CAPTAIN. You think Curt a hypocrite? [A...

CAPTAIN. You think Curt a hypocrite?

[ALICE. Of course I do!]

CAPTAIN. And I don't! But all who come near us turn evil and go their way. Curt was weak, and the evil is strong! [Pause] How commonplace life has become! Formerly blows were struck; now you shake your fist at the most! I am fairly certain that, three months from now, we shall celebrate our silver wedding—with Curt as best man—and with the Doctor and Gerda among the guests. The Quartermaster will make the speech and the Sergeant-Major will lead the cheering. And if I know the Colonel right, he will come on his own invitation—Yes, you may laugh! But do you recall the silver wedding of Adolph—in the Fusiliers? The bride had to carry her wedding ring on the right hand, because the groom in a tender moment had chopped off her left ring finger with his dirk. [ALICE puts her handkerchief to her mouth in order to repress her laughter] Are you crying? No, I believe you are laughing! Yes, child, partly we weep and partly we laugh. Which is the right thing to do?—Don't ask me! The other day I read in a newspaper that a man had been divorced seven times—which means that he had been married seven times—and finally, at the age of ninety-eight, he ran away with his first wife and married her again. Such is love! If life be serious, or merely a joke, is more than I can decide. Often it is most painful when a joke, and its seriousness is after all more agreeable and peaceful. But when at last you try to be serious, somebody comes and plays a joke on you—as Curt, for instance! Do you want a silver wedding? [ALICE remains silent] Oh, say yes! They will laugh at us, but what does it matter? We may laugh also, or keep serious, as the occasion may require.

August Strindberg, The Dance of Death, Part One, in Plays: First Series, trans. Edwin Björkman, 1912.