when Olof and Lars Andersson were arrested and charged with high
treason for not having informed the proper authorities of a plot
against the King's life. This plot was an old story, having been
exposed and punished in 1536. Their defence was that they had
learned of it through secret confession, which they as ministers
had no right to reveal. The trial took only two days, and on
January 2, 1540, both were sentenced to death.

The second scene of the final act must be laid in the spring of
1540, as the ceremony of confirmation has generally taken place
about Easter ever since the Swedish church became Lutheran.

While, in the main, Strindberg made the events of his play accord
with what was accepted as historical fact when he wrote, there
are anachronisms and inaccuracies to be noted, although to none
of them can be attached much importance. When, in the first and
second acts, he represents the Anabaptist leaders, Rink and
Knipperdollink, as then in Stockholm and actually introduces one
of them on the stage, he has merely availed himself of a legend
which had been accepted as truth for centuries, and which has
been exploded only by recent historical research. We know now
that Rink and Knipperdollink could never have been in Sweden, but
we know also that a German lay preacher named Melchior Hofman
appeared at Stockholm about the time indicated in the play, and
that, in 1529, another such preacher, named Tilemann, made Olof
himself the object of his fierce invectives. These instances
serve, in fact, to prove how skilfully Strindberg handled his
historical material. He is never rigid as to fact, but as a rule
he is accurate in spirit. Another instance of this kind is found
in the references in the first act to the use of Swedish for