Immediately after his election, the new King called Lars
Andersson from Strangnas to become his first chancellor. Later
on, he pressed Olof, too, into his service, making him Secretary
to the City Corporation of Stockholm--which meant that Olof
practically became the chief civil administrator of the capital,
having to act as both clerk and magistrate, while at the same
time he was continuing his reformatory propaganda as one of the
preachers in the city's principal edifice, officially named after
St. Nicolaus, but commonly spoken of as Greatchurch. As if this
were not sufficient for one man, he plunged also into a feverish
literary activity, doing most of the work on the Swedish
translations of the New and Old Testaments, and paving the way
for the new faith by a series of vigorous polemical writings, the
style of which proclaims him the founder of modern Swedish prose.
Centuries passed before the effective simplicity and homely
picturesqueness of his style were surpassed. He became,
furthermore, Sweden's first dramatist. The Comedy of Tobit,
from which Strindberg uses a few passages in slightly modernized
form at the beginning of his play, is now generally recognized as
an authentic product of Olof's pen, although it was not written
until a much later period.

Strindberg's drama starts at Strangnas, at the very moment when
Olof has been goaded into open revolt against the abuses of the
Church, and when he is saved from the consequences of that revolt
only by the unexpected arrival of King Gustaf and his own
appointment as City Secretary. From the slightly strained, but
not improbable, coincidence of that start to the striking climax
of the last act, the play follows, on the whole, pretty closely
the actual course of events recorded in history. To understand