Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/236

218 some time been compelled to put up with translations of such pieces as Voltaire's "Zaire," "Merope," etc., the Norwegian,, came forward in 1771 with his opera, "Thronfölgen i Sidon," written as text to Italian music in the high-flown style of that period. The opera was produced in the Royal Theatre, and was received with an applause so great that the author was forthwith appointed director of the theatre. Shortly afterward the young and talented critic,, wrote in his dramatic journal a very bitter review of this opera, and when Bredal replied with a farce in one act called "den dramatishe Journal," the theatre was literally turned into a fighting arena between the friends of the director and those of the critic, which conflict was the occasion of Ewald's satirical drama, "De brutale Klappere " (the brutal applauders). The next year the Norwegian, an able writer and gifted poet, wrote in the conventional French style a tragedy, "Zarine," which was produced at the Royal Theatre, and was received with boundless applause.

Now appeared Wessel's great parody, the tragedy called "Kjærlighed uden Strömper" (Love without stockings), written throughout in the style of the pseudo classical tragedies, in Alexandrines, with here and there an air inserted. From beginning to end there was a scrupulous and most ridiculous regard for the prescribed "unities." Wessel availed himself of the conventional, stereotyped apparatus of the above mentioned dramas, that is to say of the hero and heroine, the rival of the former and the betrothed. The action likewise consists chiefly in the conflict between virtue and love; in short, the whole play is a faithful copy of his models, and a parody has seldom been more skilfully planned or executed with more precision. The contents of the play are briefly the following: Grete, the female lover, has in a dream received a terrible warning that she "will never be married unless the wedding takes place that very day." But her bridegroom, the tailor-apprentice Johan von Ehrenpreis,