August Strindberg

“ KERSTI. Shall we have new furniture?
MATS. There will be nothing new. Everything is handed down from one generation to another.
KERSTI. But we can sweep, can't we?
MATS. No, we can't! The dust in a mill is like the coating in a pipe. Mustn't be touched!
KERSTI. Is that the wheel?
MATS. That's the wheel.
He pulls the lever, whereupon the rushing of the water through the race is heard, and the wheel begins to turn.
KERSTI. Ugh! Have we to listen to that noise?
MATS. It's ours! And we should be thankful as long as we hear it, because that means we have grist for the mill. ”

“ AGDA. No, I don't. [JORGHEN looks offended] Not unless you try to be good.
JORGHEN. How the devil is that to be done?
AGDA. Shame! Shame!
JORGHEN. If you never see anything good, how can you believe in it?
AGDA. Tell me, secretary, did the Prince mean what he said about the Hanseatic people and what they are doing in that house?
JORGHEN. No, child! That was only a cruel jest. But no Swedish authority can interfere with what they are doing in there. That much you should know, if you are worrying about your Jacob.
AGDA. Will you do me a favour? It won't cost you anything. ”

“ MARCUS. [Enters] Two Dalecarlians ask to see you.
ISRAEL. Tell them to wait.
MARCUS goes out.
JACOB. They'll pay for it with their heads.
ISRAEL. Who are they, then?
JACOB. Anders Persson of Rankhyttan and Mons Nilsson of Aspeboda, who have tried in vain to get an audience with the King, and who are now moved by their futile anger to turn to you for revenge.
ISRAEL. So you know that, too?
JACOB. Without wishing to show you any disrespect, father—how can a man of your age believe that secrets exist?
ISRAEL. Time has run away from me. I don't know any longer where I stand. ”

“ MIDWIFE. Listen! I can do what others can't! I can set you free!
KERSTI. I have found my Saviour! His name is Christ Jesus!
MIDWIFE. I can make the judge as soft as wax....
KERSTI. He who shall judge the quick and the dead; He who is the resurrection and the life: He has sentenced me to death in the flesh, and to—life everlasting.
MIDWIFE. Look at the soldiers! They have gone to sleep! Take my cloak and run!
KERSTI. Are the soldiers asleep?
MIDWIFE. Their eyes are closed!—Run, run, run!
KERSTI rises and looks at the soldiers, who have closed their eyes.
MIDWIFE. Run, run, run! ”

“ SHERIFF. And there is the new life ahead of you, in mill and kitchen. No more running about in the woods, where "birches nod in the blowing breeze." No more dancing in the barns on Saturday nights. You'll be busy 'tending your pots, and watching the cradle, and having the meals on the table when Mats comes home, and—keeping an even temper when the dark days arrive—for after sunshine there is sure to be a little rain. Does it scare you to find life so serious, dear? It isn't as bad as it looks. It merely helps to make life kind of solemn. ”

“ ERIC. The sun is a deceiver; don't trust it. Blood will be shed in this place before nightfall. Eric and Abel were the names of those elegant relatives; not Cain and Abel! And that time it was Abel who killed Cain—no, Eric, I mean! That's a fine omen to start with! Eric was killed! Poor Eric!
QUEEN. Alas, alas!
ERIC. But it is of no use to take any stock in superstition, as I entered this vale of misery with my fist full of blood.
QUEEN. Now you do scare me!
ERIC. [Laughing] That's more than Jorghen would believe—that I could scare anybody. ”

“ AGDA. If your lordship commands, I must talk, of course, but....
ERIC. Give me the love that I have begged for so long!
AGDA. What one does not have one cannot give away.
ERIC. Alas!
AGDA. Not loving your lordship, I cannot give you any love.
ERIC. Diantre!—Give me your favour, then!
AGDA. Favours are not given away, but sold.
ERIC. Listen to that! It is as if I heard my wise Jacob himself philosophising. [To JORGHEN] Did you ever hear anything like it?
JORGHEN. All wenches learn that kind of patter from their lovers.
ERIC. Don't talk like that! This girl has won my heart. ”

“ I thought the days of schism were past....
REGINALD. Schism, yes—that's the word Prince Johan is using always. We had a Catholic Church, and then....
OLAVUS. Oh, shut your mouth and go to Wittenberg!
REGINALD. As it is your wish, father—but I won't study any more theology.
OLAVUS. Why not?
REGINALD. I think it is device of the devil to make people hate each other.
CHRISTINE. Good for you, Reginald!
OLAVUS. And it had to come to this in my own house! Pulchre, bene, rede!—Who, Reginald, do you think has caused this dissension under which you young people are suffering now? ”

