SOURCE: Wikander, Matthew H. “Historical Vision and Dramatic Historiography: Strindberg's Gustav III in Light of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Corneille's Cinna.” Scandinavian Studies 62, no. 1 (winter 1990): 123-29.

In the following essay, Wilander compares the way that three history plays, including Strindberg's Gustav III, treat their subjects.

Shakespeare är providentialist som antikens tragödier voro,” Strindberg declared in Öppna brev till Intima Teatern (1909; Letters to the Intimate Theater), “därför försummar han icke det historiska, utan låter den högsta rätten skipas ända till småaktighet [114]” (“Shakespeare is a Providentialist, just as the ancient writers of tragedy were, so he does not leave history without making sure that divine justice has been distributed even to the point of pettiness”). Here Strindberg seems to speak more of his own vision of Shakespeare than of a Shakespearean's, but in opening the question of meting out justice “even to...