------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
_Copyright Edition. Complete in 11 Volumes._
_Crown 8vo, price 4s. each._
=ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY=
=WILLIAM ARCHER=
Vol. I. Lady Inger, The Feast at Solhoug, Love’s
Comedy
Vol. II. The Vikings, The Pretenders
Vol. III. Brand
Vol. IV. Peer Gynt
Vol. V. Emperor and Galilean (2 parts)
Vol. VI. The League of Youth, Pillars of Society
Vol. VII. A Doll’s House, Ghosts
Vol. VIII. An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck
Vol. IX. Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea
Vol. X. Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder
Vol. XI. Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When
We Dead Awaken
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
COPYRIGHT EDITION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME II
THE VIKINGS AT
HELGELAND
THE PRETENDERS
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
[Illustration: title page]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1910
_Collected Edition, First printed_ 1906
Second Impression 1910
_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO “THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND” vii
INTRODUCTION TO “THE PRETENDERS” xx
“THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND” 1
_Translated by_ WILLIAM ARCHER
“THE PRETENDERS” 117
_Translated by_ WILLIAM ARCHER
THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND.
INTRODUCTION.
Ibsen himself has told us, in his preface to the second edition of
_The Feast at Solhoug_, how the reading of the Icelandic
family-sagas suggested to him, in germ, the theme of _The Vikings at
Helgeland_. What he first saw, he says, was the contrasted figures
of the two women who ultimately became Hiördis and Dagny, together
with a great banquet-scene at which an interchange of taunts and
gibes should lead to tragic consequences. So far as one can gather
from this statement, the particular theme which he ultimately
borrowed from the _Volsung-Saga_ had not yet entered his mind. On
the other hand, the conception of the two women’s characters was
certainly not new to him, seeing that a similar contrast presents
itself in his very earliest work, _Catilina_, between the
aptly-named Furia and the gentle Aurelia; while even in _Lady Inger
of Ostråt_ it reappears, somewhat disguised, in the contrast between
Inger Gyldenlöve and her daughter Eline. While the scheme of _The
Vikings_ was still entirely vague, however, fresh influences, both
of a personal and of a literary nature, intervened, and, transposing
the theme from the purely dramatic into the lyrical key, he produced
_The Feast at Solhoug_. The foster-sisters, Hiördis and Dagny became
the sisters Margit and Signe, and the banquet, instead of being the
culminating-point of the dramatic action, became its mere
background.
The fact probably is that in 1855 the poet found himself still
unripe for the intense effort of dramatic concentration involved in
such a work as _The Vikings_. Probably, too, he knew that neither
his actors nor his public at the Bergen Theatre were prepared to go
back to the primitive austerity of the heroic age, as it was
beginning to body itself forth in his mind. The good Bergensers were
accustomed either to French intrigue (such as he had given them in
_Lady Inger_), or to Danish lyrical romanticism; and he perhaps
foresaw that the ruling taste of Bergen would be as hard to contend
against as, in the sequel, the ruling taste of Copenhagen actually
proved to be. At all events, from whatever mingling of motives, he
put the heroic theme aside for two years, while he kept to the key
of lyrical romanticism not only in the _Feast at Solhoug_, written
in the summer of 1855, but also in the very feeble _Olaf
Liliekrans_, conceived much earlier, but written in 1856. Not until
he had left Bergen behind him and returned to Christiania in the
summer of 1857, did the poet take up again, and rapidly work out,
the theme of _The Vikings_. It is almost inconceivable that only a
year should have intervened between it and _Olaf Liliekrans_.
Paul Botten-Hansen, perhaps Ibsen’s closest friend of those days,
has stated that _The Vikings_ was begun in verse. If so, the metre
chosen was probably the twelve-syllable measure of Oehlenschläger’s
_Balder’s Death_, supposed to represent the iambic trimeter of the
Greek dramatists. In an essay _On the Heroic Ballad_, written in
Bergen in the early months of 1857, Ibsen had condemned, as a medium
for the treatment of Scandinavian themes, the iambic deca-syllable
(our blank verse) in which Oehlenschläger had written most of his
plays, and which Ibsen himself had adopted in his early imitation of
Oehlenschläger, _The Hero’s Grave_. Blank verse Ibsen regarded as
“entirely foreign” to Norwegian-Danish prosody, and, moreover, a
product of Christian influences; whereas pagan antiquity, if treated
in verse at all, ought to be treated in the pagan measure of the
Greeks. At the same time we find him expressing a doubt whether
Oehlenschläger’s _Hakon Jarl_ might not have been just as poetic in
prose as in verse—a doubt which clearly shows in what direction his
thoughts were turning. It must be regarded as a great mercy that he
abandoned the iambic trimeter, which, in Oehlenschläger’s hands, was
nothing but an unrhymed Alexandrine with the cæsura displaced.
This same essay _On the Heroic Ballad_ throws a curious light on the
difficulties which occasioned the long delay between the conception
and the execution of _The Vikings_. He lays it down that “the heroic
ballad is much better fitted than the saga for dramatic treatment.
