeking him across the whole wide world. 

Now she wished to die, since he no longer loved her. 

But while she was speaking the prince's memory awoke, so he understood how everything had come about, and how the wicked troll-witch kept him from his beloved. He felt as if he was waking up from a long, heavy dream, and at first he couldn't bring out a single word. But at last he sprang up suddenly and took her in his arms, kissed her and said that she was the one person he held dearest in the whole world. Now came a joy and happiness so great, that it far exceeded the distress and sorrow they had suffered before. 

Now while they held each other in their arms and forgot everything else in their gladness at having finally found each other, the witch's daughter stepped forth unexpectedly from her hiding place. 

Then the princess became utterly terrified, for she could only suppose that they were lost and that the troll's daughter had betrayed them. But she said to them in a friendly voice:

"Calm yourselves! I won't give you away. Instead I will help you in every way I can."

And then she told them that she herself was of Christian blood, for her father was a prince whom the queen had bewitched. Her father had died of sorrow long ago, and it would be a good thing for them all if her wicked stepmother were also dead, for as long as she lived none of them could expect any happiness. 

When the prince and princess heard this they became very glad and thanked her warmly for her good will towards them. Then they discussed how they might be rid of the witch, and that was no light matter for, as everyone knows, the only way to kill a troll is to scald them to death. 

When everything had been thought through and decided, the stepdaughter crept back into her hiding place, and the prince lay down on the bed and pretended to sleep. After a while the troll came into the bedchamber to fetch the princess and to hear what had taken place. 

Then several days went by, and the princess stayed in the goose-house. But in the castle there was much commotion, for the queen was going to be wed to Prince Hat, and a great number of trolls from both near and far were invited to the banquet. 

Now the preparations were on a simply enormous scale, and the witch had her large cauldron brought forth -- it was so big it could hold eighteen oxen at once. When the fire had been lit and the oxen slaughtered, she sent down to the goose-house to ask the foreign woman how she could make sure the meat was tender and well cooked.  

"Well," answered the princess, "the custom in my country is to make the fire very hot, and to boil the stock until the base of the cauldron is blue." 

The troll-witch thought this was good advice. So she had the fire made three times hotter than before, so the water bubbled high up into the sky. After a while she sent for the princess to check if the bottom of the cauldron was blue yet. The princess came, leant over the brim and looked down into the water, but it still didn't look blue. 

After a while the queen sent for Prince Hat, but he couldn't see any blue either. 

Now the witch grew angry and said that the cauldron was blue enough, if one only looked properly. So she went and looked for herself. But when she went to lean over the cauldron -- Plop! the prince was ready and grabbed her feet and cast her headlong into the scalding hot water. And that was the end of the witch, troll though she was. 

Now the prince and princess thought that it really was not worth waiting until all the guests arrived, so they took the golden spinning-wheel, the gold yarn-winder, the gold purse and many other valuable items and swiftly departed. When they had journeyed a good long way they came at last to a splendid castle that lay and gleamed in the sun. And in the yard of the castle stood a green bush, and as they approached there sounded from it a lovely melody, resembling harps and birdsong. 

Now the princess rejoiced, for she recognized the music: it was the three singing leaves that she had from her father. But her joy was so much the greater when she came right up and saw how her little children and the prince's sisters and many other people came towards them, and the people hailed Prince Hat as their king and the princess as their queen. 

And so they were rewarded for their faithful love, and lived happy and contented for many, many years. And the prince ruled his kingdom with wisdom and manliness, so there was never a king so mighty nor a queen so good.  

And the three singing leaves never ceased to play but sounded day and night, so you never heard a lovelier song, and there was none so full of cares but they became glad when they heard that song. 

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This is my translation of Prins Hatt under jorden, a fairy tale collected in Småland (or possibly Blekinge) and first published in Svenska folksagor och äfventyr (1844-1849) by Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius and the expatriate George Stephens (he was born in Liverpool but lived most of his life in Sweden).  

The opening couple of paragraphs made me think for a moment of the folklore bedrock that underlies King Lear. But one of the things I found engaging about Prince Hat is that for most of the story there are no evil characters. The heroine's sisters aren't wicked, the heroine's stepmother is a meddler but no more, and the heroine's trials express more the mixed and recalcitrant nature of existence than a battle with the forces of darkness. It's true that in the final part of the story we do encounter a wicked witch who comes to an appropriately sticky end (very reminiscent of the Grimm brothers' Hansel and Gretel)-- though even she seems a fairly nice wicked witch, as such people go. 

