and Ibsen meant it to be so.

For they were years of ferment--those six or seven which intervened
between his return to Christiania from Bergen in 1857, and his
departure for Italy in 1864. As director of the newly founded
"Norwegian Theatre," Ibsen was a prominent member of the little
knot of brilliant young writers who led the nationalist revolt
against Danish literary tradition, then still dominant in
well-to-do, and especially in official Christiania. Well-to-do
and official Christiania met the revolt with contempt. Under such
conditions, the specific literary battle of the Norwegian with
the Dane easily developed into the eternal warfare of youthful
idealism with "respectability" and convention. Ibsen had already
started work upon the greatest of his Norse Histories--_The
Pretenders_. But history was for him little more than material
for the illustration of modern problems; and he turned with zest
from the task of breathing his own spirit into the stubborn mould
of the thirteenth century, to hold up the satiric mirror to the
suburban drawing-rooms of Christiania, and to the varied phenomena
current there,--and in suburban drawing-rooms elsewhere,--under
the name of Love.

Yet _Love's Comedy_ is much more than a satire, and its exuberant
humour has a bitter core; the laughter that rings through it is
the harsh, implacable laughter of Carlyle. His criticism of
commonplace love-making is at first sight harmless and ordinary
enough. The ceremonial formalities of the continental _Verlobung_,
the shrill raptures of aunts and cousins over the engaged pair,
the satisfied smile of enterprising mater-familias as she reckons
up the tale of daughters or of nieces safely married off under her