The saga is a great, cold, rounded and self-contained epos,
essentially objective, and exclusive of all lyricism.... If, now,
the poet is to extract a dramatic work from this epic material, he
must necessarily bring into it a foreign, a lyrical, element; for
the drama is well known to be a higher blending of the lyric and the
epos.” This “well-known” dogma he probably accepted from the German
æstheticians with whom, about this time, he seems to have busied
himself. A little further on, he adds that the accommodating prosody
of the ballads gives room for “many freedoms which are of great
importance to dramatic dialogue,” and consequently prophesies a
great future for the drama drawn from this source. It was a luckless
prophecy. He himself, though apparently he little guessed it, had
done his last work in lyrical romance; and though it has survived,
sporadically, in Danish and even in German literature, it can count
but few masterpieces during the past half-century. Perhaps, however,
Hauptmann’s _Sunken Bell_ might be taken as justifying Ibsen’s
forecast.[1]
It must have been very soon after this essay was published (May
1857) that Ibsen discovered how to impose dramatic form upon the
epic material of the sagas, without dragging in any foreign lyrical
element. He suddenly saw his way, it would seem, to reproducing in
dialogue the terse, unvarnished prose of the sagas themselves,
eloquent in reticence rather than in rhetorical or lyrical
abundance.
Had he, or had he not, in the meantime read Björnson’s one-act play,
_Between the Battles_? It was not produced until October 27, 1857,
by which time _The Vikings_ must have been almost, if not quite,
finished. But Ibsen may have seen it in manuscript several months
earlier, and it may have put him on the track of the form in which
to cast his saga-material. The style of _The Vikings_ is
incomparably firmer, purer, more homogeneous and clear-cut than that
of _Between the Battles_; but Björnson’s mediæval comedietta (it is
really little more) may quite well have given Ibsen a valuable
impulse towards the adaptation of the saga-style to drama. The
point, however, is of little moment. It is much more important to
note that while Ibsen was writing _The Vikings_ Björnson was writing
his peasant-idyll _Synnöve Solbakken_; so that these two
corner-stones of modern Norwegian literature were laid, to all
intents and purposes, simultaneously.
In an autobiographic letter to Peter Hansen,[2] written in 1870,
Ibsen mentions this play very briefly: “_The Vikings at Helgeland_ I
wrote whilst I was engaged to be married. For Hiördis I had the same
model as I took afterwards for Svanhild in _Love’s Comedy_.” More
noteworthy is his preface to a German translation of the play,
published in 1876. It runs as follows:
“In issuing a German translation of one of my earlier dramatic
works, it may not be superfluous to remark that I have taken the
material of this play, not from the _Nibelungenlied_, but in
part—and in part only—from a kindred Scandinavian source, the
_Volsung-Saga_. More essentially, however, my poem may be said to be
founded upon the various Icelandic family-sagas, in which it often
seems that the titanic conditions and occurrences of the
_Nibelungenlied_ and the _Volsung-Saga_ have simply been reduced to
human dimensions. Hence I think we may conclude that the situations
and events depicted in these two documents were typically
characteristic of our common Germanic life in the earliest
historical times. If this view be justified, it disposes of the
reproach that in the present drama our national mythic world is
brought down to a lower plane than that to which it belongs. The
idealised, and in some degree impersonal, myth-figures are
exceedingly ill-adapted for representation on the stage of to-day;
and, however this may be, it was not my aim to present our mythic
world, but simply our life in primitive times.”
The reasoning of this passage does not seem very cogent; but it
expresses clearly enough the design which the poet proposed to
himself. Before discussing the merits of the play, however, I may as
well complete the outline of its external history.
Part of that external history is written by Ibsen himself, in
letters to the Christiania Press of the day. In the autumn of 1857,
he presented the play to the Christiania Theatre, then occupied by a
Danish company, under Danish management. After a long delay, he
ascertained that it had been accepted and would be produced in March
1858. He then proposed to consult with the manager as to the casting
of the piece, but found that that functionary had no clear
conception of either the plot or the characters, and therefore left
him a couple of months in which to study it. At the end of that time
the poet again reminded the potentate of his existence, and learned
that “since the economic status and prospects of the theatre did not
permit of its paying fees for original works,” the proposed
production could not take place. Ibsen hints that, had the choice
been offered him, he would have consented to the performance of the
piece without fee or reward. As the choice was not offered him, he
regarded the whole episode as a move in the anti-national policy of
the Danish management; and the controversy which arose out of the
incident doubtless contributed to the nationalisation of the
Christiania Theatre—the supersession of Danish by Norwegian
managers, actors and authors—which took place during the succeeding
decade.
In the meantime, almost simultaneously with the rejection of the
play by the Christiania Theatre, it was rejected by the Royal
Theatre in Copenhagen. The director, J. L. Heiberg, was then
regarded as an autocrat in the æsthetic world; and his report on
_The Vikings_ is now a curiosity of literature. He declared that
nothing was so “monotonous, tiresome and devoid of all poetry” as
the Icelandic family-sagas; he could not endure their “wildness and
rawness” on the stage; the saga style, as reproduced by Ibsen,
seemed to him “mannered and affected”; and he concluded his judgment
in these terms: “A Norwegian theatre will scarcely take its rise
from such experiments, and the Danish theatre has fortunately no
need for them.”
The play was published in April 1858 as a supplement to a
Christiania illustrated paper, the author receiving an “honorarium”
of something less than £7. On November 24, 1858, it was produced at
the little “Norwegian Theatre” in Christiania, of which the poet was
then director. At the Bergen Theatre it was produced in 1859, at the
Christiania Theatre (by that time pretty well Norwegianised) in
1861. It did not make its way to Copenhagen and Stockholm until
1875. In 1876 it was acted at the Court Theatres of Munich and
Dresden, and at the Vienna Burgtheater. Thenceforward it was pretty
frequently seen on the German stage; but it does not seem to have
reached Berlin (Deutsches Theater) until 1890. In 1892 it was
produced in Moscow. The only production in the English language of
which any account has reached me took place in 1903 at the Imperial
Theatre, London, when Miss Ellen Terry appeared as Hiördis and Mr.
