In consistency of style, and in architectural symmetry of construction, the play marks a great advance upon The League of Youth. From the end of the first act to the middle of the last, it is a model of skilful plot-development. The exposition, which occupies so much of the first act, is carried out by means of a somewhat cumbrous mechanism. No doubt the “Kaffee-Klatsch” is in great measure justified as a picture of the tattling society of the little town. It does not altogether ignore the principle of economy. But it is curious to note the rapid shrinkage in the poet’s expositions. Here we have the necessary information conveyed by a whole party of subsidiary characters. In the next play, A Doll’s House,—we have still a set exposition, but two characters suffice for it, and one the heroine. In the next play again—that is to say, in Ghosts—the poet has arrived at his own peculiar formula, and the exposition is indistinguishably merged in the action. Still greater is the contrast between the conclusion of Pillars of Society and that of A Doll’s House. It would be too much to call Bernick’s conversion and promise to turn over a new leaf as conventional as the Chamberlain’s right-about-face in The League of Youth. Bernick has passed through a terrible period of mental agony which may well have brought home to him a conviction of sin. Still, the way in which everything suddenly comes right, Olaf is recovered, the Indian Girl is stopped, Aune is reconciled to the use of the new machines, and even the weather improves, so as to promise Johan and Dina a prosperous voyage to America—all this is a manifest concession to popular optimism. We are not to conceive, of course, that the poet deliberately compromised with an artistic ideal for the sake of popularity, but rather that he had not yet arrived at the ideal of logical and moral consistency which he was soon afterwards to attain. To use his own metaphor, the ghost of the excellent Eugène Scribe still walked in him. He still instinctively thought of a play as a storm in a tea-cup, which must naturally blow over in the allotted two hours and a half. Even in his next play—so gradual is the process of evolution—he still makes the external storm, so to speak, blow over at the appointed time. But, instead of the general reconciliation and serenity upon which the curtain falls in The League of Youth and Pillars of Society—instead of the “happy ending” which Helmer so confidently expects—he gives us that famous scene of Nora’s revolt and departure, in which he himself may be said to have made his exit from the school of Scribe, banging the door behind him.

The Norwegian title, Samfundets Stötter, means literally Society’s Pillars. In the text, the word “Samfund” has sometimes been translated “society,” sometimes “community.” The noun “stötte,” a pillar, has for its correlative the verb, “at stötte,” to support; so that where the English phrase, “to support society,” occurs, there is, in the original, a direct allusion to the title of the play. The leading merchants in Norwegian seaports often serve as consuls for one or other foreign Power—whence the title by which Bernick is addressed. Rörlund, in the original is called “Adjunkt”—that is to say, he is an assistant master in a school, subordinate to the headmaster or rector.

W. A.

THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH
(1869)

CHARACTERS.

The action takes place in the neighbourhood of the iron-works, not far from a market town in Southern Norway.

THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH.

ACT FIRST.

The Seventeenth of May.[[9]] A popular fête in the Chamberlain’s grounds. Music and dancing in the background. Coloured lights among the trees. In the middle, somewhat towards the back, a rostrum. To the right, the entrance to a large refreshment-tent; before it, a table with benches. In the foreground, on the left, another table, decorated with flowers and surrounded with lounging-chairs.