IV.

Holberg as a dramatic author is certainly one of the most interesting chapters in the history of Norwegian and Danish literature, and none has been subjected to a more searching examination.

It is admitted by all critics that he is indebted to the famous playwrights of ancient Rome--Plautus and Terentius--and he certainly also owes something to the Italian comedy with which he had become acquainted both in Italy and in Paris. His relation to Molière whom he admired very much has been a matter of discussion, even in France, and there are in some of his plays characters and scenes which remind one of the English dramatists of the Restoration. But he never stooped to mere imitation. The comedies which have established his fame all bear the indelible stamp of his originality and of his genius.

Let us take a short review of some of the most famous of his comedies.

First you make the acquaintance of the _Tinker Politician_--a typical representative of the time, so occupied with speculations and discussions on public affairs that he has no time to look after his own trade. It consequently goes from bad to worse. He is the central figure in a self-appointed board of Blue-Apron Politicians--a saddler, a cutler, a wig-maker, and so on. They are over head and ears in politics, discussing the events of the Spanish War of Succession, giving advice to Prince Eugène and the Duke of Marlborough or denouncing their dispositions, while expounding the most startling historical theories and making the most absurd geographical assertions. They are also eagerly taking down their own authorities.

Holberg has been so cautious as to make Hamburg the scene of his comedy, for it would certainly not have been tolerated if the action had been made to take place at Copenhagen. Some of the remarks made by the characters of the play have, therefore, retained a wonderful actuality. By way of example: "Indeed, those people don't see what is to the true benefit of Germany." Replacing the word Germany by the word Denmark we see, however, the homely, eighteenth-century address quite clearly.

In the third act the _Tinker Politician_ is most unexpectedly appointed Burgomaster of Hamburg--a sham appointment, of course, arranged by some persons who wish to play a practical joke on him in order to put his remarkable political qualities and his much-boasted administrative faculties to the test. It need hardly be said that his burgomastership which, by the way, only lasts twenty-four hours, filled up with constant embarrassments, disillusionments and mortifications, finally turns out a complete failure. He is just about to hang himself in a fit of despair when he is informed of the joke which has been played upon him. He rejoices in his good luck, denounces his political vanity in a verse which has become classic, and the moral of which may be expressed in the old proverb: "The shoemaker should stick to his last."

In another play we meet _Jean de France_, a Copenhagen cousin of _The Gentleman Dancing Master_, as Wycherly presents him in one of his wittiest plays. His name is Hans Frandsen, a Danish family name--plain and unpretentious. But Hans has been ten weeks in Paris and has returned with his name translated. He mixes his Danish with French words and phrases in the most ridiculous way, trespassing against all the rules of French Grammar. He quite impresses his father and mother by his high-sounding name, his Parisian manners, and his _air de grand seigneur_, but his would-be father-in-law informs him very plainly that he is an old-fashioned Danish citizen who means to stand no nonsense, and who will never give his daughter to a fool. Through a practical joke played upon Jean de France by means of the clever maid servant, who pretends to have left Paris for Copenhagen with the sole purpose of seeing him and enjoying his company, his ridiculousness is so amply proved that he ultimately resolves to shake off the dust of Denmark from his feet and return to fair France. The moral of the play may be expressed in the old saying: All is not gold that glitters--and the substance of it is to serve as a warning against the bad custom of the time of sending young people abroad before they have developed the necessary amount of self-knowledge and commonsense to profit by their stay.

In _Jacob von Thyboc_ or _The Bragging Soldier_, we meet a highly-developed specimen of "the military fool." I think this comedy stands out as one of the most daring attacks in any literature on the military profession. It is a picture of early eighteenth-century militarism in its worst form, redeemed by no sympathetic feature, the Danish army being at that time practically flooded by German officers, bragging and swearing, mixing German and Danish in the most horrible way, scolding and flogging their soldiers, but at the emergency cowards, eager to save their skins.