Oscar Asche as Sigurd. The scenery and dresses were designed by Miss
Terry’s son, Mr. Gordon Craig.
It would need not merely an essay, but a volume, to discuss the
relation of _The Vikings_ to its mythic material, and to other
modern treatments of that material—Friedrich Hebbel’s _Die
Nibelungen_, Richard Wagner’s _Ring der Nibelungen_, &c. The poet’s
actual indebtedness to the _Volsung-Saga_ is well summarised by
Henrik Jæger in his “Life of Ibsen”: “Like Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane,” he
says, “Sigurd Viking has achieved the deed which Hiördis (Brynhild)
demands of the man who shall wed her; and, again like his heroic
namesake, he has renounced her in favour of his foster-brother,
Gunnar, himself taking another to wife. This other woman reveals the
secret in the course of an altercation with Hiördis (Brynhild), who,
in consequence of this discovery, brings about Sigurd’s death and
her own. The reader will observe that we must keep to very general
terms if they are to fit both the saga and the drama. Are there any
further coincidences? Yes, one. After Gudrun has betrayed the
secret, there comes a scene in which she seeks to appease Brynhild,
and begs her to think no more of it; then follows a scene in which
Sigurd explains to Brynhild how it all happened; and finally a scene
in which Brynhild goads Gunnar to kill Sigurd. All these scenes have
their parallels in the third act of _The Vikings_; but their order
is different, and none of their wording has been adopted.” From the
family-sagas, again, not only the stature of the characters, so to
speak, but several details of incident and dialogue are borrowed.
The boasting-match at Gunnar’s feast, which, as we have seen, was
one of the first elements of the story to present itself to Ibsen’s
mind, has many analogies in Icelandic lore. Örnulf’s questions as to
how Thorolf fell are borrowed from _Egils Saga_, and so is the idea
of his “drapa,” or funeral chant over his dead sons. Sigurd and
Hiördis are, perhaps, almost as closely related to Kiartan and
Gudrun in the _Laxdæla Saga_ as to Sigurd Fafnir’s bane and
Brynhild. Indeed, Ibsen seems to have reckoned too confidently on
the unfamiliarity of his public with the stores of material upon
which he drew. Not, of course, that there could be any question of
plagiarism. The sagas were as legitimately at Ibsen’s service as
were Plutarch and Holinshed at Shakespeare’s. But having been
himself, as he tells us, almost ignorant of the existence of these
sagas until he came across N. M. Petersen’s translation of them he
forgot that people who had long known and loved them might resent
the removal of this trait and that from its original setting, and
might hold it to be, in its new context, degraded and
sentimentalised. “It may be,” writes H. H. Boyesen, in his generally
depreciatory remarks on the play, “that my fondness for these sagas
themselves prevents me from relishing the modification and
remoulding to which Ibsen has subjected them.” Dr. Brandes, too,
points to a particular instance in which the sense of degradation
could not but be felt. The day-dream as to the hair-woven bowstring
which Hiördis relates to Sigurd in the third act (p. 84) is in
itself effective enough; but any one who knows the splendid passage
in _Nials Saga_, on which it is founded, cannot but feel that the
actual (or at any rate legendary) event is impoverished by being
dragged in under the guise of a mere morbid fantasy.
On the whole, I think Ibsen can scarcely escape the charge of having
sentimentalised the sagas in the same way, though not in the same
degree, in which Tennyson has sentimentalised the Arthurian legends.
Indeed, Sigurd the Strong is not without points of resemblance to
the Blameless King of the _Idylls_. But, for my part, I cannot
regard this as a very serious charge. _The Vikings_ is the work of a
man still young (29), who had, moreover, developed very slowly. It
is still steeped in romanticism, though not in the almost boyish
lyricism of its predecessors. The poet is not yet intellectually
mature—very far from it. But here, for the first time, we are
unmistakably face to face with a great imagination and a
specifically dramatic endowment of the first order. The germs of
promise discernible in _Lady Inger_ have ripened into rare technical
mastery.
