Abell has been a bold experimenter with dramatic form who has enriched Danish drama with a variety of expressionistic techniques. For some of these he is indebted to Strindberg whom he admired greatly. Kjeld Abell has, moreover, in the best of his dramas been a thoughtful and—despite all his playfulness and wit—serious critic of his times. It is this latter aspect of his work which is my subject.

There are three major motifs in Kjeld Abell's theater: (1) satire of bourgeois life and values (middle-class conventionality and respectability are seen by Abell as stifling to all human spontaneity, originality and joy of life); (2) criticism of political neutrality or indifference and moral passivity, connected with a call for active resistance to oppressive totalitarian forces; (3) criticism of emotional coldness and lack of solidarity with others in certain types of modern intellectuals, coupled with a conviction that emotional warmth and...