SOURCE: Wirmark, Margareta. “Strindberg's History Plays: Some Reflections.” In Strindberg and Genre, edited by Michael Robinson, pp. 200-06. Norvik Press, 1991.

[In the following essay, Wirmark discusses Strindberg's history plays.]

At the turn of the year 1898-9 Strindberg entered upon an intense period of dramatic writing. ‘Jag har nu lagt undan allt annat och ägnar mig uteslutande åt teaterförfatteri’ (I have now put everything else aside and am devoting myself entirely to writing for the theatre—XIII, p. 59) he wrote, in a letter dated 26 December 1898. In January 1899 he was to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, which may have been one of the reasons for this new start. In the letter Strindberg refers to his youthful masterpiece Måster Olof, which was to be revived for the occasion.¹ The time has come to present Sweden with a dramatic art worthy of the name, Strindberg proclaims, and his intention is to fulfil the promise of his youth, at the same time recreating Swedish dramatic art.

The grandness of Strindberg's plans can be traced from his drafts. One of them, which Claes Rosenqvist dates to summer 1898, lists both written and unwritten dramas: ‘Folkunga-Sagan, Mäster Olof, Gustav Vasa, Erik XIV, Karl IX, Gustaf Adolf, Kristina, Karl XI, Karl XII, Friedrich, Gustav III’ (The Saga of the Folkungs, Master Olof, Gustav Vasa, Erik XIV, Charles IX, Gustav Adolf, Queen Christina, Charles XI, Charles XII, Friedrich, Gustav III).²

The title of this draft is ‘Svenska Historiska Dramer’ (Swedish Historical Plays). Strindberg thus identifies the history play as a category of its own, a tradition which has been upheld by scholars from Martin Lamm onwards. We must ask whether this tradition is a useful one. Does it in fact increase our ability to discern and describe what is unique to Strindbergian drama? It is a question to which I shall return in due course.

Walter Johnson's Strindberg and the Historical Drama is the most thorough study of this genre. The dramas treated, twenty-one in all, are those that deal with historical figures, usually a king. Johnson tries to distil what is common to this group and finds in all of them a drive towards cosmic order and a struggle for power. He also notes their ‘remarkable variety of plots and the variety in the characterizations’.³

At first sight Johnson's study seems adequate. But he has neglected one thing: he does not prove that his characteristics are unique to the historical plays. The possibility remains that the same characteristics may, in the same combination, appear in all of Strindberg's dramas.

It is hard to find an acceptable criterion for the history play if the simple fact of its dealing with historical figures proves unsatisfactory. Yet it is even harder to discern the borderline with other types of drama. We may then abstain from a precise definition, and accept this common denominator, that a historical drama deals with a historical person, in order to continue to use the term. This is what I intend to do in what follows.

Most of Strindberg's history plays, including the best ones, were written around the turn of the century. He consciously set out to write history plays, and proclaimed himself the reviver of the genre before he had even started. It was a remarkable venture: he set out to dramatize nothing less than the whole of Swedish history. Today we know that he succeeded. He portrayed the kings in chronological order, covering five hundred years of Swedish history in only three, and devoting one drama apiece to seven kings and one popular hero. As Johnson remarks, only Sweden and Great Britain possess such a treasury of history plays.

When Strindberg embarked upon this scheme, he began with the Middle Ages and the Reformation, epochs he was familiar with from his earlier plays Mäster Olof, Gillets hemlighet, and Herr Bengts hustru. He followed the order of his draft and completed four plays in one year: Folkungasagan, Gustav Vasa, Erik XIV, and Gustav Adolf. Three of them were accepted at once by the theatre and Gustav Vasa especially was warmly received by the critics as well as the public.⁴

Strindberg then took a pause in writing history plays and switched to dramas with contemporary subjects. But a year later, in summer 1901, he began again. This time he completed a further four plays: Carl XII, Engelbrekt, Kristina, and Gustav III. But he no longer follows his original plan all that strictly. He jumps over some of the kings and alters the order: after Carl XII, for example, he returns to the fifteenth century and writes about Engelbrekt. Nor does he devote himself exclusively to the history play: Ett drömspel is written parallel with Kristina.

This second quartet of history plays was received quite differently. Some of them were refused, and those which were produced were not very successful. Kristina was considered unhistorical, even provocative, and was not performed at all. Engelbrekt was withdrawn after only two performances, and Carl XII was staged, but met with no success.⁵

In fact these two quartets of history plays, written in 1899 and 1901 respectively, have very little in common. As far as form and dramaturgy is concerned, the first group belongs to the nineteenth century. Strindberg follows the traditional method of constructing a drama. He employs the Freytag model, and it is easy to trace the dramatic curve, from exposition to climax and the denouement. The plot is easy to follow. The drama is based on a selection and concentration of events that cover several years in historical time and the regal protagonist, who is portrayed as powerful and treated as a positive hero even if tyrannical, meets with affliction in the course of the drama and is transformed into a better man. There is no doubt that the king is the centre and the subject of the drama.