Ibsen was doubtless right in feeling that the superhuman figures of
the mythical sagas were impossible on the non-musical stage, just as
Wagner was right in feeling that the world of myth could be embodied
only in an atmosphere of music. The reduction, then, of the Volsungs
and Niblungs to the stature of the men of the family-sagas was not
only judicious, but necessary. But was it judicious to go to the
myth-sagas for the initial idea of a play which had to be developed
in terms of the family-sagas? Scarcely, I think. The weak points in
the structure of the story are precisely those at which the poet has
had to replace supernatural by natural machinery. To slay a dragon
and to break through a wall of fire, even with magical aid, are
exploits which we can accept, on the mythic plane, as truly
stupendous. But it is impossible to be really impressed by the
slaying of Hiördis’s bear, or to share in the breathless admiration
with which that achievement is always mentioned. If the bear is to
be regarded as a fabulous monster, it might just as well be a dragon
at once; if it is to be accepted as a real quadruped, the killing of
it is no such mighty matter. We feel it, in fact, to be a mere
substitute, a more or less ludicrous makeshift. And in the same way,
Sigurd’s renunciation of Hiördis becomes very difficult to accept
when all supernatural agency—magic potion, or other sleight of
wizardry—is eliminated. We feel that he behaves like a nincompoop in
despairing of winning her for himself, merely because she does not
show an obviously “coming on” disposition, and like an immoral
sentimentalist in handing her over to Gunnar. This, to be sure, is
the poet’s own criticism of his action. It is the lie which Sigurd
and Gunnar conspire to tell, or rather to enact, that lies at the
root of the whole tragedy. We have here Ibsen’s first treatment of
the theme with which he is afterwards so much concerned—the
necessity of truth as the basis of every human relation. Gunnar’s
acquiescence in Sigurd’s heroic mendacity is as clearly condemned
and punished as, in _Pillars of Society_, Bernick’s acquiescence in
Johan’s almost equally heroic self-sacrifice. Both plays convey a
warning against excesses of altruism, and show that we have no right
to offer sacrifices which the person benefiting by them has no right
to accept. But to indicate a correct moral judgment of Sigurd’s
action is not to make it psychologically plausible. We feel, I
repeat, that the poet is trying in vain to rationalise a series of
actions which are comprehensible only on the supernatural plane.
This unreality of plot involved a similar unreality, or at any rate
extreme simplicity, of characterisation. All the personages are
drawn in large, obvious traits, which never undergo the smallest
modification. Sigurd is throughout the magnanimous hero, Dagny the
submissive, amiable wife, Hiördis the valkyrie-virago, Gunnar the
well-meaning weakling, not cowardly but inefficient. By far the most
human and most individual figure is old Örnulf, in whom the spirit
of the family-sagas is magnificently incarnated. We feel throughout
the inexperience of the author, his incuriousness of half-tones in
character, his tendency to view human relations and problems in a
purely sentimental light. To compare Hiördis with Hedda Gabler,
Sigurd with Halvard Solness, is to realise what an immeasurable
process of evolution the poet was destined to go through. Indeed, we
as yet seem far enough off even from Duke Skule and Bishop Nicholas.
But the man of inventive imagination and the man of the theatre are
already here in all their strength. Whatever motives and suggestions
Ibsen found in the sagas, the construction of the play is all his
own and is quite masterly. Exposition, development, the carrying on
of the interest from act to act—all this is perfect in its kind. The
play is “well-made” in the highest sense of the word. Already the
poet shows himself consummate in his art of gradually lifting veil
after veil from the past, and making each new discovery involve a
more or less striking change in the relations of the persons on the
stage. But it is not technically alone that the play is great. The
whole second act is a superbly designed and modulated piece of
drama; and, for pure nobility and pathos, the scene of Örnulf’s
return—entirely of the poet’s own invention—is surely one of the
greatest things in dramatic literature. It is marvellous that even
æsthetic prejudice should have prevented a man like J. L. Heiberg
from recognising that he was here in presence of a great poet. The
interest of the third act is mainly psychological, and the
psychology, as we have seen, is neither very profound nor very
convincing. But the fourth act, again, rises to a great height of
romantic impressiveness. Whatever hints may have come from the
sagas, the picture of Örnulf’s effort of self-mastery is a very
noble piece of work; and the plunge into supernaturalism at the
close, in the child’s vision of Asgårdsreien, with his mother
leading the rout, seems to me an entirely justified piece of
imaginative daring. I cannot even agree with Dr. Brandes in
condemning as “Geheimniskrämerei” Sigurd’s dying revelation of the
fact that he is a Christian. It seems to me to harmonise entirely
with the whole sentimental colouring of the play. The worst flaws I
find in this act are the terrible asides placed in the mouths of
Gunnar and Dagny after the discovery of Sigurd’s death.
The word _Vikings_ in the title is a very free rendering of
_Hærmændene_, which simply means “warriors.” As “warriors,” however,
is a colourless word, and as Örnulf, Sigurd, and Gunnar all are, or
have been, actually vikings, the substitution seemed justifiable. I
would beg, however hopelessly, that “viking” should be pronounced so
as to rhyme _not_ with “liking” but with “seeking,” or at worst with
“kicking.” Helgeland, it may be mentioned, is a province or district
in the north of Norway.
Örnulf’s “drapa” and his snatches of verse are rhymed as well as
alliterated in the original. I had the less hesitation in
suppressing the rhyme, as it was actually foreign to the practice of
the skalds.
THE PRETENDERS.
INTRODUCTION.
Six years elapsed between the composition of _The Vikings_ and that
of _The Pretenders_.[3] In the interval Ibsen wrote _Love’s Comedy_,
and brought all the world of Norwegian philistinism, and (as we
should now say) suburbanism, about his ears. Whereas hitherto his
countrymen had ignored, they now execrated him. In his
autobiographic letter of 1870, to Peter Hansen, he wrote: “The only
person who at that time approved of the book was my wife.... My
countrymen excommunicated me. All were against me. The fact that all
were against me—that there was no longer any one outside my own
family circle of whom I could say ‘He believes in me’—must, as you
can easily see, have aroused a mood which found its outlet in _The
Pretenders_.” It is to be noted that this was written during a
period of estrangement from Björnson. I do not know what was
Björnson’s attitude towards _Love’s Comedy_ in particular; but there
can be no doubt that, in general, he believed in and encouraged his
brother poet, and employed his own growing influence in efforts to
his advantage. In representing himself as standing quite alone,
Ibsen probably forgets, for the moment, his relation to his great
contemporary.
