Ludvig Holberg

“ JEPPE. It is a shame that the deacon is not in town, for there's so much Latin in my son's letter that I can't understand. Tears come to my eyes when I think that a poor peasant's son has got so much book-learning, especially as we aren't tenants of the university. I have heard from people who know about learning that he can dispute with any clergyman alive. Oh, if only my wife and I could have the joy of hearing him preach on the hill, before we die, we shouldn't grudge all the money we have spent on him! I can see that Peer the deacon doesn't much relish the idea of my son's coming. ”

“ NILLE. O—o—o—! What is that? What do I hear? Can a dead man talk?
JEPPE. Don't be afraid, Nille, I shan't hurt you.
NILLE. But, my dearest husband, how can you talk when you're dead?
JEPPE. I don't know myself how it happens. But listen, my dear wife! Run like wildfire and bring me eightpence worth of brandy, for I am thirstier now than I ever was when I was alive.
NILLE. Shame, you beast! You scoundrel! You hopeless drunkard! Haven't you drunk enough brandy in your living lifetime? Are you still thirsty, you sot, now that you are dead? ”

“ MONTANUS. Can't you hear? I say "Monsieur Montanus."
JACOB. Mossur Montanus, Mossur Montanus.
MONTANUS. That's right. "Montanus" in Latin is the same as "Berg" in
Danish.
JACOB. Then can't I be called "Jacob Montanus"?
MONTANUS. When you have been to school as long as I have and passed your examinations, then you can give yourself a Latin name, too; but as long as you are a peasant boy, you must be satisfied with plain Jacob Berg. By the way, have you noticed that my sweetheart has been longing for me?
JACOB. Indeed she has. She has been very impatient at your staying away so long, brother. ”

“ HENRICH. What are you going to be, then? You're not a mere maiden, so you must be a young lady. That is surely the next degree of honor to which you rise when you lose your maidenhood.
ENGELKE. I had rather be a peasant's daughter. Then I could be sure of getting the man on whom I have set my heart.
HENRICH. Oh, is that all the young lady is crying about—that she wants to get married? Now she can get married in the shortest possible time to any man she points at, for half the town will besiege the house to be a burgomaster's son-in-law. ”

“ ANTONIUS. Your husband has his head full of political whims, and has a burgomastership on his brain. He turns up his nose at working-people like me and my kind. He imagines that he is cleverer than the notary public himself.
GESKE. The fool! The idiot! Will you heed him? I believe he's more likely to become a vagrant and have to beg his bread, than to become a burgomaster. Dear Antonius! you mustn't pay attention to him, and you mustn't lose the affection you have for my daughter.
ANTONIUS. Von Bremen swears she shall take no one who is not a politician. ”

“ Monsieur, you have a devilish bad Latin pronunciation. Speak your mother-tongue, and you will do better. I don't say this because I have any prejudice against Latin, for I sometimes sit and talk Latin with my servant for hours at a time. Isn't that so, Henrich?
HENRICH. It is wonderful to hear his Honor talk Latin; I swear the tears come into my eyes when I think of it. It is like listening to peas boiling in a pot, the words come so quickly from his mouth. The devil himself doesn't know how a man can manage to talk so fluently. But what won't long practice do for you? ”

“ MONTANUS. Little mother, I should like very much to break him of the habit of calling me "brother." It is not decent for a peasant boy to call a learned man "brother." I should like to have him call me "Monsieur."
JEPPE. Do you hear that, Jacob? When you speak to your brother after this, you are to call him Mossur.
MONTANUS. I should like to have the deacon invited here to-day, so that I can see what he is good for.
JEPPE. Yes, surely, it shall be done.
MONTANUS. In the mean time I will go to visit my sweetheart.
NILLE. But I am afraid it is going to rain. Jacob can cany your cloak for you. ”