I'm guessing the editors contributed substantially, e.g. to the subtly varied expression in the story's sets of three.

The related Norwegian tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne) appeared in Asbjørnsen and Moe's Norske Folkeeventyr (1843-44); this is the better-known version in the English-speaking world. It was one of the tales in Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book (1889). Both tales recall "Cupid and Psyche" as narrated in Apuleius' The Golden Ass (2nd century CE). 

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the king's castle

The word I have mostly translated as castle or domain is kungsgård. Gård on its own means a farm, though it can be a grand one, e.g. herregård -- literally gentleman's farm: a country house or country estate. The word kungsgård can mean a large royal residence (such as a castle), or the king's lands, or both at once (as is often the case here). 

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I'm giving you this ring, and a fire-steel with a flint, and a candle. If you want to see what your husband looks like, get up in the night, make a flame through the ring and light the candle.

This seems a bit garbled. A fire-steel (eldstål) is itself somewhat ring-shaped. This is so you can grip it with one hand and whack it down hard on the flint in the other hand (right next to the tinder).

 

Various forms of eldstål

Use of the eldstål, demonstrated by a Dalarna woman in 1916

[Both images are from the Swedish Wikipedia entry on "Eldstål".]

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made her way forward over stocks and stones

So far I haven't managed to talk myself out of directly transferring the expression "över stockar och stenar" into English. I know "stocks and stones" is not a very well-established phrase in modern English, but it was pretty common in past times.  Some may remember Milton's sonnet "On the late Massacre in Piemont" -- 

When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones

(see Aaron Taylor's interesting blog post on the topic). To give some other rather random examples, it also occurs in Scott's narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810), and even in David Copperfield (1850), when Littimer complains of how Little Em'ly received his infamous proposal:

She had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. 

(David Copperfield, Chapter 46) 

In English the expression was mainly used as an image of lifelessness or lack of spirit. Here's one more, Doris in John Vanbrugh's Aesop (1697):

Shield us, kind Heaven: what things are Men in Love?

Now they are Stocks and Stones; then they are Fire and Quicksilver...

(Aesop, Act IV)

Anyway, stock (in both Swedish and English) means a tree-stump or large log. Hopefully readers will get the general feel of difficult terrain.

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one of mother Berta's pixies

The word is pysslingar. I think it means the same as the "small trolls" (småtrollen) previously seen round the fire. 

I'm using the word "pixies" rather loosely. (One suggestion connects the pixie of Devon and Cornwall with the Swedish dialect word pyske (=pyssling), but there is no consensus favouring this, or any other, theory of pixie's origin.)

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yarn-winder

The word is härvel, which strictly speaking means a spinner's weasel, as shown in the image below. (There is a theory that this is the weasel in Pop goes the weasel.)  I'm not sure, but I think this kind of yarn-winder (with its mechanical "pop" when a skein is complete) was only invented in the 18th century. It's possible the folktale is talking about its simpler and much more ancient ancestor the niddy-noddy (härvträ). 

A härvel (spinner's weasel), probably from the 19th century

[Image source: https://www.stundars.fi/harvel/ .]

A härvträ (niddy-noddy) from the 19th century

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/021028409099/harvtra .]

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until she came on top and found a dwelling in the mountain.

The word is bergstuga. Today the word stuga usually means a small house, cottage or cabin (SAOB stuga 2). But here it's being used in the older sense of a room with a fire (SAOB stuga 1). (The word is distantly related to the English word stove.) I think we should conceive the eldest of the old troll-women as living in a mountain cave, just like her sisters. 

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... she thought she could go along with it this time

... tyckte hon, att det finge väl gå för sig för den här gången

I had some trouble with this! 

finge is the past subjunctive of få. The subjunctive tenses are mere relics in modern Swedish, just like in English (the exceptional persistence of vore in Swedish exactly paralleling the persistence of were in English). But other subjunctives sometimes show up in older texts like this one.

The subjunctive is called the konjunktiv in Swedish.  Here's an interesting article about it by Catharina Grünbaum in Språk tidningen:

https://spraktidningen.se/artiklar/2016/03/leve-dessa-ord-pa-glomskans-avgrund

Like the subjunctive mood of the verb, the word väl implies hesitant supposition. 

Gå för sig is an expression meaning that something will do, is possible or acceptable or appropriate. 