Yet the relation to Björnson lay at the root of the
character-contrast on which _The Pretenders_ is founded. Ibsen
always insisted that each of his plays gave poetic form to some
motive gathered from his own experience or observation; and this is
very clearly true of the present play. Ever since _Synnöve
Solbakken_ had appeared in 1857, Björnson, the expansive, eloquent,
lyrical Björnson, had been the darling child of fortune. He had gone
from success to success unwearied. He was recognised throughout
Scandinavia (in Denmark no less than in Norway) as the leader of the
rising generation in almost every branch of imaginative literature.
He was full, not only of inspiration and energy, but of serene
self-confidence. Meanwhile Ibsen, nearly five years older than he,
had been pursuing his slow and painful course of development in
comparative obscurity, in humiliating poverty, and amid almost
complete lack of appreciation. “Mr. Ibsen is a great cipher” (or
“nullity”) wrote a critic in 1858; another, in 1863, laid it down
that “Ibsen has a certain technical and artistic talent, but nothing
of what can be called ‘genius.’” The scoffs of the critics, however,
were not the sorest trials that he had to bear. What was hardest to
contend against was the doubt as to his own poetic calling and
election that constantly beset him. This doubt could not but be
generated by the very tardiness of his mental growth. We see him
again and again (in the case of _Olaf Liliekrans_, of _The Vikings_,
of _Love’s Comedy_, and of _The Pretenders_ itself), conceiving a
plan and then abandoning it for years—no doubt because he found
himself, in one respect or another, unripe for its execution. Every
such experience must have involved for him days and weeks of
fruitless effort and discouragement. To these moods of scepticism as
to his own powers he gave expression in a series of poems (for the
most part sonnets) published in 1859 under the title of _In the
Picture Gallery_. In it he represents the “black elf” of doubt,
whispering to him: “Your soul is like the dry bed of a mountain
stream, in which the singing waters of poetry have ceased to flow.
If a faint sound comes rustling down the empty channel, do not
imagine that it portends the return of the waters—it is only the dry
leaves eddying before the autumn wind, and pattering among the
barren stones.” In those years of struggle and stress, of depressing
criticism, and enervating self-criticism, he must often have
compared his own lot and his own character with Björnson’s, and
perhaps, too, wondered whether there were no means by which he could
appropriate to himself some of his younger and more facile
brother-poet’s kingly self-confidence. For this relation between two
talents he partly found and partly invented a historic parallel in
the relation between two rival pretenders to the Norwegian throne,
Håkon Håkonsson and Skule Bårdsson.
Dr. Brandes, who has admirably expounded the personal element in the
genesis of this play, compares Håkon-Björnson and Skule-Ibsen with
the Aladdin and Nureddin of Oehlenschläger’s beautiful dramatic
poem. Aladdin is the born genius, serene, light-hearted, a trifle
shallow, who grasps the magic lamp with an unswerving confidence in
his right to it. (“It is that which the Romans called _ingenium_”
says Bishop Nicholas, “truly I am not strong in Latin; but ’twas
called _ingenium_.”) Nureddin, on the other hand, is the far
profounder, more penetrating, but sceptical and self-torturing
spirit. When at last he seizes Aladdin’s lamp, as Skule annexes
Håkon’s king’s thought, his knees tremble, and it drops from his
grasp, just as the Genie is ready to obey him.
It is needless to cite the passages from the scenes between Skule
and Bishop Nicholas in the second act, Skule and Håkon in the third,
Skule and Jatgeir in the fourth, in which this element of personal
symbolism is present. The reader will easily recognise them, while
recognising at the same time that their dramatic appropriateness,
their relevance to the historic situation as the poet viewed it, is
never for a moment impaired. The underlying meaning is never allowed
to distort or denaturalise the surface aspect of the picture.[4] The
play may be read, understood, and fully appreciated, by a person for
whom this underlying meaning has no existence. One does not point it
out as an essential element in the work of art, or even as adding to
its merit, but simply as affording a particularly clear instance of
Ibsen’s method of interweaving “Wahrheit” with “Dichtung.”
So early as 1858, soon after the completion of _The Vikings_, Ibsen
had been struck by the dramatic material in _Håkon Håkonsson’s
Saga_, as related by Snorri Sturlasson’s nephew, Sturla Thordsson,
and had sketched a play on the subject. At that time, however, he
put the draft aside. It was only as the years went on, as he found
himself “excommunicated” after _Love’s Comedy_, and as the contrast
between Björnson’s fortune and his became ever more marked, that the
figures of Skule and Håkon took more and more hold upon his
imagination. In June 1863, he attended a “Festival of Song” at
Bergen, and there met Björnson, who had been living abroad since
1860. Probably under the stimulus of this meeting he set to work
upon _The Pretenders_ immediately on his return to Christiania, and
wrote it with almost incredible rapidity. The manuscript went to the
printers in September; the book was published in October 1863
(though dated 1864), and the play was produced at the Christiania
Theatre, under the author’s own supervision, on January 17, 1864.
The production was notably successful; yet no one seems fully to
have realised what it meant for Norwegian literature. Outside of
Norway, at any rate, it awoke no echo. George Brandes declares that
scarcely a score of copies of the play found their way to Denmark.
