Chapter 6 - Page 2

announced, they do not say, "I am glad of it," but, "It will probably
be good for nothing; it will be hissed off the stage." That hissing-off
plays a great part, and is an amusement which fills the house; but it
is not the bad actor who is hissed, no, the author and the composer
only are the criminals; for them the scaffold is erected. Five minutes
is the usual time, and the whistles resound, and the lovely women smile
and felicitate themselves, like the Spanish ladies at their bloody
bullfights. All our most eminent dramatic writers have been whistled
down,--as Oehlenschl ger, Heiberg, Oversko, and others; to say nothing
of foreign classics, as Moli re. In the mean time the theatre is the
most profitable sphere of labor for the Danish writer, whose public
does not extend far beyond the frontiers. This had induced me to write
the opera-text already spoken of, on account of which I was so severely
criticised; and an internal impulse drove me afterwards to add some
other works. Collin was no longer manager of the theatre, Councillor of
Justice Molbeck had taken his place; and the tyranny which now
commenced degenerated into the comic. I fancy that in course of time
the manuscript volumes of the censorship, which are preserved in the
theatre, and in which Molbeck has certainly recorded his judgments on
received and rejected pieces, will present some remarkable
characteristics. Over all that I wrote the staff was broken! One way
was open to me by which to bring my pieces on the stage; and that was
to give them to those actors who in summer gave representations at
their own cost. In the summer of 1839 I wrote the vaudeville of "The
Invisible One on Sprog÷," to scenery which had been painted for another
piece which fell through; and the unrestrained merriment of the piece
gave it such favor with the public, that I obtained its acceptance by
the manager; and that light sketch still maintains itself on the
boards, and has survived such a number of representations as I had
never anticipated.

This approbation, however, procured me no further advantage, for each
of my succeeding dramatic works received only rejection, and occasioned
me only mortification. Nevertheless, seized by the idea and the
circumstances of the little French narrative, "_Les paves_," I
determined to dramatise it; and as I had often heard that I did not
possess the assiduity sufficient to work my mat riel well, I resolved
to labor this drama--"The Mulatto"--from the beginning to the end, in
the most diligent manner, and to compose it in alternately rhyming
verse, as was then the fashion. It was a foreign subject of which I
availed myself; but if verses are music, I at least endeavored to adapt