BEGRIFFENFELDT, Dr. Phil., director of the madhouse at Cairo.
HUHU, a language-reformer from the coast of Malabar.
HUSSEIN, an eastern Minister.
A FELLAH, with a royal mummy.
SEVERAL MADMEN, with their KEEPERS.
A NORWEGIAN SKIPPER and HIS CREW.
A STRANGE PASSENGER.
A PASTOR.
A FUNERAL–PARTY.
A PARISH–OFFICER.
A BUTTON–MOULDER.
A LEAN PERSON.
[The action, which opens in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and ends around the 1860’s, takes place partly in Gudbrandsdalen, and on the mountains around it, partly on the coast of Morocco, in the desert of Sahara, in a madhouse at Cairo, at sea, etc.]
Act First
Scene First
[A wooded hillside near ÅSE’s farm. A river rushes down the slope. On the further side of it an old mill shed. It is a hot day in summer.]
[PEER GYNT, a strongly-built youth of twenty, comes down the pathway. His mother, ÅSE, a small, slightly built woman, follows him, scolding angrily.]
Åse
Peer, you’re lying!
Peer [without stopping]
No, I am not!
Åse
Well then, swear that it is true!
Peer
Swear? Why should I?
Åse
It’s a lie from first to las
See, you dare not!t.
Peer [stopping]
It is true — each blessed word!
Åse [confronting him]
Don’t you blush before your mother?
First you skulk among the mountains
monthlong in the busiest season,
stalking reindeer in the snows;
home you come then, torn and tattered,
gun amissing, likewise game;—
and at last, with open eyes,
think to get me to believe
all the wildest hunters’-lies!—
Well, where did you find the buck, then?
Peer
West near Gendin.
Åse [laughing scornfully]
Ah! Indeed!
Peer
Keen the blast towards me swept;
hidden by an alder-clump,
he was scraping in the snow-crust
after lichen —
Åse [as before]
Doubtless, yes!
Peer
Breathlessly I stood and listened,
heard the crunching of his hoof,
saw the branches of one antler.
Softly then among the boulders
I crept forward on my belly.
Crouched in the moraine I peered up;—
such a buck, so sleek and fat,
you, I’m sure, have ne’er set eyes on.
Åse
No, of course not!
Peer
Bang! I fired!
Clean he dropped upon the hillside.
But the instant that he fell
I sat firm astride his back,
gripped him by the left ear tightly,
and had almost sunk my knife-blade
in his neck, behind his skull —
when, behold! the brute screamed wildly,
sprang upon his feet like lightning,
with a back-cast of his head
from my fist made knife and sheath fly,
pinned me tightly by the thigh,
jammed his horns against my legs,
clenched me like a pair of tongs;—
then forthwith away he flew
right along the Gendin–Edge!
Åse [involuntarily]
Jesus save us —!
Peer
Have you ever
chanced to see the Gendin–Edge?
Nigh on four miles long it stretches
sharp before you like a scythe.
Down o’er glaciers, landslips, scaurs,
down the toppling grey moraines,
you can see, both right and left,
straight into the tarns that slumber,
black and sluggish, more than seven
hundred fathoms deep below you.
Right along the Edge we two
clove our passage through the air.
Never rode I such
