He
remained in Bergen, cramped by want of means in his material condition,
and much harassed and worried by the little pressing requirements of the
theatre. It seems that every responsibility fell upon his shoulders, and
that there was no part of stage-life that it was not his duty to look
after. The dresses of the actresses, the furniture, the scene-painting,
the instruction of raw Norwegian actors and actresses, the selection of
plays, now to please himself, now to please the bourgeois of Bergen, all
this must be done by the poet or not done at all. Just so, two hundred
years earlier, we may imagine Moliere, at Carcassonne or Albi, bearing
up in his arms, a weary Titan, all the frivolities and anxieties and
misdeeds of a whole company of comedians.
So far as our very scanty evidence goes, we find the poet isolated from
his fellows, so far as isolation was possible, during his long stay at
Bergen. He was not accused, and if there had been a chance he would have
been accused, of dereliction. No doubt he pushed through the work of the
theatre doggedly, but certainly not in a convivial spirit.
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