name of youth, he demands the evolution of a new truth; and Gert
is right in calling Olof a renegade. The individual must always
become a renegade--forced by the necessity of natural laws; by
fatigue; by inability to develop indefinitely, as the brain
ceases to grow about the age of forty-five; and by the claims of
actual life, which demand that even a reformer must live as man,
mate, head of a family, and citizen. But those who crave that the
individual continue his progress indefinitely are the shortsighted
--particularly those who think that the cause must perish because
the individual deserts it. ... It is an open question, for that
matter, whether Olof did not have a better chance to advance his
cause from the pulpit of the reformed Greatchurch than he would
have had in low-class taverns."

These passages were written by Strindberg fourteen years after
the completion of the play to which they refer. We have other
evidence, however, that, while he might have seen things more
clearly in retrospect, he had not been lured by the lapse of time
into placing his characters in a light different from that in
which they were conceived. On the list of characters forming part
of the original handwritten manuscript of the first version of
Master Olof, now preserved in the Public Library of Gothenburg,
Sweden, the author has jotted down certain very significant notes
opposite the more important names. Thus he has written opposite
the name of the King: "To accomplish something in this world, one
has to risk morality and conscience;" opposite the name of Olof:
"He who strives to realize an idea develops greatness of
personality--he accomplishes good by his personal example, but he
is doomed to perish;" opposite that of Bishop Brask: "There is
movement in whatever exists--whatever stands still must be