playwright to make his tragedy a mosaic of effective bits borrowed
hither and thither from the Sagas. Scandinavian bibliography has toiled
to show his indebtedness to this tale and to that, and he has been
accused of concealing his plagiarisms. But to say this is to miss the
mark. A poet is at liberty to steal what he will, if only he builds his
thefts up into a living structure of his own. For this purpose, however,
it is practically found that, owing perhaps to the elastic consistency
of individual human nature, it is safest to stick to one story,
embroidering and developing it along its own essential lines.

There is great vigor, however, in many of the scenes in _The Vikings_.
The appearance of Hioerdis on the stage, in the opening act, marks,
perhaps, the first occasion on which Ibsen had put forth his full
strength as a playwright. This entrance of Hioerdis ought to be extremely
effective; in fact, we understand, it rarely is. The cause of this
disappointment can easily be discovered. It is the misfortune of The
Vikings that it is hardly to be acted by mortal men. Hioerdis herself is
superhuman; she has eaten the heart of a wolf, she claims direct descent
from a race of fighting giants. There is a grandeur about the conception
of her form and character, but it is a grandeur which might well daunt a
human actress. One can faintly imagine the part being played by Mrs.
Siddons, with such an extremity of fierceness and terror that ladies and
gentlemen would be carried out of the theatre in hysterics, as in the
days of Byron. Where Hioerdis insults her guests, and contrives the
horrid murder of the boy Thorolf before their eyes, we have a stage-
dilemma presented to us-either the actress must treat the scene
inadequately, or else intolerably. _Ne pueros coram populo Medea
trucidet_, and we shrink from Hioerdis with a physical disgust. Her great
hands and shrieking mouth are like Bellona's, and they smell of blood.