*

witch

The word häxa (witch) does not actually appear in the story. The term that's used most often of the wicked enchantress is käring, which literally means an old woman, but is usually pejorative in tone. (Though the same word is also used of the three helpful troll-women.) Perhaps "hag" would be a more accurate rendering, but I felt that it was too prescriptive, implying a physical ugliness that the story never confirms, and on the whole I felt that a fairy-tale "witch" gave the best idea of her role in the story. (Folklore structuralists may also note that in Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche this role is taken by Venus.) 

Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)

 

Cardamine hirsuta. Frome, 31 March 2021.

A young Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta, Sw: Bergbräsma). A pretty sight at this time of year. It's a common weed and one that's very good to eat. It tastes like cress, unsurprisingly. You can eat all of a young plant like this, including the flowers and seedpods. (I'd put it right up there with young Smooth Sow-thistle as the top salad veg in the garden.)

It's very much a plant of Europe and North Africa. It doesn't get very far into Russia. It's native to southern and central Sweden but is only common round the coasts. ("Berg" in the name means "cliff", not "mountain".) I suppose the species struggles to cope with a long winter freeze.

Cardamine hirsuta. Frome, 31 March 2021.

The flowers of Hairy Bittercress have four stamens. Its closest relatives, Wavy Bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa) and Narrow-leaved Bittercress (Cardamine impatiens), have six stamens.

These relatives aren't very likely to turn up in gardens, but some other white-flowered Brassicaceae do: Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) has unique purse-like fruits; Common Whitlowgrass (Erophila verna) has split petals and short fruits; Thale Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) has entire leaves. 

Not that it matters too much from the eating point of view: all members of the Brassicaceae family are edible by humans. (The plants are more concerned with deterring insects and other herbivores.)

Cardamine hirsuta. Frome, 31 March 2021.

As the plants grow older they elongate like this. Not quite so delicious, but still pretty good.

If you want them out of your garden, you need to pull up the Hairy Bittercress plants when they're young. Like any self-respecting annual weed, Hairy Bittercress doesn't hang around when it comes to ripening seed. If you leave it a week or two, all the seedpods will explode as soon as you touch the plant, showering seeds everywhere. 

Repellently, the gardening advice for Hairy Bittercress on the RHS website still lists various brands of weedkiller as an alternative to weeding. Apart from the evil effects of using such products -- why mince words? -- it's particularly pointless in this case, when the plants pull out so easily. (If you did use weedkiller you'd surely want to pull up the dead plants anyway, not just leave them there, so what effort have you saved yourself?) 

Notes on August Strindberg's A Dream Play (1901)

The Daughter, the Portress and the star-pattern bed-spread

[Image source: Theater pictures by Magda Molin. From a 1947 production at the Malmö Stadsteater, directed by Olof Molander. The Daughter was played by Inga Tidblad and the Portress by Jullan Kindahl. The Swedish Wikipedia entry on Ett drömspel says "Which side of Strindberg is emphasized is a question of the director's choice; while the modernist abstract side was emphasized by Max Reinhardt, Olof Molander placed greater emphasis on the realistic aspects in his sets of A Dream Play." Ingmar Bergman considered Molander his greatest inspiration as a theatre director. Molander's Strindberg productions were celebrated for their deep psychological power. The drama critic Herbert Grevenius wrote that Molander was famously dictatorial and unhappy, with a sadistic streak. During each production he would victimize one of the company.]

This post reads the Swedish text alongside Edwin Björkman's translation. None of the texts I've consulted organize the play into numbered acts or scenes; and that seems to be an important aspect of the dramaturgy, even though late in the play one of Strindberg's own SDs refers back to "the first scene of the first act" . Anyway these notes are in sequence and I'm sure you'll find your way if you know the play.

1.

Fonden föreställer molnkåpor liknande raserade skifferberg med slott och borgruiner

The background represents cloud banks that resemble corroding slate cliffs with ruins of castles and fortresses.

(Opening SD of the Prologue)

On 6 May 1901 Strindberg married for the third time, to the young actress Harriet Bosse. She walked out at the end of August after a quarrel, saying it was forever. Strindberg continued to write to her and she came back on October 5th. A Dream Play was written around this time. It was finished in November 1901, except for the scene with the coalheavers, added early in 1902. Later in 1902 the play was published.* 

But Strindberg made another addition in 1906, the verse Prologue. Bergman's TV version (see below) misses out the Prologue, except for a glimpse of this mysteriously powerful cloudscape. Then he jumps straight into the Daughter's conversation with the Glazier, like the 1902 text. 

