SOURCE: Sjönell, Barbro Ståhle. “The Plans, Drafts, and Manuscripts of the Historical Plays in Strindberg's ‘Green Bag.’” Scandinavian Studies 62, no. 1 (winter 1990): 69-75.

[In the following essay, based on the notes in Strindberg's “green bag,” Sjönell describes Strindberg's construction of the history plays and his plans to complete a history cycle.]

During Strindberg's second long stay abroad (1890-98) he began to collect his drafts and manuscripts in a green cloth bag. The bag aroused great curiosity among all who met him, and it is mentioned in several of the memoirs written by friends he made during his time in Berlin. Dr. Carl Ludwig Schleich gives the following description of the repository:

Alla sina planer, utkast, fragment, skisser stoppade han i en stor grön flanellsäck, som kunde tillsnöras och vilken han vaktade som en skatt. Hur månget av honom i samtal präglat bonmot samlades icke likt sädeskorn i denne “grön säck” till kommande utsäde och skörd!

—[Schleich 30]

(He puts all his plans, drafts, fragments and sketches into a green flannel bag, the opening of which is drawn together with a string, and he watches over it as if it were a treasure. What a number of bon mots coined in conversations he must have gathered in his “Green Bag” for future sowing and reaping!)

When Schleich later visited the aging Strindberg in the Blue Tower, he was allowed to go into the library to see how the contents of the Green Bag had grown, and it then filled a whole cupboard. Schleich compares the neatness and order he found there with “som i ett av kvinnohand vårdat linneskåp [Schleich 56]” (“that in a linen closet looked after by a woman”).

In the beginning of the 1920s the collection was deposited with the Royal Library, where it was arranged and itemized by the head of the Manuscript Department, Oscar Wieselgren. Today the Green Bag consists of about 25,000 sheets, kept in over 70 cardboard boxes as well as in 60-odd folders and envelopes.

In connection with the ongoing publication of the National Edition of Strindberg's Collected Works, it is the task of the subeditors to register all extant drafts for Strindberg's works in a separate critical commentary. In 1982, I was entrusted with producing a detailed catalogue of the contents of the Green Bag, in which each sheet is to be registered, identified, and described. The catalogues will be published in their entirety in the Royal Library's Acta series.

Very little of the material in the collection is from the Berlin years; the bulk of it spans the time from the writing of Inferno (1897) to Strindberg's death in 1912. In other words, it does not contain any drafts of the six early historical dramas he wrote in the 1870s and 1880s. On the other hand, it does include the drafts of the eleven post-Inferno dramas with plots all taken from Swedish history and of the four plays on themes from world history. Most of this material is in three boxes, which also contain some plans for incomplete historical dramas.

In one of the boxes with early drafts and notes for plays with themes from world history there is also a number of sketches for a drama cycle with such ambitious titles as “Menniskans Saga” (“The Saga of Man”), “Verldshistoriska Dramer” (“Dramas of World History”), and “Jordens Saga” (“The Saga of the Earth”). The development of Strindberg's plans to dramatize the story of man from Antiquity up to the French Revolution can be traced back to the letters he wrote in the 1880s, while his attempts to realize those plans can be found in the notes and drafts to “Peter I,” “Maria Stuart,” “Karl den store” (“Charlemagne”), “År 1000” (“The Year 1000”), and “Domedagar” (“Days of Judgment”). A fragment of “Maria Stuart” has also been preserved. However, Strindberg's grand scheme gave birth to only four plays: Näktergalen i Wittenberg (The Nightingale in Wittenberg), Genom öknar till arfland (Through Deserts to Ancestral Land), Hellas, and Lammet och vilddjuret (The Lamb and the Beast), all written in 1903; and a collection of short stories, Historiska miniatyrer (Historical Miniatures), published in 1905.