The second quartet, written at the dawn of the new century, deviates in almost every aspect from this pattern. It is true that the Freytag model is also used here, but only its last stage. Strindberg focuses on the final period of each reign. Kristina deals with her abdication; Gustav III centres upon a plot to assassinate the king; and in Carl XII the king dies at Fredrikshald. Christina, Gustav III and Charles XII are all engaged in a war, but none of them is seen fighting. Their power is seldom stressed; they do not always know what decision they should reach, and it is hard to tell if the monarch is the subject of the play.

In Strindberg's later historical plays war is already lost and the defeated return to their native country. Both Carl XII and Gustav III begin with the king re-entering Swedish territory, to be tried by his people and have sentence passed upon him. Several of the plays deal with the king's death, which is never ordinary, though in the case of Gustav III the actual assassination is only anticipated and not portrayed while in Kristina another woman becomes a surrogate, stabbed in the street because she resembles the Queen.

Reference to specific historical events is rare in Strindberg's history plays. Sometimes the month or the day of the week may be mentioned, but never the precise year. The spectator has to determine for himself the exact period in which the play is set. In act four of Gustav III we learn that the Bastille has just fallen; every spectator familiar with history can deduce from this that the drama takes place in late summer 1789. From the stage directions we see that Carl XII begins in December 1715, but the information is never given in the dialogue. The spectator is ignorant of the exact date. There is only one reference to time: we are told that the last scene at Fredrikshald takes place on the first Sunday in Advent.

If one limits oneself to the information afforded by the dialogue, Strindberg's history plays are difficult if not impossible to date. In his Öppna brev till Intima teatern he states that this is intentional, and maintains that every dramatist is free to set historical chronology aside. His task is not to teach the audience history, nor is he obliged to give correct information: ‘Den som fordrar den kronologiska ordningens iakttagande vid händelsers hopfogande i ett historiskt drama, den har ingen aning om ett drama och borde icke få yttra sig med anspråk på att bli hörd’ (Anyone who insists on chronological order in the construction of a historical drama knows nothing whatsoever about drama, and should not be permitted to express himself with any claim to being heard—SS 50, p. 248).

In Gustav Vasa different events covering between five and ten years are compressed into only five days. Gustav Vasa reigned for almost forty years, from 1523 to 1560. Strindberg selects the years 1542-43 for his drama, the years of Nils Dacke's rebellion in Småland. However, no one in the play mentions the precise year. To locate it, the spectator has to apply his own knowledge of history. Anyone who fails to do so will nevertheless understand the action. In the Öppna brev till Intima teatern Strindberg explains why he chose to depict Gustav Vasa at a time when his power was placed in question: ‘Denna förtvivlans tid ger bäst tillfälle skildra den stora människan Gustav Vasa med alla hans mänskliga svagheter’ (That time of despair affords the best opportunity of depicting the great human being Gustav Vasa in all his human weakness—SS 50, p. 247).

But Strindberg is not content to describe only the Dacke rebellion. He also adds some further events which cannot be so easily placed at a particular time. The king is not only shown in conflict with his people, he also quarrels with his son, the future Erik XIV. This conflict between father and son no doubt covered several years but Strindberg abbreviates it to cover the same period as the Dacke rebellion. Furthermore, Vasa is not the only father in the play who is portrayed as fighting against his son; Strindberg augments it with the parallel action of the Hanseatic councillor Herman Israel, who is likewise in conflict with his son, Jacob, thus refining upon the material provided by history in a dramatically effective way.

Despite his afflictions, however, Gustav Vasa is depicted as a strong ruler. His absence from the stage during the first half of the play does not prevent the audience sensing his power, and when he finally appears, carrying Tor's hammer, his resemblance to a god is underlined. Carl XII, on the other hand, which may be described as a vacuum, an endless waiting, depicts a monarch who is devoid of Vasa's strength and power. The king's death is anticipated by everyone in the play, but is continually deferred, though he is perceived from the start as a loser.

This is underlined by the setting, which conveys everything to the spectator from the outset. The play opens with ‘The Man’ (at once a late Adam and a parallel to the king) returned from the war and strolling amidst the debris of his past. What remains of the Eden of his youth is a ghastly place from which all life has departed. His wife and children have succumbed to the plague and the apple tree of life in his ravaged garden bears a single, rotten apple. This use of setting differs from Strindberg's practice in Gustav Vasa. Here, everything has to be interpreted as a symbol. Sweden is a tree bereft of all its leaves, the king a rotten apple which refuses to fall.

