August Strindberg—Bust by K.I. Eldh (Bought by the Swedish State. In the National Museum, Stockholm)
August Strindberg—Portrait by Carl Larsson, 1899. (In the National Museum, Stockholm)
The Saga of the Folkungs, Gustavus Vasa and Eric XIV appeared in 1899, and showed that the author of Master Olof had returned to the art with which, twenty-seven years earlier, he had given his country its greatest historical play. With the precision of the somnambulist who takes up the thread of mental events, regardless of the time that has passed, Strindberg resumed the story of Master Olof where he had left off. In Gustavus Vasa we again meet Olof, the renegade, but he is now—as befits his character—a secondary person, duly subservient to the Power of the Time, King Gustavus Vasa. With Gustavus Vasa and Eric XIV Strindberg attained to mastery of a dramatic art, in which he stands unsurpassed. The art of writing the psychological drama of history is his, and his alone. No other dramaturge of modern times has approached him in clarity of historical vision, or in imaginative reconstruction of living characters which are at once true to their time and to all times.
No period of Swedish history lends itself better to dramatic treatment than that dominated by the first of the Vasas, Gustavus Erikson, the chosen king of the people, the incarnation of will, of a wholly masculine personality. The king's struggle to quell the rebellious spirit of the freemen of Dalecarlia, the vast inland county north of Stockholm, to whom he owes his throne and his power, is the subject of the play. The wrath of the king pervades the first act with an atmospheric suggestion of fateful horror which is the antithesis of melodramatic art, and shows Strindberg's power of restraint and concentration in the unfoldment of tragedy. The king has marched to Dalecarlia in order to punish the stiff-necked peasants who think that they can make and unmake kings with impunity. When the curtain rises upon the assembled leaders of the peasants the king is not seen, but his presence is felt. Master Olof has arrived as the emissary of the sovereign; solemn messengers bid the veterans of the soil to remain seated until they are called to appear before the king. There is a sense of suppressed fear in the room; the quiet, slow-thinking men, dad in white sheep-skin coats, suspect something, but cannot grasp the unthinkable audacity of the king's plans. One by one they are called out, but no one returns. Then a messenger from the king brings in three blood-stained sheep-skin coats, and throws them on the table. This is the king's warning to those who remain, and who are permitted to live.