“ STUDENT. The liberator is approaching! Be welcome, thou pale and gentle one!—Sleep, you beauteous, unhappy and innocent creature, who have done nothing to deserve your own sufferings! Sleep without dreaming, and when you wake again—may you be greeted by a sun that does not burn, by a home without dust, by friends without stain, by a love without flaw! Thou wise and gentle Buddha, who sitst waiting there to see a heaven sprout from this earth, endow us with patience in the hour of trial, and with purity of will, so that thy hope be not put to shame! ”

“ But your maternal ancestor was nevertheless a daughter of Eric Ploughpenny of Denmark and had a son with her brother-in-law, King Waldemar of Sweden, the son of Earl Birger....
QUEEN. Why do you tell me all these dreadful stories?
KING. I thought it might amuse you to know that you have royal blood in your veins, while I have peasant blood. You are too modest, Margaret, and I wish to see you exalted—so high that that fool Eric will be forced to respect you.
QUEEN. To have sprung from a crime should make one more modest. ”

“ MARCUS and DAVID go quietly out to the left.
ERIC. A man from Småland who is full of sensible ideas.—Do you still need to have your forehead bandaged?
JACOB. Do you think I wear the bandage as an ornament, or as a souvenir of the city mob?
ERIC. You should not bear a grudge against the good folk because some scamp has misbehaved himself.
JACOB. I don't, my friend, and I know perfectly well what a stranger must expect in a hostile country. If you come to Luebeck, you will see how they stone Swedes.
ERIC. You talk just like Jorghen Persson. Do you know him? ”

“ JORGHEN. Let the maiden go before she begins to cry. I can't bear tears.
ERIC. I suppose you have never cried, Jorghen?
JORGHEN. Twice: when I was born, and once after that—out of rage.
ERIC. You are a beast, Jorghen.
AGDA goes back into the tavern.
JORGHEN. However—you wish to figure out what is to happen, and to form a decision on the basis of your false calculations. Have you not noticed how all our plans are foiled? That's the game of the gods. Sometimes we act wisely, and everything goes to the devil, and then we act like fools, and everything turns out right. ”

“ ERIC. Otherwise he is probably a perfect rascal like his father.
JORGHEN. Then I shall be pleased to make his acquaintance.
ERIC. Because he is a rascal?—Ha-ha!
JORGHEN. In spite of it!
AGDA. [Enters from the left] Did you call me, Prince?
ERIC. No, but you are always welcome. Sit down here.
AGDA. The honour is too great for me.
ERIC. Of course, it is!
AGDA. And so I leave—to save my honour.
ERIC. Dare you sting, you gnat?
AGDA. That's your fancy only. I am too sensible and humble to hurt the feelings of a great lord like yourself, my Prince.
ERIC. Very good! Very good, indeed! ”

“ MIDWIFE. [Turns and runs out with the galloping movement of a wild thing; her back, which then becomes visible, looks like that of a fox and ends in a sweeping, bushy tail; she hisses rather than speaks] We'll meet at the wedding, bid or unbid! And the Sheriff, too! Ad-zee! Ad-zee! Ad-zee!
KERSTI takes a few faltering steps in direction of the tarn, as if she meant to throw herself into the water.
Then she begins to walk up and down in front of the cradle. After a while she takes off the round Dalecarlian jacket she is wearing and puts it on top of the clothing already covering the cradle. ”

“ The King, as we find him in the drama, is a wonderfully vivid and faithful reconstruction of a great man that has writ himself in large letters on the map of his country. But he is also a symbolisation of a type that will always remain one of the most fascinating of all that people the earth: that of the ruler who is conscious both his mission and of the price that must be paid for its fulfilment. The problem of Strindberg's play might be said to be this: granted such a mission, how much has a man the right to pay for its proper fulfilment? ”

“ Bribes won't do that, nor will threats—but suffering and repentance will [She goes to HUMMEL] We are miserable human creatures, and we know it. We have erred and we have sinned—we, like everybody else. We are not what we seem, but at bottom we are better than ourselves because we disapprove of our own misdeeds. And when you, Jacob Hummel, with your assumed name, propose to sit in judgment on us, you merely prove yourself worse than all the rest. You are not the one you seem to be—no more than we! You are a thief of human souls! ”

“ CHRISTINE. Luther is dead!
OLAVUS. Dead?
CHRISTINE. That's what my brother-in-law writes me in this letter from Magdeburg.
OLAVUS. [Rising] Dead! [To REGINALD] My poor Alexander, what will you pull to pieces now?
REGINALD. First the universe, and then myself.
OLAVUS. [Pushing him toward the door at the left] Go ahead, then, but begin with yourself. The universe will always remain.
CHRISTINE. [As she rises and is about to go out with REGINALD] Will there be peace on earth now?
OLAVUS. That will never be!—Let me have that letter.
CHRISTINE and REGINALD go out to the left. ”

