The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume I

LOVE'S COMEDY

Translation by C. H. Hereford







INTRODUCTION*


_Koerlighedens Komedie_ was published at Christiania in 1862. The
polite world--so far as such a thing existed at the time in the
Northern capital--received it with an outburst of indignation
now entirely easy to understand. It has indeed faults enough.
The character-drawing is often crude, the action, though full of
effective by-play, extremely slight, and the sensational climax
has little relation to human nature as exhibited in Norway, or
out of it, at that or any other time. But the sting lay in the
unflattering veracity of the piece as a whole; in the merciless
portrayal of the trivialities of persons, or classes, high in their
own esteem; in the unexampled effrontery of bringing a clergyman
upon the stage. All these have long since passed in Scandinavia,
into the category of the things which people take with their Ibsen
as a matter of course, and the play is welcomed with delight by
every Scandinavian audience. But in 1862 the matter was serious,