Even where Swedish history was concerned, the number of plays Strindberg actually wrote proved to be far fewer than what he had originally planned. Among early incomplete drafts is a drama about Saint Birgitta, titled “Karl Ulfsson och hans Moder” (“Charles Ulfsson and His Mother”), which is a dramatized version of a short story in Nya svenska öden och äventyr (1906, New Swedish Destinies and Adventures), and also the drafts to “Johan III” (“John III”), “Karl IX” (“Charles IX”) and “Karl XI” (“Charles XI”).

There are many examples of how Strindberg used the same notes for more than one work, as well as indications that he continued to work on older drafts. In one draft to Engelbrekt, written in 1901, one can see how the author exhorts himself to read the notes he had made for Svanevit (1901; Swanwhite) and Kronbruden (1900-01; The Crown Bride). In Ockulta dagboken (1977, The Occult Diary) Strindberg writes that he examined the drafts to “Bosättningen” (“Setting Up House”) and “Korridordramat” (“The Corridor Drama”) when he began to work on Ett drömspel (1901; A Dreamplay), and if one looks at the drafts of the various historical dramas, it becomes clear that they have in common a similar structure, indicating their compositional interdependence.

If we examine the approximately 300 extant notes, plans, and sketches for the historical dramas on Swedish themes that Strindberg wrote between 1899 and 1908, a clearly distinguishable working pattern emerges.

One type of preparatory work, presumably the oldest, can be classed as part of Strindberg's groundwork. Belonging to this category is a list of the literature pertaining to the life and times of the monarch that Strindberg is focusing on, as well as the notes on historical items that directly reflect his studies on the subject. Frequently there are long investigations into the family relationships of the title figures and other characters, but most of the notes refer to historical events. Dates are carefully recorded. Occasionally excerpts from Strindberg's readings are included.

The next step in development of the plays can be observed in notes pertaining to dramatic motifs or themes and to character sketches, as well as lists of the dramatis personae and suggestions for act divisions. One outstanding characteristic of Strindberg's preparatory work is the beautifully produced headings. Here it seems that Strindberg attempted to create the right mood for the play that lay ahead of him. Thus the decorative title page for the drama about Gustav II Adolf, that is, a work dealing with a time in history when Sweden was a great political power, exhibits the Swedish blue and yellow colors, while the draft to Engelbrekt contains ornamentation reminiscent of the folk art of Dalecarlia, the setting of the play.

The final version of a given work was probably preceded by a draft in which the division into acts was marked. All eleven completed historical dramas have such drafts, which also include lists of characters and detailed descriptions of individual scenes.

Yet another category of material found in the Green Bag consists of corrections and additions, probably made after the actual writing had been completed. As a rule Strindberg used paper that he bough in whole, undivided sheets—the so-called Lessebo Bikupa, which has a watermark with the year of printing, thus, it can sometimes be used to decide the chronology of the preparatory work.

The origins of the three dramas Carl XII (1901), Kristina (1901; Queen Christina), and Gustav III (1902) have been investigated by several scholars. Thus Göran Stockenström has traced the nearly two-year period of gestation for Carl XII (Stockenström, “Kring Tillkomsten” 24). The preparatory work for Carl XII consists of 23 pages. There are unusually extensive notes for this historical drama, most of them dealing with the character of the king. The Green Bag material reveals some of the sources for the portrayal of the monarch. For instance, under the title “Carl XII” Strindberg has written in Greek letters the name of his brother-in-law, Hugo von Philp. Elsewhere, the King and Görtz are compared to Napoleon and Bernadotte. Strindberg apparently intended to give the King's sister, Ulrika Eleonora, some of the traits he found in his own sister, Anna von Philp, who in one draft is referred to in Greek letters as “dum och fräck” (“stupid and insolent”), a clear reflection on Strindberg's part of the hostility that existed between him and his sister's family at the time.