A Dream Play was first performed in 1907, with Harriet Bosse playing the Daughter. She and Strindberg had been divorced since 1904 but they still retained some kind of relationship. 

fond = background. Useful vocabulary when reading stage directions!

raserade = rased, destroyed. 

skifferberg = shale or slate cliffs. 

slott and borg are more or less synonymous, the latter perhaps with more emphasis on the idea of a stronghold. 

2.

Modren: Den Schweiziske Robinson . . .

The Mother: Swiss Family Robinson . . .

The book that the Officer damaged as a boy (and for which his brother was punished). The word schweiziske (=Swiss) adopts German spelling (Schweiz / schweizerisch) but with a Swedish ending.  

3.

Det är synd om människorna!

Men are to be pitied.

(This is the Daughter's repeated comment, the play's leitmotiv. But it's not really a philosophical proposition. It's a much more homely expression in Swedish, unfortunately one for which English has no close equivalent. Poor mankind! or I'm so sorry for mankind! or It's so hard for mankind! (Or maybe humans or people ...) 

The word synd, outside this expression, means "sin" or "transgression". As here:

Dottern: Finns det icke angenäma plikter?

Advokaten: De bli angenäma när de äro uppfyllda . . .

Dottern: När de icke finnas mera . . . Plikt är således allt oangenämt! Vad är då det angenäma?

Advokaten: Det angenäma är synd.

Dottern: Synd?

Advokaten: Som skall straffas, ja! Har jag haft en angenäm dag och afton, så har jag helveteskval och ont samvete dagen efter.

The Daughter. Are there no pleasant duties?

The Lawyer. They become pleasant when they are done.

The Daughter. When they have ceased to exist—Duty is then something unpleasant. What is pleasant then?

The Lawyer. What is pleasant is sin.

The Daughter. Sin?

The Lawyer. Yes, something that has to be punished. If I have had a pleasant day or night, then I suffer infernal pangs and a bad conscience the next day.

4.

Fonden  dras upp; nu synes en ny fond föreställande en gammal ruskig brandmur. Mitt i muren är en grind som öppnar till en gång, vilken mynnar ut i en grön ljus plats, där en kolossal blå stormhatt (Aconitum) synes. Till vänster vid grinden sitter Portvakterskan med en schal över huvud och axlar virkande på ett stjärntäcke. Till höger är en affischtavla som affischören rengör; bredvid honom står en sänkhåv med grön skaft. Längre bort till höger är en dörr med lufthål i form av en fyrväppling. Till vänster om grinden stär en smal lind med kolsvart stam och några ljusgröna löv; därinvid en källarglugg.

The background is raised and a new one revealed, showing an old, dilapidated party-wall. In the centre of it is a gate closing a passageway. This opens upon a green, sunlit space, where is seen a tremendous blue monk's-hood (aconite). To the left of the gate sits THE PORTRESS. Her head and shoulders are covered by a shawl, and she is crocheting at a bed-spread with a star-like pattern. To the right of the gate is a billboard, which THE BILLPOSTER is cleaning. Beside him stands a dipnet with a green pole. Further to the right is a door that has an air-hole shaped like a four-leaved clover. To the left of the gate stands a small linden tree with coal-black trunk and a few pale-green leaves. Near it is a small air-hole leading into a cellar.

In A Dream Play the dream-like quality extends to the staging. There's a doubling and splitting of properties as well as characters. The portress' shawl and star-patterned bed-spread seem somehow to be one thing, at least symbolically. The billposter's net seems later to split in two; he tells the Daughter that he has a sänkhåv (=sink-net) and also a green sump (=a corf: immersed basket or box for keeping live fish or crayfish). 

Brandmur A fire wall (intended to stop fire spreading from one building to another). The significance, visually, is that it's a mainly blank wall without windows or door openings.  

There is a gatekeeper's lodge (portvakterskans rum), which is mentioned in a later SD, when this scene transforms into the Lawyer's office. The lodge must be where the Officer goes to use the telephone, and where the Daughter withdraws to talk with the Billposter. Did Strindberg forget to mention it here, or is it to be identified with the mysterious källarglugg that the play never refers to again?

Stormhatt (=storm hat) is the normal name for monkshood. In this case it's probably a dream-like enlarged version of the popular garden plant Aconitum napellus known in Sweden as Äkta Stormhatt (=True Storm Hat). This is "True" as contrasted with the native plant of Scandinavian fells, Nordisk Stormhatt (=Nordic Storm Hat, Aconitum lycoctonum)

Fyrväppling -- Yes, it means a lucky clover leaf with four leaflets. Though actually the normal Swedish word used in naming clover species is klöver. Väppling is used in the names of other leguminous species like melilot and kidney vetch. 