Not until Ibsen had left Norway (April 1864) and had taken the
Danish reading public by storm with _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_, did
people go back upon _The Pretenders_ and discover what an
extraordinary achievement it was. In January 1871, it was produced
at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, where Emil Poulsen found in Bishop
Nicholas one of the great triumphs of his career. It was produced by
the Meiningen Company and at the Munich Hoftheater in 1875, in
Stockholm in 1879, at the Königliches Schauspielhaus, Berlin, and at
the Vienna Burgtheater in 1891; and it has from time to time been
acted at many other Scandinavian and German theatres. The character
of Nicholas has fascinated many great actors: what a pity that it
did not come in the way of Sir Henry Irving when he was at the
height of his power! But of course no English actor-manager would
dream of undertaking a character which dies in the middle of the
third act.
Ibsen’s treatment of history in this play may be proposed as a model
to other historic dramatists. Although he has invented a great deal,
his inventions supplement rather than contradict the records.
Chronology, indeed, he treats with considerable freedom, and at the
same time with ingenious vagueness. The general impression one
receives in reading the play is that the action covers a space of
four or five years; as a matter of fact it covers twenty-two years,
between the folkmote in Bergen, 1218, and Skule’s death, 1240. All
the leading characters are historical; and although much is read
into them which history does not warrant, there is little that
history absolutely forbids us to conceive. The general features of
the struggle between the two factions—Håkon’s Birkebeiner, or
Birchlegs, and Skule’s Vargbælgs—are correctly enough reproduced. In
his treatment of this period, the Norwegian historian, J. E. Sars,
writing thirteen years after the appearance of _The Pretenders_,
uses terms which might almost have been suggested by Ibsen’s play.
“On the one side,” he says, “we find strength and certainty, on the
other lameness and lack of confidence. The old Birchlegs[5] go to
work openly and straightforwardly, like men who are immovably
convinced of the justice of their cause, and unwaveringly assured of
its ultimate victory. Skule’s adherents, on the other hand, are ever
seeking by intrigues and chicanery to place stumbling-blocks in the
way of their opponents’ enthusiasm.” Håkon represented Sverre’s
ideal of a democratic kingship, independent of the oligarchy of
bishops and barons. “He was,” says Sars, “reared in the firm
conviction of his right to the Throne; he grew up among the veterans
of his grandfather’s time, men imbued with Sverre’s principles, from
whom he accepted them as a ready-made system, the realisation of
which could only be a question of time. He stood from the first in a
clear and straightforward position to which his whole personality
corresponded.... He owed his chief strength to the repose and
equilibrium of mind which distinguished him, and had its root in his
unwavering sense of having right and the people’s will upon his
side.” His great “king’s-thought,” however, seems to be an invention
of the poet’s. Skule, on the other hand, represented the old
nobility in its struggle against the new monarchy. “He was the
centre of a hierarchic aristocratic party; but after its repeated
defeats this party must have been lacking alike in number and in
confidence.... It was clear from the first that his attempt to
reawaken the old wars of the succession in Norway was undertaken in
the spirit of the desperate gambler, who does not count the chances,
but throws at random, in the blind hope that luck may befriend
him.... Skule’s enterprise had thus no support in opinion or in any
prevailing interest, and one defeat was sufficient to crush him.”
In the character of Bishop Nicholas, too, Ibsen has widened and
deepened his historical material rather than poetised with a free
hand. “Bishop Nicholas,” says Sars, “represented rather the
aristocracy ... than the cloth to which he belonged. He had begun
his career as a worldly chieftain, and, as such, taken part in
Magnus Erlingsson’s struggles with Sverre; and although he must have
had some tincture of letters, since he could contrive to be elected
a bishop ... there is no lack of indications that his spiritual lore
was not of the deepest. During his long participation in the civil
broils, both under Sverre and later, we see in him a man to whose
character any sort of religious or ecclesiastical enthusiasm must
have been foreign, his leading motives being personal ambition and
vengefulness rather than any care for general interests—a cold and
calculating nature, shrewd but petty and without any impetus, of
whom Håkon Håkonsson, in delivering his funeral speech ... could
find nothing better to say than that he had not his equal in worldly
wisdom (_veraldar vit_).” I cannot find that the Bishop played any
such prominent part in the struggle between the King and the Earl as
Ibsen assigns to him, and the only foundation for the great
death-bed scene seems to be the following passage from _Håkon
Håkonsson’s Saga_, Cap. 138: “As Bishop Nicholas at that time lay
very sick, he sent a messenger to the King praying him to come to
him. The King had on this expedition seized certain letters, from
which he gathered that the Bishop had not been true to him. With
this he upbraided him, and the Bishop, confessing it, prayed the
King to forgive him. The King replied that he did so willingly, for
God’s sake; and as he could discern that the Bishop lay near to
death, he abode with him until God called him from the world.”
In the introduction to _The Vikings at Helgeland_ I have suggested
that in that play Ibsen had reached imaginative and technical
maturity, but was as yet intellectually immature. The six years that
elapsed between _The Vikings_ and _The Pretenders_ placed him at the
height of his intellectual power. We have only to compare Skule,
Håkon, and Bishop Nicholas with Gunnar, Sigurd, and Örnulf to feel
that we have passed from nobly-designed and more or less animated
waxworks to complex and profoundly-studied human beings. There is no
Hiördis in _The Pretenders_, and the female character-drawing is
still controlled by purely romantic ideals;[6] but how exquisitely
human is Margrete in comparison with the almost entirely
conventional Dagny! The criticism of life, too, which in _The
Vikings_ is purely sentimental, here becomes intense and searching.
