But when he tries to raise her she is dead,
and he himself, overwhelmed by his emotion, falls dead at her side.
This is so obviously a closet-drama that it is difficult to imagine how
it would look under the illumination of the foot-lights. For all that, I
see a recent announcement that the trial is soon to be made at the
_Theatre Libre_ in Paris.[10] No Scandinavian theatre, as far as I know,
has as yet had the courage to risk the experiment. In his next play,
however, "Love and Geography" (1885), Bjoernson reconquered the stage and
repeated his early triumphs. From the scientific seriousness of "Beyond
their Strength" his pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of light
comedy, almost bordering on farce. Not that "Love and Geography" is
without a Bjoernsonian moral, but it is amusingly, jocosely enforced in
scenes of great vivacity and theatrical effect. This time it is himself
the author has chosen to satirize. The unconscious tyranny of a man who
has a mission, a life-work, is delightfully illustrated in the person of
the geographer, Professor Tygesen, to whom Bjoern Bjoernson, the actor,
when he played the part at the Christiania Theatre, had the boldness to
give his father's mask.
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