mance on the anniversary of the foundation
of the Norwegian Stage.

As I was then stage-manager of the Bergen Theatre, it was I myself
who conducted the rehearsals of my play. It received an excellent,
a remarkably sympathetic interpretation. Acted with pleasure and
enthusiasm, it was received in the same spirit. The "Bergen
emotionalism," which is said to have decided the result of the
latest elections in those parts, ran high that evening in the
crowded theatre. The performance ended with repeated calls for
the author and for the actors. Later in the evening I was serenaded
by the orchestra, accompanied by a great part of the audience. I
almost think that I went so far as to make some kind of speech
from my window; certain I am that I felt extremely happy.

A couple of months later, _The Feast of Solhoug_ was played in
Christiania. There also it was received by the public with much
approbation, and the day after the first performance Bjornson wrote
a friendly, youthfully ardent article on it in the _Morgenblad_. It
was not a notice or criticism proper, but rather a free, fanciful
improvisation on the play and the performance.

On this, however, followed the real criticism, written by the
real critics.

How did a man in the Christiania of those days--by which I mean
the years between 1850 and 1860, or thereabouts--become a real
literary, and in particular dramatic, critic?

As a rule, the process was as follows: After some preparatory
exercises in the columns of the _Samfundsblad_, and after the
play, the future critic betook himself to Johan Dahl's bookshop
and ordered from Copenhagen a copy of J. L. Heiberg's _Prose
Works_, among which was to be found--so he had heard it said--an
essay entitled _On the Vaudeville_. This essay was in due course
read, ruminated on, and possibly to a certain extent understood.
From Heiberg's writings the young man, moreover, learned of a
controversy which that author had carried on in his day with
Professor Oehlenschlager and with the Soro poet, Hauch. And he
was simultaneously made aware that J. L. Baggesen (the author of
_Letters from the Dead_) had at a still earlier period made a
similar attack on the great author who wrote both _Axel and Valborg_
and _Hakon Jarl_.

A quantity of other information useful to a critic was to be
extracted from these writings. From them one learned, for instance,
that taste obliged a good critic to be scandalised by a hiatus.
Did th