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 in Hamburg, in 1883, and for that the author modified
and altered it greatly. Eventually it was played, in its original form,
in the Scandinavian countries, and in its turn stirred up a bitter
controversy on the ethics of male and female morality as regards
marriage. It was currently said that hundreds of contemplated marriages
were broken off in Norway as an effect of its statement of a vital
problem. The remodelling the play originally underwent for its
performance in Germany was drastic. The second and third acts were
entirely recast, the character of Dr. Nordan was omitted and others
introduced, and the ending was changed. The first versi