mmon-sense
of the yeoman farmer; and the doctor, the "family friend," as a sort of
mocking chorus. Besides its plea for a higher regard for truth, the play
also attacks the precept, preached by worldly wisdom, that we ought to
harden our natures to make ourselves invulnerable; a proposition
which was hateful to one of Bjornson's persistently impressionable
and ingenuous nature. The fact remains, as Brandes grimly admits, that
"nowadays we have only a very qualified sympathy with public characters
who succumb to the persecution of the press." Brandes sees in the play,
besides its obvious motive, an allegory. Halvdan Rejn, the weary and
dying politician, is (he says) meant for Henrik Wergeland, a Norwegian
poet-politician who had similar struggles, sank under the weight of
similar at tacks, died after a long illness, and was far higher reputed
after his death than during his life. In Harald Rejn, with his honest
enthusiasm and misjudged political endeavours Brandes sees Bjornson
himself; while the yeoman brother, Haakon, seems to him to typify the
Norwegian people.

_The Bankrupt_ (_En Fallit_: literally _A Bankruptcy_) was partly
written in Rome, partly in Tyrol, and published at Copenhagen in 1875.
It was a thing entirely new to the Scandinavian stage for a dramatist
to deal seriously with the tragi-comedy of money, and, while making
a forcible plea for honesty, to contrive to produce a stirring and
entertaining play on what might seem so prosaic a foundation as business
finance. Some of the play's earliest critics dismissed it as "dry,"
"prosaic," "trivial," because of the nature of its subject; but it made
a speedy success on the boards, and very soon became a popular item in
the repertories of the Christiania, Bergen and Copenhagen theatres. It
was actually first performed, in a Swedish translation, at Stockholm, a
few days before it was produced at Christiania. Very soon, too, the play
reached Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and other German and Austrian theatres.
It was played in Paris, at the Theatre Libre in 1894. The character of
Berent, the lawyer, which became a favourite one with the famous Swedish
actor Ernst Possart, was admittedly more or less of a portrait of a
well-known Norwegian lawyer, by name Dunker. When Bjornson was writing
the play, he went to stay for some days with Dunker, who was to instruct
him as to the legal aspect of bankruptcy. Bjornson took the opportunity
of studying the lawyer as well as the la