Comedies by Holberg: Jeppe of the Hill, the Political Tinker, Erasmus Montanus

Here is a Danish playwright writing in the 1720s who somehow anticipated every absurdities of modern life: the gullible man elevated to power, the overeducated fool who returns home insufferable, the drunk who stumbles into fortune and can't handle it. Ludvig Holberg, the father of Scandinavian drama, wrote these three comedies to needle at the pretensions of his society, and they remain viciously funny because human vanity hasn't changed in three hundred years. In "Jeppe of the Hill," a peasant wakes in a baron's bed, dressed in silk, surrounded by servants who call him 'my lord' - and the joke is that he believes it, because why wouldn't a man believe he deserves what fortune suddenly hands him? "The Political Tinker" gives us a village craftsman who becomes mayor through sheer bumbling, a satire of democracy that feels uncomfortably current. "Erasmus Montanus" follows a young scholar whose Latin and philosophy make him unable to speak plainly to his own family. These are plays about the gap between what people are and what they believe themselves to be, written in crackling verse that moves like wit itself. They are also, simply, enormously entertaining - full of physical comedy, misrecognition, and the pleasure of watching fools exposed.