Amongst the one-act plays which were written between 1887 and 1897, Samum, Pariah, The Stronger, Playing with Fire and The Link present the typical characters of psychic intensity and neuropathic activity. Samum is the story of the revenge of an Arabian girl and her lover upon a hapless Frenchman, lieutenant in a Zouave regiment. She kills him, not with a dagger, for that might involve the punishment of her tribe, but with words. With the help of "Samum," the hot, suffocating wind of the desert which blows phantoms into the white man's brain, she thrusts suggestion after suggestion into his mind. She makes the sick man believe that he has been bitten by a mad dog; she offers him sand instead of water in the drinking bowl, and rejoices when he dreads the drink; she invokes hideous pictures of the defeat of his regiment, the faithlessness of his wife, the death of his child, before his fevered imagination. She finally makes him stare in a mirror at the ghastly image of a skull, and tells him that this is his face, that he is dead. And when the Frenchman, murdered by horror, sinks back dead, Youssef, her lover, proud of race and proud of the woman's black magic, hails her as the worthy mother of his child.
Pariah is a dialogue which bears the mark of the master-craftsman in the dramatic presentation of psychological events. It is a contest of minds founded on a tale by Ola Hansson. Two middle-aged men, one an archæologist, the other a somewhat mysterious man of unknown occupation, who has returned to Sweden from America, have met in the country. The archæologist is engaged in recovering antique ornaments from the bowels of the earth. In the room where the two men face each other there stands a box, containing bracelets and trinkets of gold which he has found. Herr X., the archæologist, talks of his poverty, of how easily he might appropriate to his own use some of the gold he has found. Debts could be paid, and his wife's anxiety allayed by one single bracelet. So simple and yet impossible to do. Herr Y. listens to the reasons which prevent Herr X. from becoming a thief though there can be no fear of detection. Incapable of stealing himself, Herr X. expresses his pity for others who fall under similar temptation. He suspects that the man by his side is in need of such pity—his conduct has already betrayed the convict. By a series of psychologically timed questions Herr X. unmasks Herr Y., who, taken by surprise, confesses that he has served a term of imprisonment for fraud. The wild anger which for a moment surged through the brain of the criminal has given way to servile admiration of the superior mind. He kisses the archæologist's hand. All is known, and yet there is no condescension on the part of the stronger man. Herr Y. tells the story of how he came to write a false signature; he wishes to persuade Herr X. of his spiritual innocence, show him that he was the victim of an uncontrollable impulse which never defiled his real self. Herr X. has fallen into an introspective mood. Hesitating, half afraid of what he is doing, he confides to Herr Y. that he has killed a man—a worthless, drunken old servant, and without intention to inflict deadly injury, it is true, but such is the fact: he is a murderer. In reply to Herr Y.'s eager questions why he escaped without punishment, Herr X. gives the reasons, why he believed it to be a greater wrong to give himself up to justice than to conceal the deed—there were his parents, his career, his fitness for life. Herr Y. has the scoundrel's alert sense of opportunity. He begins by pointing out his moral superiority over Herr X., and ends by trying to extort money. Let Herr X. only put his hand in the box, and transfer some of its contents to Herr Y., and nothing more will be said of the crime. Let him refuse to do this, and the whole story will be told at the nearest police-station. The end of this incisive piece of psychology shows us Herr Y., driven to flight by the cold-blooded logic of Herr X., who demonstrates that the would-be accuser is a forger who is "wanted," and whose dread of the police authorities is a guarantee of his discretion in the matter.
The Stronger is a contest of temperaments carried out by one voice only. Two women—the wife and the mistress of one man—have met in a café. Mademoiselle Y. sits silent, whilst Madame X. talks. But her silence conveys more than speech. It drives Madame X. to reveal the humiliation she has suffered, it drives her through jealous and angry recriminations to a triumphant and vindictive assertion of her superior position as the legal wife and mother. As an ironical and adroit study of two types of the soul feminine, and by the skilful handling of the monologue the piece is one of the best of its genre.
Playing with Fire is a triangular comedy of marriage, in which conjugal fidelity is saved at the eleventh hour through sudden and truly Strindbergian disillusionment which makes the friend of husband and wife depart like a rocket from the house of temptation, whilst the peace of an orderly lunch descends upon the family. The First Warning is a conjugal squabble, and one of the weakest dramatic episodes conceived by Strindberg. The character of the jealous and enslaved husband, who has made six vain attempts to flee from the devastating charm of his wife, is a diluted réchauffé of an incident related in The Confession of a Fool, including the significant moment when the wife is subjugated by the shock of losing her first front tooth, and the attendant discovery of the vanity of all things of beauty. The dialogue is unreal, and Strindberg's sketch of the young girl so unnatural that we may be grateful that the type has not been more frequently chosen for "naturalistic" treatment.
The Link, a tragedy published in 1897, is a masterly divorce-court scene. Here Strindberg draws the shame and agony of the broken marriage-tie with bitter realism, and yet with a delicate touch of that all-human compassion before which the flowers of satire wither. The Baron and the Baroness have decided to separate, and proceedings for a deed of separation have been entered by the husband. There is a link between them which cannot be broken—the child whom they both love; and for his sake they are determined not to expose their differences before the hungry eyes of scandal-mongers. The husband is willing to let the mother have the custody of the child. But the questions of the judge pierce the veneer of amiability. Who is the cause of dissension? What has brought them before the Court? The answers bring accusations and recriminations, a parade of quarrels and dissensions, angry revelations of infidelity, disgust, espionage, lies, hatred, and, when the Court exercises its legal power of depriving both parents of the custody of the child, the torture of vain regret and empty lives. There is consummate art in the picture of the emotional revolution, through which husband and wife are forced into self-damning revelations. The minor characters of the jurymen and court officials are drawn with a calm observation and quiet humour which form an effective background to its central tragic figures. Incidentally, the inadequacy of the law to secure justice for the wronged is shown, and the lawyer in the play has some affinity with the legal luminaries in M. Brieux's La Robe Rouge. But Strindberg's judge is a righteous man who chafes under the limitations and responsibilities of his profession.