The only point of superiority in _The Vikings_—if it be a point of
superiority—is purely technical. The action of the earlier play is
concentrated and rounded. It has all the “unity,” or “unities,” that
a rational criticism can possibly demand. In a word, it is, in form
as well as essence, an ideal tragedy. _The Pretenders_, on the other
hand, is a chronicle-play, far more close-knit than Shakespeare’s or
Schiller’s works in that kind, but, nevertheless, what Aristotle
would call “episodic” in its construction. The weaving of the plot,
however, is quite masterly, betokening an effort of invention and
adjustment incomparably greater than that which went to the making
of _The Vikings_. It was doubtless his training in the school of
French intrigue that enabled Ibsen to depict with such astonishing
vigour that master wire-puller, Bishop Nicholas. This form of
technical dexterity he was afterwards to outgrow and bring into
disrepute. But from _The Vikings_ to _Pillars of Society_ he
practised, whenever he was writing primarily for the stage, the
methods of the “well-made play”; and in everything but
concentration, which the very nature of the subject excluded, _The
Pretenders_ is thoroughly “well-made.”
With this play, though the Scandinavian criticism of 1864 seems to
have been far from suspecting the fact, Ibsen took his place among
the great dramatists of the world. In wealth of characterisation,
complexity and nobility of emotion, and depth of spiritual insight,
it stands high among the masterpieces of romantic drama. It would be
hard to name a more vigorous character-projection than that of
Bishop Nicholas, or any one dramatic invention more superbly
inspired than the old man’s death scene, with the triumphant
completion of his _perpetuum mobile_. But even if the Bishop were
entirely omitted, the play would not be _Hamlet_ without the Prince
of Denmark. The characters of Håkon and Skule, and the struggle
between them, would still make one of the greatest historic dramas
in literature.
It has not been generally noticed, I think, that Ibsen found in
Björnson’s _King Sverre_, published in 1861, a study of Bishop
Nicholas in his younger days. The play, as a whole, is a poor one,
and does not appear in the collected edition of Björnson’s works;
but there is distinct merit in the drawing of the Bishop’s
character. Furthermore, it ought to be remembered that _The
Pretenders_ was not the first work, or even the first great work, of
its class in Norwegian literature. In 1862, Björnson had published
his splendid trilogy of _Sigurd Slembe_, which, though more fluid
and uneven than _The Pretenders_, contains several passages of
almost Shakespearean power. It was certainly greater than anything
Ibsen had done up to that date. Ibsen reviewed it on its appearance,
in terms of unmixed praise, yet, as one cannot but feel, rather
over-cautiously.
If anything could excuse the coolness of Norwegian criticism towards
_The Pretenders_, it was the great and flagrant artistic blemish of
the Ghost Scene in the last act. This outburst of prophetico-topical
satire is a sheer excrescence on the play, indefensible, but, at the
same time, fortunately negligible. It is, however, of interest as a
symptom of Ibsen’s mood in the last months before he left Norway,
and also as one of the links in that chain which binds all his works
together. Just as Skule’s attempt to plagiarise Håkon’s
king’s-thought points backwards to Gunnar’s moral lapse in taking
advantage of the fraud on Hiördis, so the ironic rhymes of the
Bagler-Bishop’s ghost point forwards to the lyric indignation and
irony of _Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_.
W. A.
-----
Footnote 1:
Though he himself wrote no more plays in the key of _The Feast at
Solhoug_, the “accommodating prosody” of the ballads had doubtless
its influence on the metres of _Peer Gynt_.
Footnote 2:
_Correspondence_, Letter 74.
Footnote 3:
The original title _Kongsemnerne_ might be more literally
translated “The Scions of Royalty.” It is rendered by Brandes in
German “Königsmaterie,” or “the stuff from which kings are made.”
Footnote 4:
This remark does not apply, of course, to the satiric “parabasis”
uttered by the Bishop’s ghost in the fifth act. That is a totally
different matter.
Footnote 5:
The followers of Håkon’s grandfather, King Sverre. See Note, p.
125.
Footnote 6:
On page 277 will be found a reference to Brandes’s _Ibsen and
Björnson_; but I may as well give here the substance of the
passage. In the original form of the play, three speeches of
Ingeborg’s, in her scene with Skule, ran as follows: “It is man’s
right to forget,” “It is woman’s happiness to remember,” and “To
have to sacrifice all and be forgotten, that is woman’s saga.” It
was only on Brandes’s remonstrance that Ibsen substituted the
present form of these speeches, in which they became, not the
generalised expression of an ideal, but merely utterances of
Ingeborg’s individual character.
THE
VIKINGS AT HELGELAND
(1858)
CHARACTERS.
ÖRNULF OF THE FIORDS, _an Icelandic Chieftain._
SIGURD THE STRONG, _a Sea-King._
GUNNAR HEADMAN,[7] _a rich yeoman of Helgeland._
THOROLF, _Örnulf’s youngest son._
DAGNY, _Örnulf’s daughter._
HIÖRDIS, _his foster-daughter._
KÅRE THE PEASANT, _a Helgeland-man._
EGIL, _Gunnar’s son, four years old._
ÖRNULF’S SIX OLDER SONS.
ÖRNULF’S AND SIGURD’S MEN.
