Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/356

338 In this period the drama made an effort to abandon the student and court circles, to which it had hitherto been limited, and to appeal to the masses. The moralizing school-comedies disappeared about the middle of the seventeenth century, and were replaced by plays in the modern dramatic style. The French dramatists were studied and translated, and imitations were soon produced. At court allegorical ballets, a kind of operettas in rhymed verses, with dancing and music, were chiefly represented, while at the university the preference was accorded to the tragedies. About the year 1660, (1641-1724), who later became a famous physician, erected a theatre in the Upsala castle, where he caused dramas to be played by an amateur company of students. These dramas were partly translated and partly written by Hjärne himself or by other poets of the time. In 1686, a similar company first appeared in Upsala, and then proceeded to Stockholm, where they gave public entertainments for several years. (died 1701), the most prominent member of this "Swedish theatre," as the company was called, wrote several plays, among which is found "Darii Sorgespel" (the tragedy of Darius), for which he borrowed the materials from Curtius. In 1690, these entertainments were interrupted, and it was long before Sweden obtained another national theatre. Meanwhile it had to put up with the performances of foreign theatrical companies.

The patriotic element, which had not thoroughly succeeded in asserting itself in the poetry, since the imitation of foreign models was continually on the increase, found the freest play in the historiography of this period, if we, upon the whole, have a right to use this word in reference to the phantastic vagaries which the so-called historians produced. The splendid successes of the Swedish arms had kindled the national pride, and while the writers dreamed of a grand future in store for the fatherland, so they also indulged in all kinds of musings concerning its antiquity. Not satisfied with cherishing the hope that Sweden was going to be the