legend, or of what Shakespeare did with the indications offered for
'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' by Holinshed's chronicle-history. And the
two greatest names in modern literature are suggested not only by this
general fact of creative power, but also more specifically by certain
characters in the trilogy. Audhild, the Icelandic maiden beloved of
Sigurd, has more than once been compared with the gracious and pathetic
figure of Gretchen; and Earl Harald is one of the most successful
attempts since Shakespeare to incarnate once again the Hamlet type of
character, with its gentleness, its intellectuality, its tragic irony,
and the defect of will which forces it to sink beneath the too heavy
burden set upon its shoulders by fate. 'Sigurd Jorsalfar,' the last of
the saga-plays, was planned as the second part of a dramatic sequence,
of which the first was never written. Another work in this manner,
having for its protagonist the great national hero, Olaf Trygvason, was
also planned and even begun; but the author's energy flagged, and he
felt himself irresistibly impelled to devote himself to more modern
themes dealt with in a more modern way. But before leaving this phase of
Björnson's work, mention must be made of 'Maria Stuart i Skotland'
(1864), chronologically interjected among the saga-plays, and dealing
with the more definite history of the hapless Queen of Scots in much of
the saga-spirit. Björnson felt that the Scots had inherited no little of
the Norse blood and temper, and believed that the psychology of his
saga-heroes was adequate to account for the group of men whose fortunes
were bound up with those of Mary Stuart in Scotland. He finds his key to
the problem of her career in the fact that she was by nature incapable
of yielding herself up wholly to a man or a cause, yet was surrounded by
men who demanded of her just such whole-souled allegiance. Bothwell and
Knox were pre-eminently men of this stamp; as were also, in some degree,
Darnley and Rizzio. The theory may seem fanciful, but there is no doubt
that Björnson's treatment of this fascinating subject is one of the