In about half the drafts of the historical dramas on Swedish themes that Strindberg wrote in 1898 and later, he seems to have vacillated about the number of acts he had in mind, while he kept the remaining drafts to a fixed plan of five acts. There are ten fragmentary drafts of Carl XII in which the text is divided into acts, with their number varying between three and six. Strindberg's uncertainty in terms of the structural lay-out of Carl XII is also revealed in his hesitation about the setting for the opening scene of the play. In some drafts the locus dramaticus is the student quarter of Lund; in others it has become the coast of Skåne, which is also the setting in the final version. Strindberg also has difficulty deciding on the ending of Carl XII. In the drafts there are such variants as “Swedenborgs syner” (“Swedenborg's visions”), “Likvakan i Tistedalen” (“The wake in Tistedalen”; cf. the short story of that name in Nya svenska öden och äventyr), “I Tranchén” (“In the trenches”), and “Fredrikshall.” Those drafts that are divided into acts contain eight different versions of the drama, but only two of them are in any detail, and one of them must be classified among the fragmentary drafts mentioned earlier. None of the versions corresponds completely to the drama in its completed form. The following characters however are found in all versions: the King, Görtz, Swedenborg, and members of the various classes of society who represent the dissatisfaction of the people with the monarch.

Carl XII shows less agreement between drafts and completed play than do either Kristina or Gustav III. Yet the 21 pages of preparatory work for Kristina give us a picture of the growth of the play that is very similar to that of Carl XII, despite the fact that it was written in a very short period of time in September 1901—approximately three weeks. In his recent dissertation on Kristina, Ola Kindstedt lists 36 source works, mostly historical, for the play, as well as novels and dramas (Kindstedt 60-65). This preparation might be compared to the 60 source works mentioned by Stockenström in his study of Carl XII (Stockenström, “Strindberg och historiens Karl XII” 30-36).

In the preparatory work for Kristina there are several lists of dramatis personae and historical data, as well as two closely written pages of notes on the Queen's character. None of the other Swedish historical dramas written after Inferno has such extensive notes on the personality of the monarch as do Carl XII and Kristina. The name “Aspasia” occurs several times in the drafts of Kristina, a reference to Dagny Juel, the bohemian woman who was erotically involved with Strindberg and several others in the artistic circle gathering at Ferkel's in Berlin in the beginning of the 1890s.

As for dramatic composition, only three drafts showing act divisions remain for Kristina, which is considerably fewer than for Carl XII. But, on the other hand, the most detailed of them are very close to the final version of the play. The two earliest drafts have five acts, and the last draft was changed by Strindberg from four to five acts, which is particularly interesting since the drama in its final form has only four acts. In fact, just two days before he finished Kristina, Strindberg wrote to his wife, Harriet Bosse, who had left him, and mentioned five acts. In the final manuscript version there is a note just before the scene between Kristina and Carl Gustav in Act Four, stating “Forts … sid 75 med maskinskriften” (“Cont … p. 75 on typewriter”). The lacuna consisted originally of a word that has been crossed out, probably “tryckandet” (“printing”). But no typewritten pages have been preserved. Kindstedt supposes that the changes were made after Harriet Bosse read the play. The drafts suggest that there might have been a scene in which the Queen was quite crushed by the criticism directed at her. But in the final version the Queen defends herself successfully against the accusations brought by Carl Gustav and Oxenstierna. Strindberg's letters to his wife, in which he repeatedly asks to be allowed to “resonera fram slutet med henne” (“reason out the end with her”), also indicate that he was not certain how to finish the play. The more positive ending might be a gesture of reconciliation toward his wife, for whom he wrote the part of Kristina (cf. Kindstedt 29).

Strangely enough, a similar situation is to be found in the manuscript of Gustav III. Half way through the last act, in the middle of a scene between the King and Armfelt, Strindberg has made a note “Fortsättes på nästa sida, 87 (med skrifmaskinen)” (“Continues on next page, 87 [typed]”). In this case there are in fact some typewritten pages preserved, but there is also an ending by hand. In Gunnar Ollén's critical commentaries to Kristina and Gustav III in the National Edition, he discusses the interrelationship between the typed and handwritten versions of the latter play.

