cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

Miller, who was a judge of character, instantly guessed my thoughts. "Do I
perceive that you are frightened by these tricks?" he asked smilingly, with a little pat on
the shoulder.
I could not deny it, and so he reassured me with the assertion that it did not mean
anything. "There is a young man here with the company, who sometimes expresses
himself in that extravagant way. In other respects he is a splendid fellow, who does not
mean any harm by the ruckus he makes," he continued explaining.
This benign interpretation astonished me no less than the bombardment itself,
since if the carafe had hit him it would have had the same effect whether it had been sent
with good intentions or evil, and therefore I cannot deny that I got a marvellous
impression of what was considered fun and what was taken seriously in this company.
At the evening meal I met the rest of the actors and actresses, and here that
impression was fully corroborated. Between these gentlemen and ladies a confidence and
naturalness prevailed which I had never believed could develop between people who had
seen each other for the first time fairly recently, and it was obvious that the few days in
which the company had been gathered before my arrival must have been sufficient to
eradicate every trace of shyness. Nobody thought to weigh his words; on the contrary, a
tacit agreement had evidently been made: that every expression must be several degrees
stronger than its significance.
I was received immediately as a fellow conspirator, to whom by reason of the
common shipwreck one could without hesitation show absolute confidence, and in the
beginning they explained to me, in the adopted unreproduceable jargon, the matter of my
first adventure. Miller was known always to favor (or, as his less gifted co-director called
it: "favoritize") one or the other of the actors in a rather reckless fashion. The party in
question was not merely showered with presents and invitations, but also from the
moment he became the director's favorite he was named as the company's absolute
juvenile lead, he got all the rewarding roles and had permission to reject all those which
he did not like. In return for all these splendors the favorite had to endure the annoyances
which were an accompaniment of the patron's peculiarities, and among these there was
one which sometimes could be rather embarrassing for the favored hero and lover. The
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