published at Copenhagen in 1874. It was at first not accepted
for performance at Christiania or Copenhagen, though an unauthorised
performance of it was given at one of the lesser Christiania theatres
in 1875, Meanwhile a Swedish version of it had been produced,
authoritatively, at Stockholm in February of that year. The play
eventually made its way on the Norwegian and Danish stage; but, before
that, it had been seen in German dress at Munich and Hamburg. As an
inevitable result of his recent activities as a political speaker and
pamphleteer, Bjornson had come in for a good deal of vituperation in the
press, a fact which no doubt added some gall to the ink with which he
drew the portrait of the journalist in this play. The Stockholm critics,
indeed, had condemned _The Editor_ as merely a pamphleteering attack on
the editor of a well-known journal. In answer to this criticism
Bjornson wrote from Rome in March, 1875: "It is said that my play is a
pamphleteering attack on a certain individual. That is a deliberate lie.
I have studied the journalist type, which is here represented, in many
other countries besides my own. The chief characteristic of this type
is to be actuated by an inordinate egotism that is perpetually being
inflamed by passion; that makes use of bogeys to frighten people,
and does this in such a way that, while it makes all its honest
contemporaries afraid of any freedom of thought, it also produces the
same result on every single individual by means of reckless persecution.
As I wished to portray that type, I naturally took a good deal of the
portrait from the representative of the type that I knew best; but, like
every artist who wishes to produce a complete creation, I had to build
it up from separate revelations of itself. There can, therefore, be no
question of any individual being represented in my play except in so far
as he may partially agree with the type."

However much Bjornson may have written _The Editor_ with a "purpose,"
his vivid dramatic sense kept him from becoming merely didactic. The
little tragedy that takes place amongst this homely group of people
makes quite a moving play, thanks to the skill with which the types
are depicted--the bourgeois father and mother, with their mixture of
timidity and self-interest; the manly, straightforward young politician,
resolute to carry on the work that has sapped his brother's life; the
warped, de-humanised nature of the journalist; the sturdy co