page_title: Harriet Bosse
section_title: Courtship
hierarchical_section_title: Harriet Bosse / Marriage to August Strindberg / Courtship
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Harriet Bosse as Puck in A Midsummer Nigh't Dream.
context_page_description: Harriet Sofie Bosse was a Swedish–Norwegian actress. A celebrity in her day, Bosse is now most commonly remembered as the third wife of the playwright August Strindberg. Bosse began her career in a minor company run by her forceful older sister Alma Fahlstrøm in Kristiania. Having secured an engagement at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, the main drama venue of Sweden's capital Stockholm, Bosse caught the attention of Strindberg with her intelligent acting and exotic "oriental" appearance.
  After a whirlwind courtship, which unfolds in detail in Strindberg's letters and diary, Strindberg and Bosse were married in 1901, when he was 52 and she 23. Strindberg wrote a number of major roles for Bosse during their short and stormy relationship, especially in 1900–01, a period of great creativity and productivity for him. Like his previous two marriages, the relationship failed as a result of Strindberg's jealousy, which some biographers have characterized as paranoid. The spectrum of Strindberg's feelings about Bosse, ranging from worship to rage, is reflected in the roles he wrote for her to play, or as portraits of her.
context_section_description: Bosse later published Strindberg's letters from their courtship and marriage. Incidents narrated in those letters and in Bosse's own interspersed comments have been analysed at length by biographers and psychiatrists, and have become part of the "Strindberg legend". Even before their first meeting, Bosse had been inspired by the newness and freshness of Strindberg's pioneering plays; an iconoclast and radical with two turbulent marriages already behind him presented an intriguing and irresistible mix to her.
  Strindberg was susceptible to strong, independent career women, as well as to dainty, delicate-looking young girls; like his first and second wives—Siri von Essen and Frida Uhl—Bosse combined these qualities. He was entranced when he saw the dark, exotic-looking, petite twenty-two-year-old Bosse (who was often cast in sprite roles or what were conceptualized as "Oriental" roles) play her first major part, an impish Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He immediately picked her out as a suitable actress for the part of The Lady in his coming play To Damascus, and invited  her to his bachelor establishment to discuss the role. At this famous first meeting, Strindberg, according to Bosse's narrative of the event, met her at the door all smiles and charm. Offering her wine, flowers, and beautifully arranged fruit, he shared with her his fascination with alchemy, showing her a golden brown mixture he told her was gold he had made. When she got up to leave, Bosse claims Strindberg asked for the feather in her hat to use for writing his plays.  Bosse gave it to him, and he used this feather, with a steel nib insert, to write all his dramas during their marriage.  It is now in the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm.
  Strindberg wooed Bosse by sending her books about theosophy and the occult, by attempting to mould her mind, and by furthering her career. Throwing himself into writing plays with central parts he considered suitable for her, he tried to persuade her to act them, and the Dramaten management to cast her in them.  Bosse asserts in her edition of the Letters that she tended to hang back, as did the management, being in agreement that she lacked the experience for major and complex roles. Strindberg, a power in the theatre, nevertheless often prevailed. The role of Eleonora in Easter (1901), which intimidated Bosse by its sensitivity and delicacy, but which she finally undertook to play, turned out to be Bosse's most successful and beloved role, and a turning-point in Bosse's and Strindberg's relationship. They became engaged in March 1901, during the rehearsals of Easter, in what in Bosse's narrative may be the best-known incident of the Strindberg legend. Bosse relates how she went to see Strindberg to ask him to give the part to a more experienced actress, but he assured her she would be perfect for it. "Then he placed his hands on my shoulders, looked at me long and ardently, and asked: 'Would you like to have a little child with me, Miss Bosse?' I made a curtsey and answered, as though hypnotized: 'Yes, thank you!'—and we were engaged."
caption: Bosse as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. After the marriage was over, Strindberg kept a life-size copy of this photo mounted on a wall behind a drapery.[18]
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