“ There are others who think that he is coming to thank us Dalecarlians for the good help rendered in his last fight.
STIG. That would not be like him.
ANDERS. To thank anybody—no, indeed!
MONS. Do you think there is any cause for fear?
NILS. Not while Christian is still free.
INGHEL. It's queer that we should have to look to Christian for safety.
STIG. We knew what we had, but not what we might get. Christian took the heads of the noble lords and left the people alone. This one leaves the lords alone and rides roughshod over the people. Who should be called a tyrant? ”

“ KERSTI. But not a single church bell to be heard MATS. It's Sunday, and the ringing during the day has made them tired What shall we call the little one?
KERSTI. [In wild rebellion] Burden and Ill-luck and Un-asked and crown-thief....
MATS. Why crown-thief?
KERSTI. Because and because and because Even if we get a real wedding, I can wear no crown! What should he be called? Bride-spoil, Mother-woe, Forest-find!
MATS. Badly fares who badly does!
KERSTI. Yes, that's for you to say!
The MOTHER of KERSTI appears on the hillside among the spruces and stands looking at MATS and her daughter. ”

“ Frequently my duties toward my own people have kept me from lending you a helping hand. Frequently, too, your own hardness has stood between us. But now, when I behold you so deeply crushed, and when you have treated me with a confidence that I may well call filial, I shall forget for a moment that I am your enemy—which I must be as a man of Luebeck, while as Herman Israel I am your friend. ”

“ JORGHEN. [Becoming attentive] No, I never heard of that.
ERIC. That's what they say. And I can understand it. There is greatness in it. To feel raised above all human considerations; to kill whatever stands in the way? and trample everything else.... Sometimes, you know, when I see him coming in his big, soft hat and his blue cloak, using his boar-spear in place of a stick, I think he is Odin himself. When he is angry, the people say that they can hear him from the top story down to the cellars, and that the sound of it is like thunder. ”

“ BARBRO. [Looking at the picture just indicated] Is it true, father, that the ski-runner was named Engelbrecht, like the great chieftain we had in the past century?
MONS. Yes, it's true, child, and we used to speak of it as "the finger of God," but now we call it mere superstition.
WIFE. Don't put that sort of thing into the children's heads!
MONS. Oh, keep quiet! I teach the children nothing but what is right and proper.—And bear in mind, little girls, that, no matter what you may hear, you must never believe or say anything bad of the King. Earth bears no heavier burden than a thankless man. ”

“ MILL-FOLK. To church.
FISHERMAN. For the man who has lost his way, all roads lead to the rapids. [A rumbling noise is made by the ice] The roof is cracking!
MILL-FOLK. Where is the road to the church?
FISHERMAN. Everywhere!
MILL-FOLK. Where is the church?
FISHERMAN. You are standing on it, and walking over it, and soon it will be here.
MILL-FOLK. Is this Krummedikke's lake?
FISHERMAN. It's Krummedikke's castle and Krummedikke's lake; it's Krummedikke's church, and soon it will break.
MILL-FOLK. Lord have mercy! ”

“ Then I must do it myself! [He picks up the harp, but is unable to make its strings sound] It has grown deaf and dumb! Only think that the most beautiful flower of all can be so poisonous—that it can be more poisonous than any other one.... There must be a curse on all creation and on life itself.... Why did you not want to become my bride? Because the very well-spring of life within you has been sickened.... Now I can feel how that vampire in the kitchen is sucking my life juices.... She must be a Lamia, one of those that suck the blood of children. ”

“ There is no one there.
A crowd of beggars enter and kneel in front of the KING with hands held out in supplication.
KING. Are you mocking me?
FIRST BEGGAR. We are perishing, my noble lord!
KING. I am perishing, too!—Why are you begging, anyhow?
SECOND BEGGAR. I'll tell you. Because the King has seized the tithes that went to the poor before. And when he did so, he said: "You can beg!"
KING. And what is he doing with the tithes of the poor?
FIRST BEGGAR. Paying Prince Eric's le-lecheries!
KING. No, paying the country's debt, you knaves! [To JOHAN] Give them money, so we get rid of them. ”

“ KERSTI. [Rises very carefully and carries LIT-MATS to the bench by the fireplace, where she pulls him down and covers him up] Hushaby, hushaby!
The singing of a hymn in unison is heard from the camp. KERSTI kneels beside the bench and tries to pray, bid merely wrings her hands in despair. At last she kisses the shoes of the sleeping child, struggles to her feet, and goes to window.
MATS. There is something nice about children, isn't there?
KERSTI. Yes—yes!
MATS. Are you alone?
KERSTI. Yes, they left! Hating me—all of them!
MATS. To-morrow is our wedding-day! ”