It is the sole example of a theme taken by him
directly from comparatively modern history, and treated purely for its
value as a study of contemporary intrigue. From this point of view it
curiously exemplifies a remark of Hazlitt: "The progress of manners and
knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time perhaps
destroy both tragedy and comedy. ... At last, there will be nothing
left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on the theatre or in real
life."
When Ibsen undertook to write about Inger Gyldenloeve, he was but little
acquainted with the particulars of her history. He conceived her, as he
found her in the incomplete chronicles he consulted, as a Matriarch, a
wonderful and heroic elderly woman around whom all the hopes of an
embittered patriotism were legitimately centred. Unfortunately, "the
progress of knowledge," as Hazlitt would say, exposed the falsity of
this conception. A closer inspection of the documents, and further
analysis of the condition of Norway in 1528, destroyed the fair
illusion, and showed Ibsen in the light of an indulgent idealist.
Here is what Jaeger [Note: In _En literaert Livsbillede_] has to give us
of the disconcerting results of research:
In real life Lady Inger was not a woman formed upon so grand a plan.
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