<P> Strindberg spent the next few years in Uppsala and Stockholm, alternately studying for exams and trying his hand at non-academic pursuits . As a young student, Strindberg also worked as an assistant in a pharmacy in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden . He supported himself in between studies as a substitute primary - school teacher and as a tutor for the children of two well - known physicians in Stockholm . He first left Uppsala in 1868 to work as a schoolteacher, but then studied chemistry for some time at the Institute of Technology in Stockholm in preparation for medical studies, later working as a private tutor before becoming an extra at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm . In May 1869, he failed his qualifying chemistry exam which in turn made him uninterested in schooling . </P> <P> Strindberg returned to Uppsala University in January 1870 to study aesthetics and modern languages and to work on a number of plays . It was at this time that he first learnt about the ideas of Charles Darwin . He co-founded the Rune Society, a small literary club whose members adopted pseudonyms taken from runes of the ancient Teutonic alphabet--Strindberg called himself Frö (Seed), after the god of fertility . After abandoning a draft of a play about Eric XIV of Sweden halfway through in the face of criticism from the Rune Society, on 30 March he completed a one - act comedy in verse called In Rome about Bertel Thorvaldsen, which he had begun the previous autumn . The play was accepted by the Royal Theatre, where it premièred on 13 September 1870 . As he watched it performed, he realised that it was not good and felt like drowning himself, though the reviews published the following day were generally favourable . That year he also first read works of Søren Kierkegaard and Georg Brandes, both of whom influenced him . </P> <P> Taking his cue from William Shakespeare, he began to use colloquial and realistic speech in his historical dramas, which challenged the convention that they should be written in stately verse . During the Christmas holiday of 1870--71, he re-wrote a historical tragedy, Sven the Sacrificer, as a one - act play in prose called The Outlaw . Depressed by Uppsala, he stayed in Stockholm, returning to the university in April to pass an exam in Latin and in June to defend his thesis on Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger's Romantic tragedy Earl Haakon (1802). Following further revision in the summer, The Outlaw opened at the Royal Theatre on 16 October 1871 . Despite hostile reviews, the play earned him an audience with King Charles XV, who supported his studies with a payment of 200 riksdaler . Towards the end of the year Strindberg completed a first draft of his first major work, a play about Olaus Petri called Master Olof . In September 1872, the Royal Theatre rejected it, leading to decades of rewrites, bitterness, and a contempt for official institutions . Returning to the university for what would be his final term in the spring, he left on 2 March 1872, without graduating . In Town and Gown (1877), a collection of short stories describing student life, he ridiculed Uppsala and its professors . </P> <P> Strindberg embarked on his career as a journalist and critic for newspapers in Stockholm . He was particularly excited at this time by Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization and the first volume of Georg Brandes' Main Currents of Nineteenth - Century Literature . From December 1874, Strindberg worked for eight years as an assistant librarian at the Royal Library . That same month, Strindberg offered Master Olof to Edvard Stjernström (the director of the newly built New Theatre in Stockholm), but it was rejected . He socialised with writers, painters, journalists, and other librarians; they often met in the Red Room in Bern's Restaurant . </P>

Urdu speeches in written form on 14 august