SOURCE: Loomis, Jeffrey B. “The Intertestamental Dispensation of Strindberg's Easter.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 35, no. 3 (spring 1983): 196-202.

In the following essay, Loomis describes the religious and Biblical reference in the play Easter.

August Strindberg's Easter has been called a “Passion Play,”¹ and in a special way it is. But we must clarify the contextual meaning of that statement. The play dramatizes imitations of Christ's Passion within individual Swedish Christians at the turn of the twentieth century; yet Christ's own Passion also seems strongly present within the onstage events. The play is set during the first three days of Easter weekend, with conscious back-reference to the Lenten season. Thus, Strindberg suggests that Christ's sacrificial death is being seasonally repeated in the lives dramatized. He also hints that the Holy Spirit—the legacy of Christ to man announced on Maundy Thursday—will guide these souls through the Pentecostal...