E-text prepared by Douglas Levy
by
From The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume 1
Revised and Edited by William Archer
Translation by William Archer and Mary Morrison
Exactly a year after the production of Lady Inger of Ostrat—thatis to say on the "Foundation Day" of the Bergen Theatre, January 2,1866—The Feast at Solhoug was produced. The poet himself haswritten its history in full in the Preface to the second edition.The only comment that need be made upon his rejoinder to his criticshas been made, with perfect fairness as it seems to me, by GeorgeBrandes in the following passage:** "No one who is unacquainted withthe Scandinavian languages can fully understand the charm that thestyle and melody of the old ballads exercise upon the Scandinavianmind. The beautiful ballads and songs of Des Knaben Wunderhornhave perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far asI am aware, no German poet has has ever succeeded in inventing ametre suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained themediaeval ballad's sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanationof the powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz'sSvend Dyring's House is to be found in the fact that in it, forthe first time, the problem was solved of how to fashion a metreakin to that of the heroic ballads, a metre possessing as greatmobility as the verse of the Niebelungenlied, along with adramatic value not inferior to that of the pentameter. HenrikIbsen, it is true, has justly pointed out that, as regards themutual relations of the principal characters, Svend Dyring'sHouse owes more to Kleist's Kathchen von Heubronn than TheFeast at Solhoug owes to Svend Dyring's House. But the factremains that the versified parts of the dialogue of both The Feastat Solhoug and Olaf Liliekrans are written in that imitationof the tone and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz wasthe happily-inspired originator. There seems to me to be nodepreciation whatever of Ibsen in the assertion of Hertz's rightto rank as his model. Even the greatest must have learnt fromsome one."
But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparentin the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows noless clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators whichwe found so unmistakably at work in Lady Inger. Despite itslyrical dialogue, The Feast at Solhoug has that crispiness ofdramatic action which marks the French plays of the period. It mayindeed be called Scribe's Bataille de Dames writ tragic. Here,as in the Bataille de Dames (one of the earliest plays producedunder Ibsen's supervision), we have the rivalry of an older and ayounger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on an unjustaccusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power. Onemight even, though this would be forcing the point, find an analogyin the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong anddetermined character) has in Scribe's comedy a cowardly suitor,while in Ibsen's tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband.In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yetit seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscenceof the Bataille de Dames may have contributed to the shaping ofThe Feast at Solhoug in Ibsen's mind. But more significant thanany resemblance of theme is the similarity of Ibsen's whole methodto that of the French school—the way, for instance, in whichmisunders