Its infusion of faith and Christian symbology had the effect of modifying the storm of execration, with which pious respectability strove to break the author of The Red Room.
The performance of Master Olof at the Swedish Theatre in 1880 was a great success, and it was no longer possible to ignore Strindberg as a dramatist. Revised five times in deference to criticism and technique, the play had at last conquered opposition by the richness of its historical imagination, the splendour of its form and the fiery youthfulness of its treatment of the oldest of spiritual problems. The tardy acknowledgment was balm even to Strindberg's sceptical soul, and the two plays which he now wrote breathed "faith, hope, and charity," as if the gloomy truths of The Red Room had been forgotten.
The Journey of Lucky Peter[4] satirises humanity and Society in its narrative of what befell Peter who wanted to see the world and taste its luxuries, but like all good fairy-tales the drama ends happily, and Peter regains peace of heart, and finds his dual-soul. And the satire is tempered with a humour, so sympathetic, an understanding of the doers and victims of evil, so delicate, that the reader of this fairy-play puts down the book with a sigh of satisfaction that, after all, the worst experiences in this world prove themselves to be but necessary milestones of the pilgrim's progress. Lucky Peter who discovers the nothingness of the rich man's pleasures, of the king's power, the bitterness of fame, the changeability of human institutions! We envy him his rapid liberation from the chains of flesh, the severe tuition under his fairy-teacher. The charm of the play is irresistible; it has the mysterious eventfulness of Peter Pan and The Blue Bird, but none of the fatuities which often distort plays for children of all ages. Even when he entered fairyland Strindberg could not leave his intelligence behind.
In Sir Bengt's Wife, the other play of this period, he gives us an historical drama of marriage, in which love rises triumphant and purified through life's difficulties and misunderstandings. Sir Bengt has fallen in love with the nun who is doing penance for the sinful response of her unruly woman's heart. He delivers her from the tyranny of the abbess, and the wedding festivities promise a life-long feast for the bold knight and his fair lady. But the fates are jealous of so much happiness, such blending of strength and beauty, and disaster overtakes them in the person of the king's bailiff who demands the payment of a heavy fine in consequence of the knight's negligence in not having provided the king with a mounted soldier. Sir Bengt is unable to pay, and loses his knighthood. The unscrupulous bailiff, who has designs upon Lady Margit, helps Sir Bengt to accept the services of a moneylender by which complete ruin is averted. Sir Bengt conceals his trouble from his bride, and seeks to redeem his position by hard and honest work. A child is born, but the harmony between husband and wife is disturbed through misunderstandings. To Lady Margit the change in her husband is distressing: he works like a peasant, and has become oblivious of the arts and graces of knightly conduct.
One day when, by ignorance and womanish love of the beautiful, she has thwarted his plan for the restitution of his property he lifts his hand to strike her. Protected by the Reformation, which has now been accomplished, she asks the king to dissolve her marriage with a brutal and unworthy man. The wicked bailiff is watching the disruption of the home with satisfaction, and succeeds in gaining Lady Margit's affection. Fortunately she discovers the villainy of his plan, and tastes the reprobation of "the world" in time. The dénouement of the play is reached by a reconciliation between husband and wife, following upon the mutual discovery of sterling merit and the inviolability of marriage, parenthood and home. The simplicity of the love-drama, the inherent goodness of the characters, including the Father Confessor who, to fit the general harmony, kills the phantoms of his lower nature is scarcely Strindbergian. One dominant note rings clear and undefiled through the three plays of this period: the sense of the sacredness of paternity. The pathos and tragedy of fatherhood are interwoven in many of Strindberg's plays, but generally entangled in a multitude of disturbing emotions.
Sir Bengt's Wife was published in 1882, The Journey of Lucky Peter in 1883. During the years 1880-82 a work entitled Old Stockholm[5] appeared, with Strindberg and Claes Lundin as joint authors. It is a popular and comprehensive account of past customs, institutions and pleasures of the citizens of the capital of Sweden, profusely illustrated. Strindberg had collected the material at the Royal Library, and planned to write the whole work. His health broke down through overwork, and he found it necessary to engage a collaborator. He managed, however, to write entertainingly on guilds and orders, legends and superstitions, street music and amusements, celebration of Christmas and Easter, slang, fauna and flora of the city of his birth. The Red Room had already shown Strindberg's keen observation of the character and peculiarities of Stockholm life; the genius loci had in him a faithful, though not always flattering, raconteur. In Old Stockholm the comprehensiveness of his knowledge of the history of the Swedish capital became apparent.
The solidity of his antiquarian and historical research brought him an offer to write a popular history of Swedish culture which he accepted, on condition that the independence of his historical sense should not be suppressed. Having prepared his material he was lost in philosophical speculation over the absence of an intelligent connection between cause and effect. "Was not history a capricious muddle, a walk in a circle? Had not civilisations risen and perished, social systems appeared and disappeared, religions changed and men remained unwise and unhappy?" He succeeded in contracting his point of view, and wrote his history with the intention of counteracting the prevalent method of viewing historical events through the medium of privileged personages. Others had overrated the personal factor. Strindberg admits that he under-rated it. The Swedish People met with angry criticism and resentment of the sceptical manner in which time-worn and honoured tenets were treated.
The reception of The Swedish People aroused the powers of satire which had been lulled to sleep during a temporary spell of optimism. The warm and sunny atmosphere, in which the warrior had rested, gave place to storm and thunder, and Strindberg gathered his force for a fresh attack on Society. This time he disdained the form of the novel which, though thin and undeveloped, had yet made it possible for some of the parties arraigned to dismiss The Red Room as a piece of clever but fantastic fiction.
The New Kingdom, which appeared in 1882, is a series of satirical descriptions of the ideals and conduct of the inhabitants of the "new kingdom" which was supposed to have been created by the Swedish constitution of 1865. The book is an attack upon everything that average humanity holds dear; the scorching satire plays like lightning upon royalty, militarism, history, aristocracy, bureaucracy, the press, the theatre, and, with special annihilative pleasure, on the Swedish Academy. It was impossible to deny that Strindberg had descended from generalisations to portraiture, that well-known and highly-respected personages had been pilloried and caricatured. Affronted Society declared the book to be simply a lampoon on spotless individuals. Though the personal attacks were doubtless in bad form, and, though there are passages in the book which strain ridicule to the point of the grotesque and the vulgar, the brilliant wit, the profusion of ideas, and, above all, the incomparably good temper place The New Kingdom in the forefront of contemporary satirical writings. The genre of Grenville Murray's Les Hommes du Second Empire had suggested the form. An affinity with Max Nordau is noticeable in certain chapters, and especially in that on "The Official Lie"; but Strindberg's exposure of conventional hypocrisy and social humbug is achieved by a tempestuous outburst, compared with which Nordau's strictures seem a discursive and spiritless sermon.
The year which saw the storm of The New Kingdom also witnessed more moderate winds in the first instalment of Swedish Destinies and Adventures, a collection of stories in historical setting which showed Strindberg as an interpreter of the genial and peaceful aspects of life, as a humorous onlooker whose memory is stored with pictures of the kaleidoscopic reign of joy and sorrow, sin and virtue. Now and then the fresh narrative is oppressed by a distant rumble of the preacher who finds it difficult to suppress his views on women, political economy and over-rated civilisation.