The beautiful ballads and songs of _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_
have perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far as
I am aware, no German poet has has ever succeeded in inventing a
metre suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained the
mediaeval ballad's sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanation
of the powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz's
_Svend Dyring's House_ is to be found in the fact that in it, for
the first time, the problem was solved of how to fashion a metre
akin to that of the heroic ballads, a metre possessing as great
mobility as the verse of the _Niebelungenlied_, along with a
dramatic value not inferior to that of the pentameter. Henrik
Ibsen, it is true, has justly pointed out that, as regards the
mutual relations of the principal characters, _Svend Dyring's
House_ owes more to Kleist's _Kathchen von Heubronn_ than _The
Feast at Solhoug_ owes to _Svend Dyring's House_. But the fact
remains that the versified parts of the dialogue of both _The Feast
at Solhoug_ and _Olaf Liliekrans_ are written in that imitation
of the tone and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz was
the happily-inspired originator. There seems to me to be no
depreciation whatever of Ibsen in the assertion of Hertz's right
to rank as his model. Even the greatest must have learnt from
some one."
But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent
in the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no
less clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators which
we found so unmistakably at work in _Lady Inger_.
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