Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 2).djvu/29

 attended a "Festival of Song" at Bergen, and there met Björnson, who had been living abroad since 1860. Probably under the stimulus of this meeting he set to work upon The Pretenders immediately on his return to Christiania, and wrote it with almost incredible rapidity. The manuscript went to the printers in September; the book was published in October 1863 (though dated 1864), and the play was produced at the Christiania Theatre, under the author's own supervision, on January 17, 1864. The production was notably successful; yet no one seems fully to have realised what it meant for Norwegian literature. Outside of Norway, at any rate, it awoke no echo. George Brandes declares that scarcely a score of copies of the play found their way to Denmark. Not until Ibsen had left Norway (April 1864) and had taken the Danish reading public by storm with Brand and ''Peer Gynt, did people go back upon The Pretenders'' and discover what an extraordinary achievement it was. In January 1871, it was produced at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, where Emil Poulsen found in Bishop Nicholas one of the great triumphs of his career. It was produced by the Meiningen Company and at the Munich Hoftheater in 1875, in Stockholm in 1879, at the Königliches Schauspielhaus, Berlin, and at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1891; and it has from time to time been acted at many other Scandinavian and German theatres. The character of Nicholas has fascinated many great actors: what a pity that it did not come in the way of Sir Henry Irving when he was at the height of his power! But of course no English actor-manager would dream of undertaking a character which dies in the middle of the third act.

Ibsen's treatment of history in this play may be proposed as a model to other historic dramatists.