What is considerably more important to us than the form of his poem is, however, the substance of it. The former belongs to the taste of an age which has disappeared long ago; the latter is--as I have already suggested--a cultural portrait of contemporary Denmark, and at the same time a marvellous gallery full of human characters, stamped by the eternal mark of life itself. Holberg, like Hamlet, was of opinion that there was "something rotten in the state of Denmark," and he made up his mind to set her right by the sound cure of irony. He could have chosen no better remedy; for, in fact, the community in which he found himself was not disgraced by vices which preyed on the very pith of the nation and endangered its future. The chief fault with it was that owing to a development which forms a highly-interesting chapter in the cultural history of the country--but which it would take too long to detail--Denmark, as Holberg found her two centuries ago, was about to be stifled by an atmosphere of pedantry, humbug, hypocrisy and unsound ambition. Surrounded by laws and orders in council which interfered with their daily life in the most foolish way and increased the number of misdemeanants, the Danish people was about to lose its self-respect and absorb itself in an indiscriminate imitation of foreign nations. Holberg's keen glance pierced through all this foolery into the very depth of the national character. He saw that the Danish people was sound at the core, and he therefore merrily divested it of one piece of these masquerade garments after the other. He wanted to show the people among which he lived that life is truth, not humbug, and that instead of the comfortable advice: Disguise! hide! there is the more noble appeal: Be thyself, and fear not! There is a whole literature on _Peder Paars_ in Norwegian and Danish, and it is only fair to say that opinions of the critics vary as to the intrinsic value of the different parts of the poem from a literary point of view. On the other hand, full credit is given to the poem from a cultural standpoint. Generally speaking, _Peder Paars_ is not only the first dazzling display of Holberg's genius as a humorous and satirical writer; it also reveals him as the future playwright, who within a few years was to send pit, boxes and galleries into fits of laughter. Indeed, we may ask the question: Was there ever in any country a professor of metaphysics with so adequate a store of humour and with a more irresistible fancy to display it? IV. Holberg as a dramatic author is certainly one of the most interesting chapters in the history of Norwegian and Danish literature, and none has been subjected to a more searching examination.