Three Comedies | Page 4

ex machina." The play was, and is, immensely popular on the Scandinavian stage, and still holds the boards on others. It has been translated into Swedish, German, English, Dutch, Italian, Polish and Finnish.
Leonarda (1879) marks just as striking an advance upon Bj?rnson's early plays as the first of Ibsen's "social dramas" did upon his. Unreal stage conventions have disappeared, the characterisation is convincing, and the dialogue, if more prolix than Ibsen's (as is throughout the case with Bj?rnson), is always interesting and individual. The emotional theme of the play, the love of an older woman for her adopted daughter's young lover, is treated with the poetic touch that pervades all Bj?rnson's work; and the controversial theme, that of religious tolerance, with a sane restraint. It cannot be denied, however, that Bj?rnson's changed and unorthodox attitude towards religious matters--an attitude little expected except by those who knew him best--contributed a good deal towards the temporary waning of his popularity at this time. Leonarda is (like A Gauntlet) a good example of the root difference between Bj?rnson's and Ibsen's treatment of problems in their dramas. Ibsen contented himself with diagnosing social maladies; Bj?rnson's more genial nature hints also at the remedy, or at least at a palliative. Ibsen is a stern judge; Bj?rnson is, beyond that, a prophet of better things. Whereas Ibsen is first and foremost a dramatist, Bj?rnson is rather by instinct the novelist who casts his ideas in dramatic form, and is concerned to "round up" the whole. As Brandes says, in the course of his sympathetic criticism of the two writers, "Ibsen is in love with the idea, and its psychological and logical consequences. ... Corresponding to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have in Bj?rnson the love of humankind." Bj?rnson, moreover, was a long way behind Ibsen in constructive skill. As regards the technical execution of Leonarda, its only obvious weakness is a slight want of vividness in the presentation of the thesis. The hiatuses between the acts leave perhaps too much to the imagination, and the play needs more than a cursory reading for us to grasp the full import of the actions and motives of its personages. Leonarda has not been previously translated into English; though Swedish, French, German and Finnish versions of it exist.
A Gauntlet (finished in 1883) shows a great advance in dramatic technique. The whole is closely knit and coherent, and the problems involved are treated with an exhaustiveness that is equally fair to both sides. As has been already said, the plays that had preceded it from Bj?rnson's pen aroused such active controversy that he found it at first impossible to get A Gauntlet produced in his own country. Its first performance was in Hamburg, in 1883, and for that the author modified and altered it greatly. Eventually it was played, in its original form, in the Scandinavian countries, and in its turn stirred up a bitter controversy on the ethics of male and female morality as regards marriage. It was currently said that hundreds of contemplated marriages were broken off in Norway as an effect of its statement of a vital problem. The remodelling the play originally underwent for its performance in Germany was drastic. The second and third acts were entirely recast, the character of Dr. Nordan was omitted and others introduced, and the ending was changed. The first version was, however, evidently the author's favourite, and it is that that is presented here. Bj?rnson never published the recast version, and in the "memorial edition" of his works it is the present version that is given. The recast version was translated into English by Mr. Osman Edwards and produced (in an "adapted" and mangled form, for which the translator was not responsible) at the Royalty Theatre in London in 1894.
R. FARQUHARSON SHARP.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DRAMATIC AND POETIC WORKS.--Mellem Slagene (Between the Battles), 1857. Halte-Hulda (Lame Hulda), 1858. Kong Sverre (King Sverre), 1861. Sigurd Slembe (Sigurd the Bastard), 1862; translated by W. M. Payne, 1888. Maria Stuart i Skotland, 1864. De Nygifte (The Newly-Married Couple), 1865; translated by T. Soelfeldt, 1868; by S. and E. Hjerleid, 1870; as A Lesson in Marriage, by G. I. Colbron, 1911. Sigurd Jorsalfar (Sigurd the Crusader), 1872. Redakt?ren (The Editor), 1874. En Fallit (A Bankruptcy), 1874. Kongen (The King), 1877. Leonarda, 1879. Det ny System (The New System), 1879. En Hanske, 1883; translated as A Gauntlet, by H. L. Braekstad 1890; by Osman Edwards 1894. Over AEvne (Beyond our Strength),
Part I., 1883; translated as Pastor Sang, by W. Wilson,
1893;
Part II., 1895. Geografi og Kaerlighed (Geography and Love),
1885; Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg, 1898; translated by H. L. Braekstad, 1899. Laboremus, 1901; translation published by Chapman and Hall, 1901. Paa Storhove (At Storhove), 1904; Daglannet, 1904; Naar den ny Vin blomstrer (When the Vineyards are