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Master Olof : a Drama in Five Acts By: August Strindberg (1849-1912) |
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A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS
By August Strindberg
INTRODUCTION The original prose version of Master Olof, which is here presented for
the first time in English form, was written between June 8 and August
8, 1872, while Strindberg, then only twenty three years old, was living
with two friends on one of the numerous little islands that lie between
Stockholm and the open sea. Up to that time he had produced half a dozen plays, one of which had
been performed at the Royal Theatre of Stockholm and had won him the
good will and financial support of King Carl XV. Thus he had been able
to return to the University of Upsala, whence he had been driven a year
earlier by poverty as well as by spiritual revolt. During his second
term of study at the old university Strindberg wrote some plays that
he subsequently destroyed. In the same period he not only conceived the
idea later developed in Master Olof, but he also acquired the historical
data underlying the play and actually began to put it into dialogue. During that same winter of 1871 72 he read extensively, although his
reading probably had slight reference to the university curriculum. The
two works that seem to have taken the lion's share of his attention were
Goethe's youthful drama Goetz von Berlichingen and Buckle's History of
Civilization in England. Both impressed him deeply, and both became in
his mind logically connected with an external event which, perhaps, had
touched his supersensitive soul more keenly than anything else: an event
concerning which he says in the third volume of The Bondwoman's Son,
that "he had just discovered that the men of the Paris Commune merely
put into action what Buckle preached." Such were the main influences at work on his mind when, early in
1872, his royal protector died, and Strindberg found himself once more
dependent on his own resources. To continue at the university was out
of the question, and he seems to have taken his final departure from it
without the least feeling of regret. Unwise as he may have been in other
respects, he was wise enough to realize that, whatever his goal, the
road to it must be of his own making. Returning to Stockholm, he groped
around for a while as he had done a year earlier, what he even tried to
eke out a living as the editor of a trade journal. Yet the seeds sown
within him during the previous winter were sprouting. An irresistible
impulse urged him to continue the work of Buckle. History and philosophy
were the ultimate ends tempting his mind, but first of all he was
impelled to express himself in terms of concrete life, and the way had
been shown him by Goethe. Moved by Goethe's example, he felt himself
obliged to break through the stifling forms of classical drama.
"No verse, no eloquence, no unity of place," was the resolution he
formulated straightway. [Note: See again The Bondwoman's Son, vol. iii:
In the Red Room.] Having armed himself with a liberal supply of writing paper, he joined
his two friends in the little island of Kymmendö. Of money he had so
little that, but for the generosity of one of his friends, he would have
had to leave the island in the autumn without settling the small debt
he owed for board and lodging. Yet those months were happy indeed above
all because he felt himself moved by an inspiration more authentic than
he had ever before experienced. Thus page was added to page, and act to
act, until at last, in the surprisingly brief time of two months, the
whole play was ready mighty in bulk and spirit, as became the true
firstling of a young Titan. Strindberg had first meant to name his play "What Is Truth?" For a while
he did call it "The Renegade," but in the end he thought both titles
smacked too much of tendency and decided instead, with reasoned
conventionalism, to use the title of Master Olof after its central
figure, the Luther of Sweden. From a dramatic point of view it would have been hard to pick a more
promising period than the one he had chosen as a setting for his play... Continue reading book >>
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