5.

Dottern: (böjer huvud mot bröstet) Icke de korta tonfallen, Axel!

The Daughter: (with bent head) Beware of the short accents, Axel!

That doesn't sound like English to me. A better translation would be "Not the sharp tone ..." or "Not the harsh tone ...". 

6.

Fagervik / Skamsund

Fairhaven / Foulstrand

The Daughter and the Officer think they are going to Fairhaven, but arrive at Foulstrand instead -- the place of quarantine. (The scene shifts to Fairhaven later.)

The form of the two Swedish placenames is highly credible. (In fact there really are a couple of Fagerviks in Sweden).  Vik means a bay or inlet or cove. Sund means any sort of strait (same as the English word "sound", but less restricted in its application). In this case it evidently refers to the strait that separates the two locations). So, literally, the names mean "Fair Cove" and "Shame Sound". 

The pair of places also appear in Strindberg's collection of stories Fagervik och Skamsund (1902). Strindberg based them on two locations in the northern Stockholm archipelago:  Furusund [=Fagervik] was a fashionable seaside resort at the time, its buildings and roads given fancy Italian names like Monte Bello and Venezia. It had restaurants, theatres, bathing and sports equipment.

Just across the strait, Köpmanholm on Yxlan [=Skamsund] was far less developed and less scenic, its hillsides clear-felled and scorched as the play describes. Archipelago pilots and teetotallers lived quietly here. 

Strindberg first came to Furusund in summer 1899, and later hired the summer villa Isola Bella with Harriet Bosse. This exclusive villa had once been the quarantine hospital!  By now the quarantine station had moved -- though not to Köpmanholm, but further north, to the island of Fejan (it was used for travellers from Russia or Finland during cholera outbreaks). 

The Furusund resort attracted many foreign visitors from Russia and Germany. With the First World War it fell into rapid decline. During the Second World War Furusund was once again used as a quarantine station, this time for refugees. 

7.

Inhabitants of Skamsund...

Karantänmästaren: Här bo de sjuka, däröver bo de friska!

Officern: Här äro väl bara fattiga då?

Karantänmästaren: Nej, mitt barn, här äro de rika! Se på den där på sträckbänken! Han har ätit för mycket gåslever med tryffel och druckit så mycket Bourgogne att fötterna gått i masur!

Officern: Masur?

Karantänmästaren: Han har fått masurfötter! . . . Och den där som ligger på guillotin; han har druckit Henessy så att ryggraden måste manglas ut!

Master of Quarantine: Here you find the sick; over there, the healthy.

The Officer: Nothing but poor folk on this side, I suppose.

Master of Quarantine: No, my boy, it is here you find the rich. Look at that one on the rack. He has stuffed himself with paté de foie gras and truffles and Burgundy until his feet have grown knotted.

The Officer: Knotted?

Master of Quarantine: Yes, he has a case of knotted feet. And that one who lies under the guillotine—he has swilled brandy so that his backbone has to be put through the mangle.

masur = an unusual growth form of birch (apparently genetic), also known as Karelian birch or curly birch, valued by woodcarvers for its mottled grain (somewhat resembling burl wood). SAOB doesn't record its use in a figurative sense, so it isn't surprising the Officer is rather confused. "Knotted" is perhaps a good translation. 

Pen-knife from my childhood, with masur birch handle

Henessy i.e. Jas Hennessy & Co, producers of >40% of the world's cognac, founded by the Irish Jacobite officer Richard Hennessy in 1765. 

8.

The Poet's fondness for mud. 

Karantänmästaren: Nej, han håller sig alltid i de högsta rymderna,så att han får en hemlängtan efter gyttjan . . . det gör huden hård som på svinen, att välta sig i dyn. Sedan känner han icke bromsarnes stygn!

Master of Quarantine: No, he is roaming about the higher regions so much that he gets homesick for the mud—and wallowing in the mire makes the skin callous like that of a pig. Then he cannot feel the stings of the wasps.

dy another word for mud, ooze, sludge (gyttja), especially in swamps and morasses. 

broms is actually a horse-fly, a stinging insect well-known to all Swedish lake-bathers. Horse-flies frequent sunny spots and are attracted to wet skin. 

stygn is a variant form of styng or sting. (It also means a stitch made with a needle.) 

9. 

In Fingal's cave. In Swedish the song of the waves is a sound incantation. The English translation doesn't really hint at this. 

