Playing with History: August Strindberg’s Kristina and Pam Gems’s Queen Christina

ABSTRACT This article compares August Strindberg’s Kristina (1901) and Pam Gems’s Queen Christina (1977) and shows that these plays about Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–89) are both playing with history, but with a noteworthy difference: Strindberg incorporates his chauvinistic interests and portrays an illiterate, irresponsible, despicable monarch who is easily manipulated. His portrait of Queen Christina is not supported by Christina’s biographers and historians. On the other hand, Gems’s play undercuts the misogyny of Strindberg’s play and provides a more accurate historical account of her life’s trajectory. Gems demythologizes the distorted image of the queen as presented in Strindberg’s play. She focuses on Christina’s upbringing as a boy and her psychological endeavors to get along with her socially and politically defined role and gender.