nglish-speaking public by the historical plays of Bernard Shaw and the
short stories and novels of Anatole France.

In his eagerness, however, to express what was burning for utterance in
his own breast, the second purpose was sometimes lost sight of; and at
such times Strindberg hesitated as little to pass the bounds imposed
by an historical period as to break through the much more important
limitations of class and personal antecedents. Thus, for example,
the remarks of Olof's mother are at one moment characterized by the
simplicity to be expected from the aged widow of a small city tradesman
in the early part of the sixteenth century, while in the next--under
the pressure of the author's passion for personal expression--they
grow improbably sophisticated. Yet each figure, when seen in proper
perspective, appears correctly drawn and strikingly consistent with
the part assigned to it in the play. In his very indifference to minor
accuracies, Strindberg sometimes approaches more closely to the larger
truth than men more scrupulous in regard to details. How true he can be
in his delineation of a given type is perhaps best shown by the figure
of Gert. The world's literature holds few portrayals of the anarchistic
temperament that can vie with it in psychological exactness, and it is
as true to-day as it was in 1524 or in 1872.

This verisimilitude on a universal rather than a specific plane assumes
still greater significance if we consider it in the light of what
Strindberg has told us about his purpose with the main characters of his
first great play. As I have already said, those characters were meant
to be both mouthpieces of the author and revived historical figures, but
they were also meant--and primarily, I suspect--to be something else:
embodiments of the contradictory phases of a single individual, namely
the author himself.

"The author meant to hide his own self behind the historical
characters," Strindberg tells us, apropos of this very play. [Note: In
one of his biographical novels, The Bondwoman's Son, vol. iii: In
the Red Room.] "As an idealist he was to be represented by Olof; as a
realist by Gustaf; and as a communist by Gert." Farther on in the same
work, he continues his revelation as follows: "The King and his shadow,
the shrewd Constable, represented himself [the author] as he wished to
be; Gert, as he was in moments of aroused passion; and Olof, as, after
years of self-scrutiny, he had come to know