Master Olof: A Drama in Five Acts

Olof: A Drama in Five Acts, by
August Strindberg

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Title: Master Olof: A Drama in Five Acts.
Author: August Strindberg

Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7363] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 21,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTER
OLOF: A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS. ***

Produced by Nicole Apostola

INTRODUCTION
The original prose version of Master Olof, which is here presented for
the first time in English form, was written between June 8 and August 8,
1872, while Strindberg, then only twenty-three years old, was living
with two friends on one of the numerous little islands that lie between
Stockholm and the open sea.
Up to that time he had produced half-a-dozen plays, one of which had
been performed at the Royal Theatre of Stockholm and had won him
the good-will and financial support of King Carl XV. Thus he had been
able to return to the University of Upsala, whence he had been driven a
year earlier by poverty as well as by spiritual revolt. During his second
term of study at the old university Strindberg wrote some plays that he
subsequently destroyed. In the same period he not only conceived the
idea later developed in Master Olof, but he also acquired the historical
data underlying the play and actually began to put it into dialogue.
During that same winter of 1871-72 he read extensively, although his
reading probably had slight reference to the university curriculum. The

two works that seem to have taken the lion's share of his attention were
Goethe's youthful drama Goetz von Berlichingen and Buckle's History
of Civilization in England. Both impressed him deeply, and both
became in his mind logically connected with an external event which,
perhaps, had touched his supersensitive soul more keenly than anything
else: an event concerning which he says in the third volume of The
Bondwoman's Son, that "he had just discovered that the men of the
Paris Commune merely put into action what Buckle preached."
Such were the main influences at work on his mind when, early in 1872,
his royal protector died, and Strindberg found himself once more
dependent on his own resources. To continue at the university was out
of the question, and he seems to have taken his final departure from it
without the least feeling of regret. Unwise as he may have been in other
respects, he was wise enough to realize that, whatever his goal, the road
to it must be of his own making. Returning to Stockholm, he groped
around for a while as he had done a year earlier, what he even tried to
eke out a living as the editor of a trade journal. Yet the seeds sown
within him during the previous winter were sprouting. An irresistible
impulse urged him to continue the work of Buckle. History and
philosophy were the ultimate ends tempting his mind, but first of all he
was impelled to express himself in terms of concrete life, and the way
had been shown him by Goethe. Moved by Goethe's example, he felt
himself obliged to break through the stifling forms of classical drama.
"No verse, no eloquence, no unity of place," was the resolution he
formulated straightway. [Note: See again The Bondwoman's Son, vol.
iii: In the Red Room.]
Having armed himself with a liberal supply of writing-paper, he joined
his two friends in the little island of Kymmendö. Of money he had so
little that, but for the generosity of one of his friends, he would have
had to leave the island in the autumn without settling the small debt he
owed for board and lodging. Yet those months were happy
indeed--above all because he felt himself moved by