Strange as it may seem, Bjoernson did not intend "The King" as an argument in favor of the republic. In his preface to the third edition he distinctly repudiates the idea. The recent development of the Norwegian people, has, he says, made the republic a remoter possibility than it was ten years before (1875). But he qualifies this statement with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position by demonstrating the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway has during the last decade been thwarted in her aspirations and checked in her development. That preface, by the way, dated Paris, October, 1885, is one of the most forceful and luminous of his political pronunciamientos. It rings from beginning to end with conviction and a manly indignation. His chief purpose, he says, in writing this drama was, "to extend the boundaries of free discussion." His polemics against the clergy are not attacks upon Christianity, though he contends that religion is subject to growth as well as other things. The ultimate form of government he believes to be the republic, on the journey toward which all European states are proceeding fast, or slow, and in various stages of progress. There is something abrupt, gnarled, Carlylese, in his urgent admonitions and appeals for fair-play. The personal note is so distinct that I cannot read the play without unconsciously supplying the very cadence of Bjoernson's voice.