Holberg is often called the Danish Moliere. It is true that he
learned many lessons of technique from the great trench
dramatist, and borrowed freely and often from his work; but he
differs from Moliere both in the quality of his humor and in the
spirit that animates his critical view of life. He might as justly
be called the Danish Plautus, or the Danish Spectator. The truth is,
not only that Holberg possessed a profoundly original comic spirit,
but also that his work is clearly related to many dramatic and
literary traditions besides those of French comedy, notably to the
commedia dell'arte, and the essays of The Tatler and The Spectator.
Out of these various and diverse elements, nevertheless, he
contrived to construct dramas at once original and national.

In a large sense, Holberg's comedies arc closely related to the rest
of his work. His treatises, histories, essays, satires, and comedies
are all diverse expressions of one definite purpose. Holberg's early
life and natural cosmopolitan interests made him a citizen of
eighteenth-century Europe, as a whole, and he strove steadily to
bear the intellectual light of that urbane age to his native
country, then backward in culture. Holberg--professor, scholar, and
philosopher--seized with avidity the opportunity to write comedy,
not from a desire to display his own versatility, or from an
absorbing devotion to the drama as a form of art, but because he
believed that through his plays he could fulfil most completely what
he conceived to be his intellectual mission.

OSCAR JAMES CAMPBELL, JR.

May 20, 1914