Throughout the play the king is described with the help of negations. Not only is he a decayed fruit: he is also surrounded by darkness, stillness and silence. He moves little, preferring to remain in bed, and says nothing at all for two acts. Indeed, he is offstage for half a play which contains little specific information about history but much about the terms of human life. It is an existential drama in which man is seen as suffering from guilt but unable to find a solution to his dilemmas.

Carl XII ends with the king's death at Fredrikshald, but Strindberg leaves even this unresolved in the spectator's mind, since no one is able to tell from where the bullet has come, whether from the Norwegians in the fortress that Charles is besieging or ‘from above’, from God himself. Strindberg leaves the question unanswered, or rather he ends with two evenly weighted and contrasting answers.

However, immediately following the King's death he appends an additional ending: ‘Allt upplöses. Mannen och Missnöjd kasta sig över Görtz och släpa ut honom. Alla rusa ut i villervalla; lägereldarne slockna; facklor och lyktor bäras ut. Det blir mörkt på scenen’ (Everything dissolves. The Man and Malcontent throw themselves upon Görtz and drag him out. Everyone rushes out in chaos, the campfires go out, torches and lanterns are carried out. Darkness falls on the stage—SS 35, p. 223).

Thus, Carl XII has two endings. First, the king is shot down. Then follows an ending in which the dramatic fiction dissolves bit by bit. First of all the actors rush out in chaos, then the lights are extinguished and the stage remains in darkness (‘Det blir mörkt på scenen’). At this point, all the instruments of the stage have stopped working.

But Strindberg is not content with this double ending. After a moment of silence a new light is activated. A lantern shines brightly at the same spot where the king was just now shot down. Strindberg's drama is an open one; he leaves the interpretation of this final sign to the spectator.

Gustav Vasa and Carl XII were written at almost the same time and they both belong to the same genre. But the two dramas have very little in common: in almost every respect they are the antithesis of each other. In the one people are seated on wooden benches in farms and wine-cellars, in the other The Man stands alone on the seashore, surrounded by darkness and cold. In one the king kills everyone who dares oppose his will, in the other for most of the time the king seems to be asleep. Gustav Vasa changes during his various struggles and learns something about himself whereas Charles XII is never seen fighting against anyone, and he does not change. The one is a hero, the other an antihero.

Is it reasonable to assign two so different dramas to the same genre? We may of course continue to do so if we remember that the term ‘history play’ is a vague one. One way of being more strict would be to make use of a double classification, to add another term, perhaps just as vague, to the first one. Gustav Vasa might be characterized as a historical play which is also a conflict drama, Carl XII is a historical play which is also a modern drama.

Although not very impressive, this way of classifying these dramas seems to me for the time being the best solution. To describe each drama more adequately, however, we require a new terminology. In order to trace the transformation of the logical drama of the last century into a modern one, we need to invent new tools. No such language is as yet available, and we have to stick to the old-fashioned way of characterizing plays, even though it is now some ninety years since Strindberg's experiments in dramatic form, when he used every possible genre, including the history play, as a melting pot for his explorations.

Not surprisingly, the portrait of the king in Carl XII met with little understanding from Strindberg's contemporaries. As a king he appeared odd and bizarre whereas Gustav Vasa was probably easier to comprehend because he accords with conventional notions of a king, being strong and powerful. Today our judgement differs. To us Gustav Vasa stands out as odd and rather bizarre while Charles XII is easier to comprehend. In many respects he can be interpreted as a symbol of Man, an Everyman from our own century. He is our contemporary, the ancestor of Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, for—though written in 1901—it is evident that Strindberg's history play has much in common with the drama of the absurd.⁶

Notes

1. Svenska teatern performed Mäster Olof from 22 to 30 January 1899. See Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik, 4th ed. (Stockholm, 1982), p. 43.

2. Claes Rosenqvist, Hem till historien. Strindberg, sekelskiftet och ‘Gusaf Adolf’ (Umeå, 1984), p. 15.

3. Walter Johnson, Strindberg and the Historical Drama (Seattle, 1963), p. 286.

4. See Ollén, pp. 292, 302, 315.

5. Ollén, pp. 423, 411.

6. See Margareta Wirmark, ‘“Skaffa mig en spindel att leka med!” Strindbergs drama Carl XII som förabsurdistisk text’, Strindbergiana VI (1991), pp. 61-94.