ce with what
history has to tell us about them. Among the chief figures there is only
one--Gert the Printer--who is not known to history, and one--the wife of
Olof--who is so little known that the playwright has been at liberty to
create it almost wholly out of his own imagination.

At the juncture represented by the initial scenes of the play, Olof was
in reality thirty-one years old, but he is made to appear still younger.
The King should be, and is, about twenty-seven, while Lars Andersson is
about fifty-four, and Bishop Brask about seventy. Gert must be thought a
man of about sixty, while Christine must be about twenty. The action
of the play lasts from 1524 to 1540, but Strindberg has contracted the
general perspective, so to speak, giving us the impression that the
entire action takes place within a couple of years. I have tried to work
out a complete chronology, and think it fairly safe to date the several
parts of the play as follows:

The first act takes place on Whitsun Eve, 1524, which means that the
exact date must fall between May 10 and June 13 of that year, and
probably about June 1.

The first scene of the second act occurs in the early evening of a
Saturday in the summer--probably in June--of 1524. The second scene is
fixed at midnight of the same day, and the third scene on the following
morning, which, in view of the fact that Olof is to preach, we may
assume to be a Sunday.

The first scene of the third act seems to take place four days later,
but Olof was not married until February, 1525,--to "Christine, a maiden
of good family,"--and it was only during the winter of 1526-27 that the
Church reformers were given free rein by the King, and Olof himself was
despatched to the University of Upsala for the purpose of challenging
Peder Galle, the noted Catholic theologian, to a joint discussion. This
was also the time when the first Swedish version of the New Testament
was completed by Olof and Lars Andersson--an event referred to in the
scene in question.

The exact date of the second scene of the third act is St. John's
Eve, or June 24, 1527, at which time occurred the important Riksdag at
Vesteras, where the King broke the final resistance of the nobility and
the Catholic clergy by threatening to abdicate. The debate between Olof
and Peder Galle took place at the Riksdag, Galle having evaded it as
long as he could.

The date of the fourth act is very uncertain, but it seems safe to place
it in t