AUGUST STRINDBERG:

The theatre, and indeed art in general has seemed to me for a long time a biblia
pauperum, a bible in pictures for the benefit of the illiterate; with the dramatist as a
lay preacher hawking contemporary ideas in a popular form, popular enough for the
middle classes, who comprise the bulk of playgoers, to be able to grasp wihtout too
much effort what the minority is talking about. the theatre has always been a primary
school for the young, the semi educated, women, all of whom retain the humble
faculty of being able to deceive themselves and let themselved be deceived- in other
words to accept the illusion and react to the sugestion of the author.

Nowadays the primitive process of intuition is giving way to reflection, investigation

and analysis, and i feel that the theatre, like religion, is on the way to being discarded
as a dying form whch we lack the necessary conditions to enjoy.

from the preface to "Miss Julie".