Gustav III was probably begun in February 1902 and, according to Ockulta dagboken (“The Occult Diary”), was completed on 16 March in the same year. Strindberg had studied the subject since September 1901. In Ulla Wattman's paper on the play, she mentions five historical works and a couple of novels that were used as sources (335-38). If Strindberg's book collections, book loans, authored works, and letters were to be searched for source material to Gustav III as thoroughly as Stockenström and Kindstedt have searched through such material for Carl XII and Kristina, it is likely that a great many more sources would be found for the genesis of Gustav III.

The number of pages from the material in the Green Bag devoted to Gustav III is small—only 18 pages. As in the other two plays discussed here, the preparatory work reflects Strindberg's reading of historical works. Notes on them are often included in his listing of the characters. But, the preparatory work for Gustav III differs from that of the other plays in that there are no detailed notes on the King's character. His personality is dismissed in one line with the description “Upplyst despot—poet—dramatiker—skådespelare—kvinnlig—Voltairian” (“Enlightened despot—poet—dramatist—actor—effeminate—Voltairian”). On the other hand, there are several pages of suggestions for strikingly dramatic scenes, an indication of the play's Scribean structure.

For Gustav III there are only three drafts divided into acts; two of them have five acts, and both end at the Opera, where the historical king was shot in 1792. One incident occurs in all three versions: the fête at Drottningholm where the Dalecarlian regiment is in hiding. The first version opens in fact with the fête at the Drottningholm Palace, that is, with the event that forms the last act of the completed drama. The second version begins in Holmberg's bookstore, just as the finished play does. The third version is incomplete, containing only Acts 2, 3 and 4—which appears to be the last. This version is however very detailed; it fills several pages and is very close to the play in its final form.

The drafts of Carl XII, Kristina and Gustav III do very little to support the statement Strindberg made in his Öppna brev till Intima teatern (1908-09; “Open Letters to the Intimate Theater”), that when he was writing a drama, he always began with the last act. Quite possibly he did so until he put his plans down on paper. When he sat at his desk with a draft in front of him, he apparently felt his way forward by sorting his material and dividing it into a varying number of acts. Frequently only a few of the scenes or themes to be found in the first sketches have survived right up to the final product.

Furthermore, it is obvious that Strindberg felt unsure of how to conclude the plays discussed here. Indications of his uncertainty can be noticed even in the final manuscript stage. Ollén has found no less than five different variants of the final lines in Gustav III, both in the first handwritten manuscript and in the various revisions Strindberg made of the drama (Strindberg 327). The ending of Karl XII also shows traces of manuscript alterations made by the author. His hesitation about the final scene of Kristina has already been mentioned. However, the existence of more than one possible ending is not unique in Strindberg's production, as suggested by such well-known examples as his various experimental conclusions for Röda rummet (1879, The Red Room), and Fröken Julie (1888; Miss Julie.).

Works Cited

Kindstedt, Ola. Strindbergs Kristina. Historiegestaltning och kärleksstrategier. Studier i dramats skapelseprocess. Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen vid Uppsala universitet 24. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988.

Ollén, Gunnar. “Textkritisk kommentar till August Strindbergs Samlade verk.” Vol. 48: Gustav III. Kristina.” See Strindberg.

Schleich, Carl Ludwig. Hågkomster om Strindberg. Stockholm: Björck & Börjesson, 1916.

Stockenström, Göran. “Kring tillkomsten av Karl XII.” Meddelanden från Strindbergssällskapet 45 (1970): 20-43.

———. “Strindberg och historiens Karl XII.” Meddelanden från Strindbergssälskapet 47-48 (1971): 15-37.

Strindberg, August. Kristina. Gustav III. Vol. 48 of Samlade verk. Ed. Gunnar Ollén. Stockholm: Norstedts, 1988.

———. Strindbergs brev till Harriet Bosse. Med kommentarer af Harriet Bosse. Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1932.

Wattman, Ulla. “Strindbergs drama Gustav III.” Meddelande från Avd. För dramaforskning vid Litteraturhistoriska institutionen 13. Uppsala: Dramaforskning, 1968.