INTRODUCTION.
"Jeppe on the Hill" (Jeppe paa Bjerget) is probably the best known of Holberg's many comedies. It was first presented in the Danish Theatre in 1722, and has since then been played times without number and with continued appreciation. It is a plain picture of peasant life, with the ludicrous side turned out, of course, but so faithful in detail and comprehensive in character that it has become known as the best expression of medieval conditions in the Scandinavian language, the classic representation of the medieval peasant in northern Europe. The plot of the play is briefly thus:
Jeppe, the principal character, is a poor oppressed peasant, abused by his wife and trodden down by his superiors. We are introduced in the opening scene to his wife, Nille, a veritable Xanthippe transplanted to the eighteenth century. With her shrill voice and stout whip,—Master Erik, by name,—she drives him out at an unreasonably early hour to go an unreasonable long distance for an insignificant amount of soap. She is, in fact, a true counterpart of Dame Van Winkle, wielding authority over a poor, weak Rip. Without so much as a cup of coffee, he starts with his dozen pence with which he is to make his purchase. On the way he stops in at the rascally innkeeper's, Jakob Skomager's, who induces the vacillating Jeppe to part little by little with his money until the poor peasant finds himself "broke," and with nothing to show for his departed coin but a "glorious drunk." After a soliloquy in which he calls to mind his past life, especially his brief experience in the army, he is overcome by his intoxication and falls in a drunken stupor by the wayside. In this senseless condition he is found by his "liege lord and master," the nobleman, and his servants. They decide to play a joke on the fellow; they dress him in the baron's clothes, take him to the castle and put him in the baron's bed, and then wait near by to see the show.
When he awakes he is certainly the transformed—and perplexed—peasant. He is quite overcome by the splendor of his surroundings, thinks at one moment that he is in a dream, and next decides that he must be in paradise; he calls for his wife, receives no reply, and wonders whether he is really himself or someone else. He tries in vain to connect the past with the present. When the uniformed servants answer his cry for help the situation becomes comical indeed. When Jeppe is finally convinced by servants and doctors that he is the baron, he assumes his new role with a vengeance and begins by tyrannizing over the servants and calling them to account. He does not forget to satisfy his desire for good things to eat and drink and after some fast music and a dance with the overseer's wife, he is overcome once more, this time by the wines and excitement, and falls again into a stupor of intoxication. He is dressed in his old clothes and put back on the dungheap where he first was found. When he awakes he finds himself by the old familiar wayside in all his old toggery,—plain "Jeppe on the Hill" once more. He is now thoroughly convinced that he really was in paradise, and begins to take another nap in the hope of again coming into his former glory, but when his wife, Nille, steals up and administers a resounding whack on his back with old Master Erik, he is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he is in paradise no longer. The situation is further complicated for poor Jeppe and made the more ludicrous to the spectators when he is hauled before a magistrate for taking possession of the baron's house and tyrannizing over his servants. At the mock trial, which is one of the most humorous situations in the play, he stands ready to embrace the lawyer who defends him while he is wishing he could knock down or hang the lawyer who accuses him.
When he finds himself solemnly condemned to die by poison and hanging, he implores in vain for pardon, asks for some whiskey to keep up his courage, bids farewell to wife, family and dumb friends, and falls as before into a deep stupor. As he gradually regains consciousness, it is but to find himself hanging from the gallows,—by the arm pits, to be sure, but looking dead enough to cause his wife a few brief moments of remorse for her past treatment of her departed spouse. After he has been sentenced to life again by the same court that sentenced him to death before, the magistrate gives him four Rixdollars, a great sum for him, and he finds himself again the same old "Jeppe." When at last he is free, and the cause of his perplexities and bewildering metamorphoses has been revealed to him in startling fashion by the irrepressible Magnus, his chagrin is deep, indeed. The play closes after the old fashion by the reappearance of the perpetrators, the baron and his attendants, the former drawing the moral from the incident.
