" However, no man can unite the advantages of
adult age and childhood, and we all feel that there is something
incongruous in a child's talking of love.
It is a curious fact that his world-wide fame as the poet of childhood
never quite satisfied Andersen.[22] He never accepted it without a
protest. It neither pleased nor sufficed him. He was especially eager to
win laurels as a dramatist; and in 1839 celebrated his first dramatic
success by a farcical vaudeville entitled "The Invisible at Sprogoee."
Then followed the romantic drama "The Mulatto" (1840), which charmed the
public and disgusted the critics; and "The Moorish Maiden," which
disgusted both. These plays are slipshod in construction, but
emotionally effective. The characters are loose-fibred and vague, and
have no more backbone than their author himself. J. L. Heiberg thought
it high time to chastise the half-cultured shoemaker's son for his
audacity, and in the third act of "A Soul after Death," held him up to
ridicule. Andersen, stabbed again to the heart, hastened away from home,
"suffering and disconcerted.
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