NOTES
P. 18.“William Russel.” An original historic tragedy, founded upon the career of the ill-fated Lord William Russell, by Andreas Munch, cousin of the historian P. A. Munch. It was produced at Christiania in 1857, the year of Ibsen’s return from Bergen, and reviewed by him in theIllustreret Nyhedsbladfor that year, Nos. 51 and 52. Professor Johan Storm of Christiania, to whose kindness I owe these particulars, adds that “it is rather a fine play and created a certain sensation in its time; but Munch is forgotten.”
P. 20.A grey old stager.Ibsen’s friend P. Botten-Hansen, author of the playHyldrebryllupet.
P. 59.A Svanhild like the old.In the tale of the Völsungs Svanhild was the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun,—the Siegfried and Kriemhild of theNibelungenlied. The fierce king Jormunrek, hearing of her matchless beauty, sends his son Randwer to woo her in his name. Randwer is, however, induced to woo her in his own, and the girl approves. Jormunrek thereupon causes Randwer to be arrested and hanged, and meeting with Svanhild, as he and his men ride home from the hunt, tramples her to death under their horses’ hoofs. Gudrun incites her sons Sorli and Hamdir to avenge their sister; they boldly enter Jormunrek’s hall, and succeed in cutting off his hands and feet, but are themselves slain by his men. This last dramatic episode is told in the EddicHamthismol.
P. 94.In the remotest east there grows a plant.The germ of the famous tea-simile is due to Fru Collett’s romance,“The Official’s Daughters” (cf.Introduction, p. ix.). But she exploits the idea only under a single and obvious aspect, viz., the comparison of the tender bloom of love with the precious firstling blade which brews the quintessential tea for the Chinese emperor’s table; what the world calls love being, like what it calls tea, a coarse and flavourless aftercrop. Ibsen has, it will be seen, given a number of ingenious developments to the analogy. I know Fru Collett’s work only through the accounts of it given by Brandes and Jæger.
P. 135.Another Burns.In the original: “Dölen” (“The Dalesman”), that is A. O. Vinje, Ibsen’s friend and literary comrade, editor of the journal so-called and hence known familiarly by its name. See the Introduction.
P. 160.Like Old Montanus.The hero of Holberg’s comedyErasmus Montanus, who returns from foreign travel to his native parish with the discovery that the world is not flat. Public indignation is aroused, and Montanus finds it expedient to announce that his eyes had deceived him, that “the worldisflat, gentlemen.”