Sigurd Slembe (trilogy)
| Sigurd Slembe | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson |
| Date premiered | 1869 (published 1862) |
| Place premiered | Meiningen, Germany |
| Original language | Norwegian |
| Subject | Historical drama |
| Genre | Romantic |
| Setting | Stavanger, Caithness, Orkney |
Sigurd Slembe (Sigurd the Bastard; slembe may also be translated as "worthless" or "ill-disposed") is a trilogy of plays written by the Norwegian playwright Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and published in 1862. It is regarded as his finest historical drama and was influenced by the works of William Shakespeare and Friedrich Schiller. It directly influenced Henrik Ibsen's The Pretenders, written the following year, which explores some similar themes. In contrast to Ibsen's attempts to create a historical setting through artificially archaic language, Bjørnson's trilogy used contemporary language. The success of this approach seems to have prompted Ibsen to adopt a similarly modernistic approach to his later history plays.
The trilogy is based on the history of the real Sigurd Slembe, a 12th-century pretender to the Norwegian throne, whose story was told in the medieval kings' sagas Heimskringla, Fagrskinna, and Morkinskinna. The first part of the trilogy takes some liberties with the historical account, but the other parts follow the sagas. The plays have been performed occasionally, notably at the inauguration of the National Theatre in Oslo in 1899. They were first performed in their entirety in Meiningen, Germany, in 1869, but it was not until 1885 that the trilogy was performed in Norway, in Oslo's Christiania Theatre.
The trilogy opens with the one-act play Sigurd's First Flight (Sigurds første flugt), set in blank verse. It begins in Stavanger in 1122 where Sigurd, a young man of twenty years old, is praying to Saint Olaf, Norway's patron saint, in the hope of learning the identity of his father. Sigurd's mother Tora confesses that he is the illegitimate son of her sister's husband, King Magnus Barefoot. Sigurd responds with a passionate outburst and swears that he will insist on his right to succeed to the throne. He leaves his mother and goes to join the Crusades.
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