_Guests, house-carls, serving-maids, outlaws, etc._
_The action takes place in the time of Erik Blood-axe (about 933_
A.D.) _at, and in the neighbourhood of, Gunnar’s house, on the
island of Helgeland, in the north of Norway._
_Pronunciation of Names_: Helgeland=Helgheland; Örnulf=Örnoolf;
Sigurd=Sigoord; Gunnar=Goonnar; Thorolf=Toorolf; Hiördis=Yördeess;
Kåre=Koarë; Egil=Ayghil. The letter “ö” as in German.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
VIKINGS AT HELGELAND.
PLAY IN FOUR ACTS.
ACT FIRST.
_A rocky coast, running precipitously down to the sea at the back.
To the left, a boat-house; to the right, rocks and pinewoods.
The masts of two warships can be seen down in the cove. Far
out to the right, the sea, dotted with reefs and skerries, on
which the surf is running high; it is a stormy snow-grey
winter-day._
SIGURD _comes up from the ships; he is clad in a white tunic with a
silver belt, a blue cloak, cross-gartered hose, untanned
brogues, and a steel cap; at his side hangs a short sword._
ÖRNULF _comes in sight immediately afterwards, high up among
the rocks, clad in a dark lamb-skin tunic with a breastplate
and greaves, woollen stockings, and untanned brogues; over his
shoulders he has a cloak of brown frieze, with the hood drawn
over his steel cap, so that his face is partly hidden. He is
very tall and massively built, with a long white beard, but is
somewhat bowed by age; his weapons are a round shield, sword,
and spear._
SIGURD _enters first, looks around, sees the boat-shed, goes quickly
up to it, and tries to burst open the door._
ÖRNULF.
[_Appears among the rocks, starts on seeing_ SIGURD, _seems to
recognise him, descends and cries:_] Give place, Viking!
SIGURD.
[_Turns, lays his hand on his sword, and answers:_] ’Twere the first
time if I did!
ÖRNULF.
Thou shalt and must! I need the shelter for my stiff-frozen men.
SIGURD.
And I for a weary woman!
ÖRNULF.
My men are worth more than thy women!
SIGURD.
Then must outlaws be highly prized in Helgeland!
ÖRNULF.
[_Raising his spear._] Thou shalt pay dear for that word!
SIGURD.
[_Drawing his sword._] Now will it go ill with thee, old man!
[ÖRNULF _rushes upon him;_ SIGURD _defends himself._
DAGNY _and some of_ SIGURD’S _men come up from the strand;_ ÖRNULF’S
_six sons appear on the rocks to the right._
DAGNY.
[_Who is a little in front, clad in a red kirtle, blue cloak, and
fur hood, calls down to the ships:_] Up, all Sigurd’s men! My
husband is fighting with a stranger!
ÖRNULF’S SONS.
Help! Help for our father! [_They descend._
SIGURD.
[_To his men._] Hold! I can master him alone!
ÖRNULF.
[_To his sons._] Let me fight in peace! [_Rushes in upon_ SIGURD.] I
will see thy blood!
SIGURD.
First see thine own!
[_Wounds him in the arm so that his spear falls._
ÖRNULF.
A stout stroke, Viking!
Swift the sword thou swingest,
keen thy blows and biting;
Sigurd’s self, the Stalwart,
stood before thee shame-struck.
SIGURD.
[_Smiling._] Then were his shame his glory!
ÖRNULF’S SONS.
[_With a cry of wonder._] Sigurd himself! Sigurd the Strong!
ÖRNULF.
But sharper was thy stroke that night thou didst bear away Dagny, my
daughter.
[_Casts his hood back._
SIGURD AND HIS MEN.
Örnulf of the Fiords!
DAGNY.
[_Glad, yet uneasy._] My father and my brothers.
SIGURD.
Stand thou behind me.
ÖRNULF.
Nay, no need. [_Approaching_ SIGURD.] I no sooner saw thee than I
knew thee, and therefore I stirred the strife; I was fain to prove
the fame that tells of thee as the stoutest man of his hands in
Norway. Hereafter let peace be between us.
SIGURD.
Best if so it could be.
ÖRNULF.
Here is my hand. Thou art a warrior indeed; stouter strokes than
these has old Örnulf never given or taken.
SIGURD.
[_Seizes his outstretched hand._] Let them be the last strokes given
and taken between us two; and be thou thyself the judge in the
matter between us. Art willing?
ÖRNULF.
That am I, and straightway shall the quarrel be healed. [_To the
others._] Be the matter, then, known to all. Five winters ago came
Sigurd and Gunnar Headman as vikings to Iceland; they lay in harbour
close under my homestead. Then Gunnar, by force and craft, carried
away my foster-daughter, Hiördis; but thou, Sigurd, didst take
Dagny, my own child, and sailed with her over the sea. For that I
now doom thee to pay three hundred pieces of silver, and thereby
shall thy misdeed be atoned.
SIGURD.
Fair is thy judgment, Örnulf; the three hundred pieces will I pay,
and add thereto a silken cloak fringed with gold. ’Tis a gift from
King Æthelstan of England, and better has no Icelander yet borne.
DAGNY.
Well said, my brave husband; and my father, I thank thee. Now at
last is my mind at ease.
[_She presses her father’s and brothers’ hands, and talks
low to them._
ÖRNULF.
Then thus stands the troth between us; and from this day shall Dagny
be to the full as honourably regarded as though she had been
lawfully betrothed to thee, with the good will of her kin.
SIGURD.
And in me canst thou trust, as in one of thine own blood.
ARNULF.