es with a parting shot at the costuming and the scenery.
Not a little of it was inherited from "Orpheus in the Lower World." Are
we so poor as that? Better wait, and for the present, give something
which demands less of the theatre. The critic grants that the
presentation may prove profitable but, on the whole, Bjornson must
feel that he has assisted at the mutilation of a master.

Bjornson did not permit this attack to go unchallenged. He was not the
man to suffer in silence, and in this case he could not be silent. His
directorate was an experiment, and there were those in Christiania
who were determined to make it unsuccessful. It was his duty to set
malicious criticism right. He did so in _Aftenbladet_[10] in an article
which not only answered a bit of ephemeral criticism but which remains
to this day an almost perfect example of Bjornson's polemical
prose--fresh, vigorous, genuinely eloquent, with a marvelous fusing
of power and fancy.

[10. April 28. Reprinted in Bjornson's _Taler og Skrifter_.
Udgivet af C. Collin og H. Eitrem. Kristiania. 1912. Vol. I,
pp. 263-270.]

He begins with an analysis of the play: The play is called a dream. But
wherein lies the dream? 'Why,' we are told, 'in the fact that fairies
sport, that honest citizens, with and without asses' heads, put on a
comedy, that lovers pursue each other in the moonlight.' But where is
the law in all this? If the play is without law (Lov = organic unity),
it is without validity.

But it does have artistic validity. The dream is more than a fantasy.
The same experiences come to all of us. "The play takes place, now in
your life, now in mine. A young man happily engaged or happily married
dreams one night that this is all a delusion. He must be engaged to, he
must marry another. The image of the 'chosen one' hovers before him, but
he can not quite visualize it, and he marries with a bad conscience.
Then he awakens and thanks God that it is all a bad dream (Lysander). Or
a youth is tired of her whom he adored for a time. He even begins to
flirt with another. And then one fine night he dreams that he worships
the very woman he loathes, that he implores her, weeps for her, fights
for her (Demetrius). Or a young girl, or a young wife, who loves and is
loved dreams, that her beloved is fleeing from her. When she follows him
with tears and petitions, he lifts his hand against her. She pursues
him, calls to him to stop, but she cannot reach him. Sh