Eugene O’Neill used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature to praise August Strindberg

“It is difficult to put into anything like adequate words the profound gratitude I feel for the greatest honor that my work could ever hope to attain, the award of the Nobel Prize…

“…the greatest happiness this occasion affords…is the opportunity it gives me to acknowledge…the debt my work owes to that greatest genius of all modern dramatists…August Strindberg…

“It was reading his plays…that, above all else, first gave me the vision of what modern drama could be, and first inspired me with the urge to write for the theatre myself…

“Of course, it will be no news to you in Sweden that my work owes much to the influence of Strindberg. That influence runs clearly through more than a few of my plays and is plain for everyone to see…

“…I am…proud of my debt to Strindberg…For me, he remains…the Master, still to this day more modern than any of us, still our leader. And it is my pride to imagine that perhaps his spirit, musing over this year’s Nobel award for literature, may smile with a little satisfaction, and find the follower not too unworthy of his Master.”