Leonarda (1879) marks just as striking an advance upon Bjornson's early plays as the first of Ibsen's "social dramas" did upon his. Unreal stage conventions have disappeared, the characterisation is convincing, and the dialogue, if more prolix than Ibsen's (as is throughout the case with Bjornson), is always interesting and individual. The emotional theme of the play, the love of an older woman for her adopted daughter's young lover, is treated with the poetic touch that pervades all Bjornson's work; and the controversial theme, that of religious tolerance, with a sane restraint. It cannot be denied, however, that Bjornson's changed and unorthodox attitude towards religious matters--an attitude little expected except by those who knew him best--contributed a good deal towards the temporary waning of his popularity at this time. Leonarda is (like A Gauntlet) a good example of the root difference between Bjornson's and Ibsen's treatment of problems in their dramas. Ibsen contented himself with diagnosing social maladies; Bjornson's more genial nature hints also at the remedy, or at least at a palliative. Ibsen is a stern judge; Bjornson is, beyond that, a prophet of better things. Whereas Ibsen is first and foremost a dramatist, Bjornson is rather by instinct the novelist who casts his ideas in dramatic form, and is concerned to "round up" the whole. As Brandes says, in the course of his sympathetic criticism of the two writers, "Ibsen is in love with the idea, and its psychological and logical consequences.... Corresponding to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have in Bjornson the love of humankind." Bjornson, moreover, was a long way behind Ibsen in constructive skill. As regards the technical execution of Leonarda, its only obvious weakness is a slight want of vividness in the presentation of the thesis. The hiatuses between the acts leave perhaps too much to the imagination, and the play needs more than a cursory reading for us to grasp the full import of the actions and motives of its personages. Leonarda has not been previously translated into English; though Swedish, French, German and Finnish versions of it exist.