As a matter of course, Holberg also introduces to us what we may call "the Latin fool." His name is _Erasmus Montanus_--an unsurpassable translation of the plain Danish name, Rasmus Berg. He exhibits his learning as a constant display of paradoxes and gives only one evidence of sound judgment and insight. Erasmus is capable of proving that his mother is a stone, because a stone cannot fly, nor can his mother; but as the poor peasant woman gets afraid of this astounding metamorphosis and already thinks her legs are turning cold, he graciously comforts her by the assurance that she can think and speak, which a stone cannot. "Consequently you are no stone, mother!" He can also prove by several arguments that children are entitled to thrash their old parents, one of the arguments being that you have to restore what has been bestowed upon you. It serves him right when the whole parish finally rises against him, not because of all these foolish assertions, but because of the only theory in which he is perfectly right, and which he proves by fair arguments, that of the earth being round. On this point he has to give in and admit that the earth is flat like a pancake--the only condition on which the father of his sweetheart will give his consent to the marriage.

In the _Lying-in Room_, a most curious portrait of contemporary customs and manners in connection with such a daily event as the birth of a child--we find ourselves in a female gallery, unsurpassed in any literature for variety, liveliness and realism. It might be worthy of a whole lecture on what would certainly prove a highly interesting subject: Holberg and the Fair Sex.

May I finally mention as perhaps the most deeply human of all his comedies, _Jeppe on the Hill_ or _The Transformed Peasant_. It is a representation of a practical joke played on a poor peasant who is found in a field near the high road, senselessly intoxicated. He is subsequently brought to the mansion, put into his lordship's bed and garbed with his lordship's finest nightshirt. He awakes and believes himself in Paradise, is treated as a Lord by the real owner of the mansion whose sham servility makes him behave himself insolently, and is once more intoxicated and replaced where he was found in his old dirty clothes. He is then accused of intrusion and violent behaviour at the mansion, sentenced formally to death, and subjected, when asleep, under the influence of a drug, to a sham execution, the rope being fastened under his arms instead of round his neck. He is finally lowered from the gallows, and brought back to life by the same authorities who have sentenced him to death, after which he is dismissed with a few shillings--and the bitter conviction that he has been treated as a plaything by the Lord of the mansion.

The low social level of the Danish peasantry in Holberg's days which contrasted so unfavourably with the social standing of the Norwegian peasants; the state of drunkenness to which they stooped in consequence of the physical and moral humiliations to which they were subjected, and which they wished to forget; the commonsense and keen power of reflection of which they nevertheless were possessed and to which Holberg has paid the famous tribute: "I never speak with peasants without learning something from them"--all this has combined to make Jeppe perhaps the most famous person in the Holberg gallery, conquering generation after generation by his inexhaustible flow of life.

It has justly been said by the famous Danish poet, Oehlenschlaeger (1779-1850) that if we might imagine that every document and record bearing upon Denmark at the commencement of the eighteenth century suddenly vanished from the earth with the sole exception of Holberg's comedies, it would yet be possible to reconstruct the Danish community of the time on the basis of them. This assertion is no exaggeration, but nevertheless it only contains a half truth.

In their outward appearance Holberg's comedies are Danish--customs and manners, names and scenery being contemporary Danish portraits hailing from Copenhagen or from the province--but from within they are unmistakably Norwegian. In fact, the typical characters of the Holberg gallery are not only his compatriots; they are natives of Bergen like himself. The old-fashioned gentleman, Jeronimus, narrow-minded, but possessed of a solid stock of commonsense which will stand no nonsense from the younger generation; his wife Magdelone, who has some recollections of a merry youth and is not altogether proof against relapses into former extravagances; Henrik, the clever servant with the ever-inventive brain, the champion of the rights of youth; Pernille, the witty chamber-maid, alternately impertinent and obsequious, but always beaming with mirth, sure of a safe, however narrow, escape--every one of them, as well as a number of less important characters, are stamped by their own dear, queer town. You may even meet them in the streets of Bergen to-day. It was not therefore by chance that the national stage of Norway was founded at Bergen in the middle of the nineteenth century. The city in which Holberg was born and in which his persons moved about in life, quite naturally became the birthplace of the Norwegian scenic art, and it is the lasting honour of the actors and actresses of the _Bergen National Stage_--still the official name of the theatre of the city--to have contributed to build up a Holberg tradition, which has been further developed by actors and actresses from other parts of the country, chiefly at the Christiania Theatre and its artistic heir the National Theatre at Christiania.