When studying the work of Strindberg, we can sense both the materiality and the dramatic charge of the technical means of communication he sets to work. Emblematic is the short story “Half a Sheet of Foolscap” where Strindberg, like a detective, analyzes the imprint made by the use of the telephone on the walls of a modest home—the declining fortunes of a little family are told with the telephone list as a kind of script written in shorthand. The list of numbers and names has a story to tell (Strindberg 1994). (This dramatic invention is frequently employed in crime drama of today—the forensics make use of the call log of the missing woman's phone in order to piece together her actions during her final days.)

Strindbergian telecommunications have an ominous emotional charge—to say the least, they present themselves as disturbers of peace. That seems to be how the elderly gentleman regards the telephone, in the Chamber Play Storm (Oväder, 1907).

Communications can be “instruments of torture,” as Strindberg puts it in the curious prose work A Blue Book II (En blå bok II, Strindberg 1999:865). And they can—as in the play Easter (Påsk, 1901)—act, and feel, touchingly, in a seemingly animistic way: [Eleanora] “Do you hear how the telephone wires are wailing? That's because of the hard words the beautiful soft red copper can't bear. When people speak ill of one another on the telephone the copper wails and wails” (Strindberg 2008b:302; cf. Olsson 2003:43–44).

Telecommunications have a prominent role to play, not only in urban surroundings. Miss Julie—first published in 1888—has a rural, old-fashioned setting. Only three actors are needed, according to the list of characters—Miss Julie; Jean, the servant; and Kristin, the cook.