Such is the simple plot of this immortal comedy. Now a few words as to its significance. Jeppe, the hero and central figure of the play, is a type of the oppressed, circumscribed, and despirited serf of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, despised by his superiors and abused by his wife, drunken as an almost inevitable result of his condition and mercilessly driven from his own home. Drink is practically his only recourse and is to him the nearest and easiest approach to happiness. It is as the eminent Danish critic, Brandes, suggests, a sort of other life to Jeppe,—it is to him what music and poetry is to us. What may we gather from his reminiscences as he calls them up in his intoxication? His soldier days, his smattering of German, and his campaigns are particularly vivid, and although the latter were probably not especially glorious, they furnish him his proudest memories. Indeed the most honorable words he could put in the mouth of the sexton as he imagined him at his own funeral are those words so unspeakably comical, that "he lived like a soldier and died like a soldier."
What does this peasant know, and where did he get his knowledge? The source is not far to seek. His figures have the flavor of the stable and the Bible and he is far more certain of his use of the former than of the latter. He has also come by just enough of folklore to misapply it, as note his reference to Abner and Roland. Who are his most intimate friends? There is Mo'ns Christofferson who gives him excellent advice which he fails to follow, but dearest of all is his dappled horse, a trifle lazier, if such a thing is possible, than himself. But poor he has always been, and while baron he shows that he knows to a much greater degree than the baron himself the value of money; for though he has, so far as he knows, more money than he has ever seen in all his peasant days, he remains niggardly in his use of it even when he has all he wants.
What is this man's highest idea of enjoyment, what does he demand when his greatest wish can be fulfilled? Simply a good bed, fine clothes, plenty to eat, sweet wine in abundance, many servants, and a handmaid. If he has any greater ambition it would be to have more and better things to eat and drink, and more and finer things to wear. It is but natural that "he who works like a horse will enjoy himself like a dog." With such ideals it is easy to see how he could imagine that he had been suddenly transported into heaven. With the feeling that his lord's chief business is to pilfer his hard-earned money; that the sexton is a personage whose chief virtue is a powerful voice; and that lawyers and magistrates are black-robed blackguards who juggle with equal facility with justice and Latin phrases, we can see that Jeppe's idea of law and authority was not very exalted. His highest idea of justice was embodied in his toast, "God keep our friends, and may the devil take all our enemies!"
Though he is a peasant he knows life and human nature and has, too, a philosophy of life,—a philosophy which to him is his salvation. He does not look on life in any bitter or hopeless way, yet he has that distrust and suspicion so characteristic of the Danish peasant. He is always master of the situation, and is cautious and sly enough never to allow himself to be caught off his guard. He weeps in sheer gratitude when his lawyer defends him, and he offers him a chew of his tobacco, but when the lawyer answers that he did it from a sense of Christian charity he answers, sarcastically, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Lawyer, I had not thought you people were so honest." In the last act (Act V., Scene 2) we see another illustration of his native shrewdness. When he has been sentenced back to life we would naturally expect a profuse expression of gratitude from Jeppe on his delivery from death. But when the judge says to him, "Thank us, that we have been so gracious as to sentence you back to life," Jeppe gives the unexpected answer that "if you had not hanged me yourself, I should have been glad to thank you that you let me down again."
While a mere peasant he appears dull and common-place enough, but give him the opportunity which he gets from the second act and on, and he displays a surprising readiness in his efforts to solve the perplexing problems he has had placed before him. The question of existence or non-existence which he has to answer might well perplex a sage; but while Jeppe is not quite able to unravel the situation, he makes rare use of the powers of logic at his command. When at last he is asked to face death, he does so with resignation, for he has not had much to be thankful for in life. In the supposed hour of his death he turns, not to the Bible of which he is so blissfully ignorant, but to that never-failing comforter through life—the whiskey bottle. When he bids farewell, as he supposes, to this world, he includes the whole circle of his interest, and says, "Goodbye," and "Thanks for good company" to his family and his animal friends, including his dappled horse, his faithful dog, and even "Mo'ns," his black cat.
We have then in Jeppe a character furnishing on the one hand entertainment to the young and light of heart, and on the other an interesting study for the psychologist, the statesman, the socialist, the historian and the philanthropist.
Thus the author has depicted through the various burlesque and humorous situations of a comedy a concrete yet typical character, he has given us the pathetic history of a poor, oppressed peasant, a whole human life from the cradle to the grave.
—W. C. W.