The first act is an inimitable burst of
lyrical high spirits, tottering on the verge of absurdity, carried along
its hilarious career with no less peril and with no less brilliant
success than Peer fables for himself and the reindeer in their ride
along the vertiginous blade of the Gjende. In the second act, satire and
fantasy become absolutely unbridled; the poet's genius sings and dances
under him, like a strong ship in a storm, but the vessel is rudderless
and the pilot an emphatic libertine. The wild impertinence of fancy, in
this act, from the moment when Peer and the Girl in the Green Gown ride
off upon the porker, down to the fight with the Boeig, gigantic
gelatinous symbol of self deception, exceeds in recklessness anything
else written since the second part of _Faust_. The third act,
culminating with the drive to Soria Moria Castle and the death of Ase,
is of the very quintessence of poetry, and puts Ibsen in the first rank
of creators. In the fourth act, the introduction of which is abrupt and
grotesque, we pass to a totally different and, I think, a lower order of
imagination.
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