“ SCENE 3 JEPPE. Now I've lived half a hundred years, but in all that time I haven't had so much happen to me as in these two days. It is a devil of a story, now that I come to think of it: one hour a drunken peasant, the next a baron, then another hour a peasant again; now dead, now alive on a gallows, which is the most wonderful of all. Perhaps it is that when they hang living people they die, and when they hang dead people they come to life again. It seems to me that, after all, a glass of brandy would taste magnificent. Hey, Jacob Shoemaker! ”

“ MONTANUS. For all that, he may have no learning at all.
JEPPE. He preaches beautifully, too.
MONTANUS. For all that, too, he might have no learning at all.
NILLE. Oh, honored son! How can a man lack learning if he preaches well?
MONTANUS. Surely, mother! All the ignorant folk preach well, for inasmuch as they can't compose anything out of their own heads, they use borrowed sermons, and learn good men's compositions by heart, though sometimes they don't understand them themselves. A learned man, on the other hand, won't use such methods; he composes out of his own head. ”

“ NILLE. I never shall see how people can keep so much in their head.
My head swims just from hearing them talk about it.
JEPPE. That's why learned folk usually aren't quite right in their heads.
NILLE. What nonsense! Do you think our son Rasmus Berg isn't quite right?
JEPPE. It only seems a little queer, mother, that he should write a
Latin letter to me.
PEER. Jeppe's right there, certainly. That was a little foolish. It is just as if I were to talk Greek to the bailiff, to show him that I understood the language.
JEPPE. Do you know Greek, Peer? ”

“ I am so much afraid, my dear, that you will make some mistake before you get accustomed to the position that you have attained.—Henrich, run get a tea-table and some cups, and tell the girl to run out and get fourpence' worth of coffee—one can always buy more later.—You make it a rule, my dear, not to talk much until you learn to carry on refined conversation. You must not be too humble, either, but stand upon your dignity, and strive in every way to get the old tinkering habits out of your head, and try to imagine that you have been a burgomaster's wife for years. ”

“ MONTANUS. I shall not allow myself to be drawn into dispute with a rogue of a peasant like you. If you understood Latin, I should readily oblige you. I am not accustomed to disputation in Danish.
JACOB. That is to say, Mossur has become so learned that he cannot make clear his meaning in his mother-tongue.
MONTANUS. Be silent, audacissime juvenis! Why should I exert myself to explain my opinions to coarse and common folk, who don't know what universalia entia rationis formae substantiales are? It certainly is absurdissimum to try to prate of colors to the blind. ”

“ HERMAN. Quiet, wife! You will be Madam Burgomaster before you know it. Do you think that I go out just to pass the time? Ay, I do ten times as much work as all of you in the house: the rest of you work with your hands only; I work with my brain.
GESKE. All crazy people work that way, building castles in the air just as you do, cudgelling their brains with bosh and nonsense, imagining that they are doing something of importance when it is really nothing at all.
GERT. If she were my wife, she would not talk that way more than once. ”

“ GESKE. My husband has been made burgomaster.
HENRICH. What of?
GESKE. What of? Of Hamburg!
HENRICH. The deuce you say! That certainly is the devil's own jump for a tinker!
HERMAN. Henrich, speak with more respect. You must know that you are now the lackey of a man of prominence.
HENRICH. Lackey! Then I don't advance nearly so much!
HERMAN. You shall advance in time. You may even be a reutendiener some day. Only keep still. Your duty for a few days is to act as lackey until I can get a servant.—He can wear my brown coat, my dear, till we get a livery. ”

“ I should begin my speech like this: "I thank you, wise and noble gentlemen, for the honor you have done a wretched tinker like me in making him burgomaster—"
HERMAN. You always bring in your confounded "tinker." It is not proper to talk like that at the City Hall, where I must act as if I had been born a burgomaster. If I were to make such a speech, I should only be scorned and mocked. No, no, Henrich, you would make a poor orator. He is a rogue who says I was ever a tinker. I have merely tinkered a little to pass the time away when I have been tired of studying. ”

