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 how he has lived, but even how he will meet death. Jeppe possesses enough of the common stuff of human nature always to awaken comprehension and delight; yet he is more than an extraordinarily complete and convincing individual, and his story is more than an amusing farce. Widely prevalent social conditions of a past time are here expressed in human terms of lasting truth and vitality. In Jeppe the peasant of the eighteenth-century Sjaelland lives for all time.

The Political Tinker, while it contains no such deep study of personality as Jeppe of the Hill, is no less clearly a comedy of character and no less obviously a good human satire. In it the foibles of the central figure are displayed more definitely in their relation to the rest of his family. [Footnote: The play is probably founded upon the story of the political upholsterer which appears in an essay of The Tatler. For a general discussion of Holberg's relations to foreign literature, the reader is referred to The Comedies of Holberg, by O. J. Campbell, Jr. (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, vol. iii, Harvard University Press, 1914). This is the only full treatment of Holberg in English. Ed.] "The satire," says Holberg, in his introduction to the first published edition of the play, "is directed against those boasters among common people in free cities who sit in taverns and criticise the mayor and Council; they know everything and yet nothing.... I doubt if any one can show me a comedy more honorable and more moral.... The comedy, besides, is not less merry than moral, for it has kept spectators laughing from beginning to end, and for that reason, of all my comedies, it is played with the greatest profit for those concerned." The word "moral" as applied to this work illustrates the somewhat unusual meaning which Holberg attaches to it. Though he is continually at pains to speak of his "moral" comedies, it is manners and not morals that he satirizes. He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth century at its best.

Erasmus Montanus seems at first sight a mere farce, in which the author ridicules academic pedantry and the vapid formalism of logic as once taught at the University of Copenhagen. But it is much more than that. Holberg gives us a memorable series of genre paintings of Danish life of his day, and at the same time presents a situation of universal interest. Erasmus is a prig who has adopted some new ideas, not so much from righteous conviction as from the feeling that they will give him intellectual caste. His revolutionary theories raise an uproar in the village. Each apostle of the old order opposes them in his characteristic way, and Erasmus has not enough real faith within himself to prevail against the combined attacks of the Philistines; he renounces with oaths the assertions that the world is round. Still, there is nothing tragic in his renunciation, for we feel that he is as great a fool as any one in the play. Erasmus Montanus is a pure comedy, in which the author's humor plays freely upon all the figures in the drama; and it is just because the characters rather than the action absorb our interest that we do not regard it as a farce. Professor Vilhelm Andersen correctly described it as a "Danish culture-comedy of universal significance."

Holberg is often called the Danish Moliere. It is true that he learned many lessons of technique from the great trench dramatist, and borrowed freely and often from his work; but he differs from Moliere both in the quality of his humor and in the spirit that animates his critical view of life. He might as justly be called the Danish Plautus, or the Danish Spectator. The truth is, not only that Holberg possessed a profoundly original comic spirit, but also that his work is clearly related to many dramatic and literary traditions besides those of French comedy, notably to the commedia dell'arte, and the essays of The Tatler and The Spectator. Out of these various and diverse elements, nevertheless, he contrived to construct dramas at once original and national.

In a large sense, Holberg's comedies arc closely related to the rest of his work. His treatises, histories, essays, satires, and comedies are all diverse expressions of one definite purpose. Holberg's early life and natural cosmopolitan interests made him a citizen of eighteenth-century Europe, as a whole, and he strove steadily to bear the intellectual light of that urbane age to his native country, then backward in culture. Holberg--professor, scholar, and philosopher--seized with avidity the opportunity to write comedy, not from a desire to display his own versatility, or from an absorbing devotion to the drama as a form of art, but because he believed that through his plays he could fulfil most completely what he conceived to be his intellectual mission.

OSCAR JAMES CAMPBELL, JR.

May 20, 1914

JEPPE OF THE HILL OR THE TRANSFORMED PEASANT [JEPPE PAA BIERGET]

A COMEDY IN FIVE ACTS 1722

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

JEPPE OF THE HILL, a peasant.

NILLE, his wife.

JACOB SHOEMAKER, an innkeeper.

BARON NILUS, lord of the district.

Secretary to the Baron.

ERIC, a lackey.

A Valet.

MAGNUS, the village gossip.

A Judge, two Lawyers, two Doctors, a Bailiff and his Wife, Lackeys, Retainers, and others.

ACTS I, IV, AND V

SCENE: A village road; on the left, Jeppe's house; on the right, Jacob Shoemaker's inn. The court in Act IV is held in the open, and a tree is used for the gallows in Act V.

ACT II

A bedroom in the Baron's castle.

ACT III

Dining-room in the same.

ACT I

SCENE I

(Nille, alone.)

NILLE. I hardly believe there's such another lazy lout in all the village as my husband, it's as much as I can do to get him up in the morning by pulling him out of bed by the hair. The scoundrel knows to-day is market-day, and yet he lies there asleep at this hour of the morning. The pastor said to me the other day, "Nille, you are much too hard on your husband; he is and he ought to be the master of the house." But I answered him, "No, my good pastor! If I should let my husband have his way in the household for a year, the gentry wouldn't get their rent nor the pastor his offering, for in that length of time he would turn all there was in the place into drink. Ought I let a man rule the household who is perfectly ready to sell his belongings and wife and children and even himself for brandy?" The pastor had nothing to say to that, but stood there stroking his chin. The bailiff agrees with me, and says, "My dear woman, pay no attention to the pastor. It's in the wedding-service, to be sure, that you must honor and obey your husband, but it's in your lease, which is more recent than the service, that you shall keep up your farm and meet your rent--a thing you can never do unless you haul your husband about by the hair every day and beat him to his work."

I pulled him out of bed just now and went out to the barn to see how things were getting along, when I came in again, he was sitting on a chair, asleep, with his breeches--saving your presence--pulled on one leg; so the switch had to come down from the hook, and my good Jeppe got a basting till he was wide awake again. The only thing he is afraid of is "Master Eric," as I call the switch. Hey, Jeppe, you cur, haven't you got into your clothes yet? Would you like to talk to Master Eric some more? Hey, Jeppe! Come in here!