Tortured by the suggestion that Tekla has now been unfaithful to him, which every sentence spoken by Gustaf drives more deeply into the inflamed brain, Adolf consents to test Tekla's fidelity by means devised by Gustaf. When she comes home Adolf is to study her manner, and lead her to reveal her real self, whilst Gustaf listens in another room. When the husband has reached the limit of his power of deduction he is to go out, and leave to Gustaf the rôle of inquisitor. Adolf is to be a secret witness of the second examination. He can hear all in the adjoining room.
Tekla comes home. She is playful, loving, treats him as her naughty child—just as Gustaf said she would, if guilty. She has enjoyed herself, and Adolf's solemn tones of reproach and impending disaster cause a revulsion of feeling, in which she shows herself as the heartless coquette, the mangeuse d'hommes, to whom conjugal monotony is insupportably dull. Adolf goads her vanity by saying that she has reached the age, when admirers are no longer troublesome. She wishes to assure him of the contrary, warns him, threatens that in future he will have to play the ridiculous part of the jealous and deceived husband who, lacking evidence, can only injure himself.
Adolf tells her that her plumes are borrowed, that he has endowed her with sense, electrified her once empty brain, made her famous by his pictures and his deification. She concludes that he means to tell her that he has written her books. The rhythm of the quarrel rises until Adolf in the throes of an approaching fit, cries: "Be quiet. Leave me. You destroy my brain with your clumsy pincers—you thrust your claws in my thoughts and tear them to pieces."
At the sight of Adolf's condition Tekla grows tender. He recovers, and she makes him beg her forgiveness. After summoning his remaining strength he leaves her. Gustaf enters the room. There is a touching scene of recognition, embarrassment and assurances of mutual respect. The virile mind of Gustaf soothes Tekla's overwrought nerves. She allows him to understand that her present husband is feeble, backboneless, and unreasonably jealous.
They revive memories. Gustaf observes that she still wears the ear-rings which he gave her. The magnetism of old associations, old regrets, draws them together. Gustaf puts his arm round her waist; she resists and confesses herself afraid of his presence. She does not wish to do any real wrong to Adolf, for she knows that he loves her. But Gustaf knows more than she does. He shows her the tom pieces of her photograph, thrown on the floor by Adolf some time before. He makes her see clearly that Adolf treats her with contempt. He begs her to liberate herself from Adolf's sick fancies, and to come back to the man of will. Some scruples, a short struggle, and she promises to meet him in the evening when Adolf will be away.
The sound of something falling comes from the adjoining room. Gustaf assures her that it is nothing—probably a dog that has been locked up. But Tekla is smitten with sudden understanding. She sees through Gustaf's plot, knows that her husband has heard everything. The horrible revenge of the man she betrayed revolts her, yet impresses her by its diabolical consistency. Gustaf is about to leave her, declaring that the debt has been paid, when the door is opened, and Adolf appears, deadly pale, a cut across the cheek, his eyes vacant, and foaming at the mouth. He falls. Tekla throws herself over the body, from which life is fast ebbing. "Adolf, my beloved child, say that you are alive, forgive, forgive; Oh, God! he does not hear, he is dead. Oh, God in Heaven!" And the curtain falls as Gustaf exclaims: "Really, she loves him too! Poor thing!"
Creditors has added an important psychological factor to Strindberg's usual duel of sex. Here we have, not only the sinful nature of woman, the instinctive selfishness, the absence of moral sense, but the operation of a mysterious law of unity, which assists in the downfall of the woman and the victory of the stronger man. Tekla, once mother of Gustaf's child, is held to him by cords of a sympathy which may be called physiological, and which constitutes nature's irrefrangible banns of marriage.
The thesis has since been fully developed in Paul Hervieu's Le Dédale. Here the dissonance of divorce and re-marriage resounds through a highly artistic presentment of the conflict between religion, morality, affection and "nature." Marianne de Pogis has left Max, her husband, because of his infidelities. She re-marries and finds in Le Breuil, her second husband, the virtues which her former husband lacked. Her child by the first marriage falls ill, and she meets her first husband by its bedside. She remains in his house to nurse the child, and succumbs to the old love which has never died. The end is tragic. She cannot go back to Le Breuil. Hervieu cuts short the agony of three souls by the death of the two men. Le Breuil kills Max and himself; together they go over the rock into the foaming waters where human passion is extinguished. Strindberg also summons death as the only solution of Adolf's martyrdom, but, with characteristic sense of the hideous interminableness of life's complexities, leaves Tekla and Gustaf to loathe the tie which they cannot break. Gustaf is the strong man who, knowing woman, despises her and masters her. Adolf is the woman-worshipper, the slave who has sold his masculine birthright for worthless favours. He is killed by disillusionment.
The production of The Father, Lady Julie, and Creditors at the Théâtre Libre was followed by their performance at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre in Paris, another experimental theatre which was founded in 1893 by M. Lugné-Poë. Lady Julie was part of the early repertory of the Freie Bühne, an advanced playhouse which had been established in Berlin in 1889 to meet the demand for realism on the stage. The Father and Creditors were performed in Copenhagen in 1889, and the latter play was soon presented at the Residenz Theater in Berlin. The Independent Theatre in London, founded by Mr. J.T. Grein in 1891, introduced Ibsenism to England, and suffered the penalty of the pioneer. Strindbergism might have wrecked the undertaking before the work was accomplished. Mr. Grein's services to the British playgoer have not yet been fully appreciated. He broke one or two windows in the suffocating theatre of banalities and bon-bon amours. Thanks to his courage we can now enjoy an increased amount of oxygen. But the West-End stage still thrives on airlessness. The popular long-run play, in which the charming actress appears as mannequin for the best costumier, whilst social inanities are paraded as absorbing problems—with a happy ending—contracts the lungs of all who in the drama seek a mirror and a criticism of life. To find modern dramatic art they must perforce go to the sporadic centres of unconventional and non-commercial performances, or to the semi-private stages of societies which fight the prevalent stagnation by bold experimental presentation of new dramatic ideas. Strindberg's plays are practically unknown in England. The Adelphi Players produced The Father in July, 1911, and Lady Julie in April, 1912. The Stage Society, which is the descendant of Mr. Grein's Independent Theatre, has played Creditors. The Stronger, an atmospheric sketch with two characters, of whom the one maintains silence, whilst the other uses her tongue, was acted by Madame Lydia Yavorskaia and Lady Tree in 1909. Of the remainder of the fifty-one plays by which he has encompassed many "schools" of playwriting, evolved new dramatic forms, and tested different methods of expression the British public knows little or nothing.