The
normal line is one of four accents: but when this is said, it is
almost impossible to arrive at any further generalisation. There
is a certain lilting melody in many passages, and the whole play
has not unfairly been said to possess the charm of a northern
summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only
to the gleam of morning. But in the main (though much better than
its successor, _Olaf Liliekrans_) it is the weakest thing that
Ibsen admitted into the canon of his works. He wrote it in 1870
as "a study which I now disown"; and had he continued in that
frame of mind, the world would scarcely have quarrelled with his
judgment. At worst, then, my collaborator and I cannot be accused
of marring a masterpiece; but for which assurance we should probably
have shrunk from the attempt.
W. A.
*Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
**_Ibsen and Bjornson_. London, Heinmann, 1899, p.88
THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG (1856)
THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PREFACE
I wrote _The Feast at Solhoug_ in Bergen in the summer of 1855--that
is to say, about twenty-eight years ago.
The play was acted for the first time on January 2, 1856, also at
Bergen, as a gala performance on the anniversary of the foundation
of the Norwegian Stage.
As I was then stage-manager of the Bergen Theatre, it was I myself
who conducted the rehearsals of my play.
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