When Holberg returned home, he found no vacancy in the faculty.
While waiting in penury for the death of some professor, he wrote
one of his most successful works of scholarship, an Introduction to
International Law. At last, in December, 1717, he inherited, as it
were, the chair of metaphysics in the university, being thus forced
to begin his academic career by teaching a subject that he held in
contempt. Fortunately this situation was not permanent. In 1719, he
became professor of Latin; in the following year, a member of the
university council; later in life, professor of history, the subject
he liked best; and finally he was elected treasurer of the
corporation. Holberg was thus associated all his life with academic
pursuits. The greater part of his intellectual work was devoted to
regular university duties and to the composition of scholarly
treatises and moral essays, while the writing of the comedies that
won him permanent fame formed but a short interlude in his busy
life. He became a dramatist almost by chance.

In 1721, some influential citizens of Copenhagen decided that the
time was ripe for establishing native drama in Denmark. A company
was formed under the direction of a cashiered French actor,
Montaigu, who obtained royal permission to bring out plays in
Danish. Holberg, having become well known by his mock-heroic poem
Peder Paars, was at once invited to furnish the company with
original comedies, and responded enthusiastically. For the next few
months he wrote with almost incredible swiftness, and by the time
the theatre was opened, on August 23, 1722, he had finished five of
his best plays, among which were Jeppe of the Hill (Jeppe paa
Bjerget) and The Political Tinker (Den politiske Kandestober).
During the six years in which the company eked out its precarious