Dottern: Tyst! Vågorna sjunga.

(Reciterar vid svag musik.)

Det är vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

Gröna vaggor, vi vågor.

Våta äro vi, och salta;

likna eldens lågor;

våta lågor äro vi.

Släckande, brännande,

tvättande, badande,

alstrande, avlande.

Vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

The Daughter: Hush! Now the waves are singing.

(Recites to subdued music.)

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest—

Green cradles, we waves!

Wet are we, and salty;

Leap like flames of fire—

Wet flames are we:

Burning, extinguishing;

Cleansing, replenishing;

Bearing, engendering.

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest!

10. The scene with the four Deans/Dekaner.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Hör, hon väcker själv tvivel om vår auktoritet hos de unga, och så anklagar hon oss att väcka tvivel. Är det inte en brottslig handling, frågar jag alla rätt-tänkande?

Alla Rätt-tänkande: Jo, det är brottsligt.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Alla rätt-tänkande människor ha dömt dig! --  Gå i frid med din vinning! Eljes . . .

Dottern: Min vinning? -- Eljes? Eljes vad?

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: Listen to her—she herself is making the young question our authority, and then she charges us with sowing doubt. Is it not a criminal act, I ask all the right-minded?

All the Right-Minded: Yes, it is criminal.

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: All the right-minded have condemned you. Leave in peace with your lucre, or else——

The Daughter: My lucre? Or else? What else?

Vinning . It does mean "winning" or "profit" or "gain", but it tends to be used pejoratively, implying greed. Björkman's "lucre" captures that pejorative overtone.

Eljes = else, otherwise. More commonly annars or i annat fall.

Lordkanslern: Vill dottern vara god och säga oss vad hon menat med denna dörröppning?

Dottern: Nej, go vänner! Om jag sade't, skullen I icke tro't.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Där är ju intet. 

Dottern: Du sade't. -- Men du förstod det intet.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Det är bosch vad hon säger.

Alla: Bosch!

\Lord Chancellor: Will the Daughter please tell us what she meant by having this door opened?

The Daughter: No, friends. If I did, you would not believe me.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: Why, then, there is nothing there.

The Daughter: You have said it—but you have not understood.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: It is bosh, what she says!

All: Bosh!

I = old-style/high-style pronoun meaning "you" (plural or addressed to a superior). More or less equivalent to ni in modern Swedish. Curiously, just like the English pronoun "I", it's always capitalized. 

intet . Edwin Björkman's testimony is to be respected. He was a native Swede, born in 1866. His translation of the Daughter's response ("but you have not understood") interprets intet in the Daughter's response as meaning "not" (i.e. icke, inte). This is indeed a variant form recorded in the SAOB as found between 1521 and 1889. It would therefore have been unusual if not archaic in 1901. 

However Edward S. Franchuk  (Symbolism in the works of August Strindberg, p. 1111) rejects this translation, arguing that intet can only mean "nothing" (i.e. inget), as in the Dean's previous speech. He translates the Daughter's remark as "But you have understood the nothing". I.e. the physical universe is indeed nothing, but the key point is that you have understood this. 

If we go with Björkman for the primary sense, then the unusual word choice clearly signals that the Daughter is making a pun, referring to the Dean's use of intet. But I don't think that the secondary sense could then be as Franchuk interprets it, since the two meanings would then be in stark contradiction ("you have not understood" and "you have understood"). Instead, the secondary sense might convey something like "But you have understood it to be nothing (though it isn't really)". 

So that's the choice, as I see it. 1. As per Björkman, but with an underlying secondary sense; or 2. as per Franchuk, and unambiguous. 

bosch = bosh, contemptible nonsense. Derived from Turkish; James Justinian Morier used it frequently in his novel Ayesha, The Maid of Kars (1834), and it became a fashionable word across Europe. 

Ingmar Bergman's 1963 TV version of Ett drömspel / A Dream Play, with English subtitles. I've read that he wasn't very happy with it, but I found it spellbinding. It's quite a faithful rendering; a far closer realization of the staging described by Strindberg than you're ever likely to witness in the theatre. 

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* Here's the original text of Ett drömspel, as printed in 1902 (PDF):

https://litteraturbanken.se/txt/lb999200037/lb999200037.pdf

It uses the spelling of Strindberg's time. The quotations in this post come from a text that uses the modern system of Swedish spelling  (first proposed in 1906, and adopted for official publications in 1912, the year of Strindberg's death).