In trying to seize August the inspector released his hold of the man. At the same moment a stone knocked oft the three-cornered hat of authority from the inspector's head, and August wrenched himself free. The police drove the crowd before them at the point of the bayonet. August followed with other enthusiasts, determined to release the prisoners. The attempt was, of course, futile; the bayonets were the strongest.
Strindberg describes how two gentlemen, one middle-aged, the other young, both highly respectable, with conservative views, were seized with his own passionate longing to defend the people against the police. Speechless, they instinctively grasped each other's hands, and with white, set faces ran to the rescue. When the excitement was over, and the wave of sympathy had spent itself, they awoke in their normal selves and were shocked at their own conduct. August himself could jest over his wild outburst, when half an hour later he was seated in a restaurant with a chop in front of him and friends around to listen to an objective account of the whole incident. The middle-aged merchant of impeccable propriety failed to recognise August, when, by chance, they met again. The composite consciousness created by the contagion of strong emotion had ceased to exist.
When his dramatic recitals to the winds which sweep over Ladugårdsgärdet had been followed by the prosaic training at the school of the Dramatic Theatre, the conflict between dream and reality was followed by the usual tragic results. His wish to make his début in an important part was rudely brushed aside. After some humiliating experiences, he was given a small part in Björnson's Mary Stuart. He appeared as a "nobleman," and all his dramatic energy was, perforce, encompassed in the following sentence: "The Peers have sent an emissary with a challenge to the Earl of Bothwell."
It was bitterly insignificant, but it was the portal to greater achievement.
The disillusionment of his first glimpse behind the scenes was manfully rebutted. The boards and the paint which, when seen from the gallery, had held so much charm, were now, when scrutinised from the other side, dusty and ugly. The actors who were permitted to play great parts were, after all, just like ordinary mortals. They yawned loudly between their turns, and gave expression to commonplace sentiments as a relief from the sublimities uttered on the stage.
After some months, during which Strindberg was only a super, he was heartily tired of the whole thing. The mechanism, living and dead, of dramatic production disgusted him. He felt repressed and misjudged. But at the same time he was ashamed of quitting the profession which he had chosen with such high expectations. He demanded his right to be tried and judged. He was given an important part and a special rehearsal, at which he appeared without stage costume and without the requisite enthusiasm. The elder actors resented the arrangement, and Strindberg shouted his sentences in a manner which made it clear that he was in need of further instruction. He was advised to resume his pupilage. But this he would not do. The humiliation was unbearable. He cried with rage and decided to commit suicide. An opium pill which he had treasured with a view to the possibility of having to summon a catastrophic end to life's difficulties was utilised for the purpose, but failed altogether of a calamitous effect. A friend, who knew the better way, re-awakened Strindberg's interest in earthly existence through a merry drinking bout.
On the following day, he tells us, he felt bruised, wounded, tom, with quivering nerves and with the fever of shame and drunkenness in his veins. He lay on his sofa reading Topelius' Tales of a Surgeon and musing over his own troubles. His brain worked at high pressure, sorting memories, adding and eliminating, calling out personalities. He heard his characters speak. It was as if he saw them on a stage. After a few hours he had visualised a comedy in two acts, and in four days the play was written.
"It was a work," he writes in Fermentation Time, "at once painful and pleasurable, if it even could be called work, for it came of itself, without his will or effort."
"And when the piece was ready," he tells us, "he drew a deep sigh, as if years of pain were over, as if an abscess had been lanced. He was so happy that something sang within him, and he decided to send his piece to the theatre. This was the salvation."
Macaulay thought that books are written either to relieve the fulness of the mind or the emptiness of the pocket. He ignored the intimate correlation between the two motives. The full mind is only too often made inarticulate by the empty pocket, whilst, on the other hand, the empty pocket sometimes accelerates processes of the mind which, but for that stimulus, would never reach fulness. Strindberg was throughout life the slave of a full mind and an empty pocket.