Three Dramas | Page 2

journalism, in
finance, in monarchy: an appeal for less casuistry and more honesty.
Such a motive was characteristic of the vehement honesty of Björnson's
own character; he must always, as he says in one of his letters, go over
to the side of any one whom he believed to "hold the truth in his
hands."
The Editor (_Redaktören_) was written while Björnson was in Florence,
and was published at Copenhagen in 1874. It was at first not accepted

for performance at Christiania or Copenhagen, though an unauthorised
performance of it was given at one of the lesser Christiania theatres in
1875, Meanwhile a Swedish version of it had been produced,
authoritatively, at Stockholm in February of that year. The play
eventually made its way on the Norwegian and Danish stage; but,
before that, it had been seen in German dress at Munich and Hamburg.
As an inevitable result of his recent activities as a political speaker and
pamphleteer, Björnson had come in for a good deal of vituperation in
the press, a fact which no doubt added some gall to the ink with which
he drew the portrait of the journalist in this play. The Stockholm critics,
indeed, had condemned The Editor as merely a pamphleteering attack
on the editor of a well-known journal. In answer to this criticism
Björnson wrote from Rome in March, 1875: "It is said that my play is a
pamphleteering attack on a certain individual. That is a deliberate lie. I
have studied the journalist type, which is here represented, in many
other countries besides my own. The chief characteristic of this type is
to be actuated by an inordinate egotism that is perpetually being
inflamed by passion; that makes use of bogeys to frighten people, and
does this in such a way that, while it makes all its honest
contemporaries afraid of any freedom of thought, it also produces the
same result on every single individual by means of reckless persecution.
As I wished to portray that type, I naturally took a good deal of the
portrait from the representative of the type that I knew best; but, like
every artist who wishes to produce a complete creation, I had to build it
up from separate revelations of itself. There can, therefore, be no
question of any individual being represented in my play except in so far
as he may partially agree with the type."
However much Björnson may have written The Editor with a
"purpose," his vivid dramatic sense kept him from becoming merely
didactic. The little tragedy that takes place amongst this homely group
of people makes quite a moving play, thanks to the skill with which the
types are depicted--the bourgeois father and mother, with their mixture
of timidity and self-interest; the manly, straightforward young
politician, resolute to carry on the work that has sapped his brother's
life; the warped, de-humanised nature of the journalist; the sturdy
common-sense of the yeoman farmer; and the doctor, the "family

friend," as a sort of mocking chorus. Besides its plea for a higher regard
for truth, the play also attacks the precept, preached by worldly wisdom,
that we ought to harden our natures to make ourselves invulnerable; a
proposition which was hateful to one of Björnson's persistently
impressionable and ingenuous nature. The fact remains, as Brandes
grimly admits, that "nowadays we have only a very qualified sympathy
with public characters who succumb to the persecution of the press."
Brandes sees in the play, besides its obvious motive, an allegory.
Halvdan Rejn, the weary and dying politician, is (he says) meant for
Henrik Wergeland, a Norwegian poet-politician who had similar
struggles, sank under the weight of similar at tacks, died after a long
illness, and was far higher reputed after his death than during his life. In
Harald Rejn, with his honest enthusiasm and misjudged political
endeavours Brandes sees Björnson himself; while the yeoman brother,
Haakon, seems to him to typify the Norwegian people.
The Bankrupt (_En Fallit_: literally _A Bankruptcy_) was partly
written in Rome, partly in Tyrol, and published at Copenhagen in 1875.
It was a thing entirely new to the Scandinavian stage for a dramatist to
deal seriously with the tragi-comedy of money, and, while making a
forcible plea for honesty, to contrive to produce a stirring and
entertaining play on what might seem so prosaic a foundation as
business finance. Some of the play's earliest critics dismissed it as
"dry," "prosaic," "trivial," because of the nature of its subject; but it
made a speedy success on the boards, and very soon became a popular
item in the repertories of the Christiania, Bergen and Copenhagen
theatres. It was actually first performed, in a Swedish translation, at
Stockholm, a few days before it was produced at Christiania. Very soon,
too, the play reached Berlin, Munich,