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STRINDBERG had finally set up his own theatre, but under such great difficulties that it seemed as though all the powers of the world had conspired against him lest in the end he should bring his unplayed dramas on the stage.

When the theatre, the old Intima Theatre at Norra Bantorget, was to be opened, it took months before the sanction of the authorities could be obtained and before all the necessary changes were completed. As Strindberg was strongly opposed to director Falck's and his company's going on a tour through the country, he was obliged to pay their salaries for more than two months. And when on the 26th of November 1907 the theatre finally opened its gates and that forceful masterpiece The Pelican, a play expressly written for the occasion, was given as a premiere, there rose in unison a lupine howl against both the play and the author, loudest against himself, perhaps, but not so much against the dramatist as against the author of—Black Flags.

They did not consider that it was Sweden's first and only great dramatist who now himself sought to make good the wrongs done him, that it was the author himself who had to pay the piper. The Intima Theatre was to be