Ludvig Holberg, a Danish Playwright on the European Stage

Book excerpt: Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) is the founding father of the art of theatre in the Nordic countries. He was a satirist - and university professor - who took his main inspirations from the comedies of Moliere and from the commedia dell'arte to create a number of plays that mirrored contemporary costums and conducts in a both realistic and grotesque way. Due to the psychological and philosophical strength behind the comic mask the plays have been staged and revisited ever since. In the 18th century the were part of the European canon. They should be so now again. This book presents Holberg in a European context as a reformer in the spirit of the Enlightenment even before Goldoni, Diderot and Lessing, and at the same time as an exponent of a carnivalesque tradition.