The plays in this volume will give a fair idea of Holberg's best
work. They are all domestic comedies of character, in which the
foibles of some one central figure are held up to ridicule,
particularly as they are revealed in his relations with a
well-defined family group. The scene in such comedies, usually the
home of a peasant or a member of the bourgeoisie, is pictured with
uncompromising realism. Holberg insisted that his audiences should
see everything that he saw. If a Danish peasant actually lay at
times in a drunken stupor on a dunghill, he saw no reason why Jeppe
should not appear on the stage in an equally disgusting condition.
If a peasant girl in life was not averse to simpering vulgarity, why
should Lisbed talk any more circumspectly to Erasmus Montanus?
Holberg, however, had none of the interest of the modern scientific
naturalist in analyses of motive and conduct. His sense of fact was,
therefore, picturesque rather than profound. Yet he never wasted his
accurate realism upon insignificant things. Vulgar facts invariably
led beyond themselves to situations of universal interest and
significance.

"Jeppe of the Hill" is a very old story The original version is
found in the "Arabian Nights," and it has been told over and over
again. Shakespeare embodies it in "The Taming of the Shrew," and
seven other versions occur in Elizabethan literature alone. This
hackneyed farce, amplified by material from Biedermann's "Utopia,"
Holberg made the vehicle of profound delineation of character Dr.
Georg Brandes says of Jeppe, "All that we should like to know of a
man when we become acquainted with him, and much more than we
usually do know of men with whom we become acquainted in real life
or in drama, we know of Jeppe. All our questions are answered."
[Footnote: "Om Ludvig Holbergs Jeppe paa Bjerget,"] We know not only