The dialogue is pithy, simple, and sententious.
Nevertheless the play, as a whole, makes the impression of
incompleteness. It is a dramatic sketch rather than a drama. It marks no
advance on Bjoernson's previous work in the same line; but perhaps rather
a retrogression.
II
A period is apt to come in the life of every man who is spiritually
alive, when his scholastic culture begins to appear insufficient and the
traditional premises of existence seem in need of readjustment and
revision. This period, with the spiritual crisis which it involves, is
likely to occur between the thirtieth and the fortieth meridian. Ibsen
was thirty-four years old (1862) when in "The Comedy of Love" he broke
with the romanticism of his youth, and began to wrestle with the
problems of contemporary life. Goethe was thirty-seven when, in 1786, he
turned his back upon the Storm and Stress, and in Italy sought and
gained a new and saner vision of the world. This renewal of the sources
which water the roots of his spiritual being becomes an imperative
necessity to a man when he has exhausted the sources which tradition
supplies.
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