“ JEPPE. I have never done any hunting or poaching, for I know that's a thing that will get a man hard labor; no living soul can prove that I ever hunted as much as a hare in my lord's woods.
VALET. Why, my gracious lord, I was out hunting with you myself yesterday.
JEPPE. Yesterday I was at Jacob Shoemaker's, and I drank twelve pennyworth of brandy, so how could I have been hunting?
VALET. Oh, I beg his gracious lordship on my bare knees to stop talking such nonsense. Eric! have the doctors been sent for?
ERIC. Yes, they are coming immediately. ”

“ MONTANUS. That is something which is beyond proof. No learned man doubts that any longer.
JESPER. I warrant you will never get Peer the deacon to agree with you.
MONTANUS. Peer the deacon! Yes, he is a great fellow. I am a fool to stand here and talk about philosophy with you. But in order to please Monsieur Jeronimus, I will nevertheless present one or two proofs. First, we learn it from travellers, who, when they go a few thousand miles from here, have day while we have night: they see other heavens, other stars.
JERONIMUS. Are you crazy? Is there more than one heaven and one earth? ”

“ ENGELKE. I won't have any one but Antonius, whom I've already promised to marry.
HENRICH. Fie, Mamsell! Will you take a wheelwright now, a man I can scarcely associate with,—I, who am only a reutendiener? You should have a higher sense of honor after this.
ENGELKE. Be quiet, you lout! I would give up my life rather than let myself be forced to marry any one else.
HENRICH. Now reassure yourself, my young lady, we shall see, I and the burgomaster, if we can't help Antonius into office, and then you can take him and welcome. (Exit Engelke. Anneke weeps.) Why are you crying, Anneke? ”

“ HENRICH. Listen, you tinker's trash! have you never seen a livery or a lackey before? Faith, these common people are like animals, they stand and stare like cows, when they see a man in different clothes one day from what he wears another.
ANNEKE. No, a joke's one thing, and sober truth's another. Don't you know that I've learned to tell fortunes? An old woman came here to-day who reads people's hands. I gave her a bit of bread and she taught me the art of seeing in people's hands what is going to happen to them. ”

“ HENRICH. Well, what do you care about people who envy you, your Honor? If only I had been made a burgomaster like that, I should have sent my enviers to death and the devil.
HERMAN. The one thing I am a little anxious about is the matter of small ceremonies, for the world is governed by pedantry, and people notice trifles more than solid things. If only the first day were over, when I make my entry into the City Hall, I should be glad; for as far as substantial business is concerned, that is bread and butter to me. ”

“ NILLE. I am very much afraid that Monsieur Jeronimus will be offended when he hears that my son has been in his yard, but went away without talking with him.
MONTANUS. Well, I can't help that. When any one attacks philosophy, he attacks my honor. I am fond of Mademoiselle Lisbed, but my Metaphysica and my Logica have priority.
NILLE. Oh, my dear son, what did I hear? Are you engaged to two other girls in Copenhagen? That will be a bad business in the matrimonial courts. ”

“ HERMAN. Then you are good for nothing but a subordinate. Henrich, give my wife a mug of ale at the side table.
GESKE. Oh, you beast! Do you think I have come here to drink?
HERMAN. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—Now, it is all over. Listen, mother, you must not speak so harshly to your husband—it sounds utterly vulgar.
GESKE. Is it aristocratic to beg? Hasn't any woman reason enough to scold when she has such a good-for-nothing for a husband—a man who neglects his house like this, and leaves his wife and children in want? ”

“ JACOB. Won't you drink the bailiff's health?
JEPPE. Sure enough; give me credit for another penny-worth. The bailiff is an honest man; when we slip a rix-dollar into his fist, he'll swear to his lordship that we can't pay our rent. Now I'm a villain if I have any more money; you must trust me for a farthing or two.
JACOB. No, Jeppe, you can't stand any more now. I'm not the kind of man to let his patrons force themselves to drink more than is good for them. ”

“ What difference can it make to you whether the earth is oblong, round, eight-cornered, or square? I beg of you, by all the love I have borne you, that you conform to the faith in which we here on the hill have been happy for so long. If you do not humor me in this, you may be sure that I shall die of grief, and the whole world will abhor you for causing the death of one who has loved you as her own soul. ”