was not slavishly copying the fashions
of his own countrymen.

The principal, if not the only influence which acted upon Ibsen at this
moment, was that of the great Danish tragedian, Adam Oehlenschlaeger.
It might be fantastically held that the leading romantic luminary
of Scandinavia withdrew on purpose to make room for his realistic
successor, since Oehlenschlaeger's latest play, _Kiartan and Gudrun_,
appeared just when Ibsen was planning _Catilina_, while the death of the
Danish poet (January 20, 1850) was practically simultaneous with Ibsen's
arrival in Christiania. In later years, Ibsen thought that Holberg and
Oehlenschlaeger were the only dramatists he had read when his own
first play was written; he was sure that he knew nothing of Schiller,
Shakespeare or the French. Of the rich and varied dramatic literature of
Denmark, in the generation between Oehlenschlaeger's and his own, he must
also for the present have known nothing. The influence of Heiberg and of
Hertz, presently to be so potent, had evidently not yet begun. But it
is important to perceive that already Norway, and Norwegian taste and
opinion, were nothing to him in his selection of themes and forms.

It is not to be supposed that the taste for dramatic performances did
not exist in Norway, because no Norwegian plays were written. On the
contrary, in most of the large towns there were, and had long been,
private theatres or rooms which could be fitted up with a stage, at
which wandering troupes of actors gave performances that were eagerly
attended by "the best people." These actors, however, were exclusively
Danes, and there was an accepted tradition that Norwegians could
not act. If they attempted to do so, their native accents proved
disagreeable to their fellow-citizens, who demanded, as an imperative
condition, the peculiar intonation and pronunciation cultivated at
the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, as well as an absence of all native
peculiarities of language. The stage, therefore--and this is very
important in a consideration of the career of Ibsen--had come to be the
symbol of a certain bias in political feeling. Society in Norway was
divided into two classes, the "Danomaniacs" and the "Patriots." Neither
of these had any desire to alter the constitutional balance of power,
but while the latter wished Norway to be intellectually self-productive,
and leaned to a further isolation in language, literature, art and
manners, the former thought that