Strindberg's Gustav III: The Player King on the Stage of History

Strindberg's Gustav III: The Player King on the Stage of History MATTHEW If. WIKANDER Strindberg's interest in Sweden's Gustav III, founder of the Swedish Academy and both the Royal Opera and the Royal Theatre, began in 1882 with the Royal Theatre's plans to celebrate its centenary by presenting two of Gustav's plays. "Since Herr Josephson altered the program for the festival in September so that it became an ovation for instead of a protest against Gustav III and his so-called creation," he wrote in aletter to Josephson, "I am prevented in every way from participating, since I have, in two special forthcoming works, made a fool of both this king I despise and his ·Creation.,,,I The young playwright's hostile portraits of Gustav III in The Swedish People and of the Royal Theatre in The New Kingdom did indeed soon follow . Twenty years later, Strindberg presented his Gustav III to the Royal Theatre; "It cannot be right," declared the censor, Nils Bonde, "to slander on this stage the great patron and progenitor of the Royal Theatre," and the play was rejected .2 The rejection of Gustav III was more a response to Strindberg's notorious baiting ofthe Swedish Academy than an objection to the play itself. For in the intervening years, Strindberg's attitude towards Gustav III had become considerably more complex. What the play presents is not the derision and anger of the young Strindberg, but rather an attempt on the part of the mature Strindberg to see Gustav III and his theatre from a perspective governed by the researches into history which he would soon publish as "The Mysticism of World History" in 1903. Far from being a satirical attack upon Sweden's player-king, Gustav III offers a serious critique of the problems of acting and action in the theatre and in the world. The play is set in 1789, on the days leading up to Gustav Ill's royalist seizure of power. With his usual delight in ironic coincidence, Strindberg emphasizes the parallelism between this event and the fall of the Bastille. From first to last, Gustav's absolutist coup d' etat is presented against its historical background as an inappropriate coup de lhtidtre;over the course of the play the king's role shifts from that of playwright, managing events and news, to that of actor, Strindberg's Gustav ill 81 forced to perform the role of assassin's victim in a script he neither controls nor understands. As the play opens, the king's enemies gather at Holmberg's bookstore, welcoming the news of unrest in Paris and of Washington's election. "Can something new be happening in the world?" wonders Holmberg. 3 The hopes of the group seem to have been answered by accounts of Gustav's deposition; 'The comedy is ended!" Holmberg exclaims (p. 246) in a line that will become a refrain for the whole play. But the accounts of Gustav's defeats are false; he lands victorious, and the act ends with news of the executions of the officers who conspired against him. The bookstore is closed. The unseen king masterfully re-establishes his power, although there is a latent threat in the act's last moment, as the revolutionary poet Thorild is left alone on stage, contemplating the bust of Rousseau. In the second act, we are given our first look at the king himself, in his audience-room at the palace at Haga. The room is decorated with a mirror and a bust of Voltaire: under the watchful eyes of himself and of the philosopher, Gustav rehearses his appearance. He greets each of his visitors in a different manner. "Elis," he says to State Secretary SchrOderheim, "do you believe that a person of high station could or should remain in a marriage which brings him only dishonor and ridicule?" (p. 256). Thinking that the king is referring to his own unbappy marriage, SchrOderheim recommends a divorce, only to discover that he has been tricked into agreeing to divorce Lady Schriiderheim. "He's written a new play," says the king later to Lady Schroderheim, "with a leading role for you!" (p. 261...