The fifth act, an amalgam of what is worst and best in the
poem, often seems divided from it in tone, style and direction, and is
more like a symbolic or mythical gloss upon the first three acts than a
contribution to the growth of the general story.
Throughout this tangled and variegated scene the spirits of the author
remain almost preposterously high. If it were all hilarity and sardonic
laughter, we should weary of the strain. But physical beauty of the most
enchanting order is liberally provided to temper the excess of irony. It
is, I think, no exaggeration to say that nowhere to the dramatic
literature of the world, not by Shakespeare himself, is there introduced
into a play so much loveliness of scenery, and such varied and exquisite
appeal to the eyes, as there is in _Peer Gynt_. The fifth act contains
much which the reader can hardly enjoy, but it opens with a scene so
full of the glory of the mountains and the sea that I know nothing else
in drama to compare with it. This again is followed by one of the finest
shipwrecks in all poetry. Scene after scene, the first act portrays the
cold and solemn beauty of Norwegian scenery as no painter's brush has
contrived to do it.
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