good deal towards the temporary waning of his popularity at this
time. Leonarda is (like A Gauntlet) a good example of the root
difference between Bjornson's and Ibsen's treatment of problems
in their dramas. Ibsen contented himself with diagnosing social
maladies; Bjornson's more genial nature hints also at the remedy,
or at least at a palliative. Ibsen is a stern judge; Bjornson is,
beyond that, a prophet of better things. Whereas Ibsen is first
and foremost a dramatist, Bjornson is rather by instinct the
novelist who casts his ideas in dramatic form, and is concerned
to "round up" the whole. As Brandes says, in the course of his
sympathetic criticism of the two writers, "Ibsen is in love with
the idea, and its psychological and logical consequences. ...
Corresponding to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have
in Bjornson the love of humankind." Bjornson, moreover, was a
long way behind Ibsen in constructive skill. As regards the
technical execution of Leonarda, its only obvious weakness is a
slight want of vividness in the presentation of the thesis. The
hiatuses between the acts leave perhaps too much to the
imagination, and the play needs more than a cursory reading for
us to grasp the full import of the actions and motives of its
personages. Leonarda has not been previously translated into
English; though Swedish, French, German and Finnish versions of it exist.

A Gauntlet (finished in 1883) shows a great advance in dramatic
technique. The whole is closely knit and coherent, and the
problems involved are treated with an exhaustiveness that is
equally fair to both sides. As has been already said, the plays
that had preceded it from Bjornson's pen aroused such active
controversy that he found it at first impossible to get A
Gauntlet produced in his own country. Its first performance was