 LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) 4th Edition  Ver. 5.0
Doll's House                            Ibsen, Henrik          
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                                      1879                                  
                                 A DOLL'S HOUSE                             
                                                                            
                                by Henrik Ibsen                             
                                                                            
                          translated by William Archer                      
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)           
                                                                            
                             INTRODUCTION                                   
                          by William Archer                                 
-                                                                           
   ON June 27, 1879, Ibsen wrote from Rome to Marcus Gronvold: "It          
is now rather hot in Rome, so in about a week we are going to               
Amalfi, which, being close to the sea, is cooler, and offers                
opportunity for bathing. I intend to complete there a new dramatic          
work on which I am now engaged." From Amalfi, on September 20, he           
wrote to John Paulsen: "A new dramatic work, which I have just              
completed, has occupied so much of my time during these last months         
that I have had absolutely none to spare for answering letters."            
This "new dramatic work" was Et Dukkehjem, which was published in           
Copenhagen, December 4, 1879. Dr. George Brandes has given some             
account of the episode in real life which suggested to Ibsen the            
plot of this play; but the real Nora, it appears, committed forgery,        
not to save her husband's life, but to redecorate her house. The            
impulse received from this incident must have been trifling. It is          
much more to the purpose to remember that the character and                 
situation of Nora had been clearly foreshadowed, ten years earlier, in      
the figure of Selma in The League of Youth.                                 
-                                                                           
   Of A Doll's House we find in the Literary Remains a first brief          
memorandum, a fairly detailed scenario, a complete draft, in quite          
actable form, and a few detached fragments of dialogue. These               
documents put out of court a theory of my own * that Ibsen                  
originally intended to give the play a "happy ending," and that the         
relation between Krogstad and Mrs. Linden was devised for that              
purpose.                                                                    
-                                                                           
   * Stated in the Fortnightly Review, July 1906, and repeated in           
the first edition of this Introduction.                                     
-                                                                           
   Here is the first memorandum:-                                           
-                                                                           
                  NOTES FOR THE * TRAGEDY OF TO-DAY                         
-                                                                           
                                                 ROME, 19/10/78.            
   There are two kinds of spiritual laws, two kinds of conscience, one      
in men and a quite different one in women. They do not understand each      
other; but the woman is judged in practical life according to the           
man's law, as if she were not a woman but a man.                            
   The wife in the play finds herself at last entirely at sea as to         
what is right and what wrong; natural feeling on the one side, and          
belief in authority on the other, leave her in utter bewilderment.          
   A woman cannot be herself in the society of to-day, which is             
exclusively a masculine society, with laws written by men, and with         
accusers and judges who judge feminine conduct from the masculine           
standpoint.                                                                 
   She has committed forgery, and it is her pride; for she did it           
for love of her husband, and to save his life. But this husband,            
full of everyday rectitude, stands on the basis of the law and regards      
the matter with a masculine eye.                                            
   Soul-struggles. Oppressed and bewildered by belief in authority,         
she loses her faith in her own moral right and ability to bring up her      
children. Bitterness. A mother in the society of to-day, like               
certain insects, (ought to) go away and die when she has done her duty      
towards the continuance of the species. Love of life, of home, of           
husband and children and kin. Now and then a womanlike shaking off          
of cares. Then a sudden return of apprehension and dread. She must          
bear it all alone. The catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably.      
Despair, struggle, and disaster.                                            
-                                                                           
   * The definite article does not, I think, imply that Ibsen ever          
intended this to be the title of the play, but merely that the notes        
refer to "the" tragedy of contemporary life which he has had for            
sometime in his mind.                                                       
-                                                                           
   In reading Ibsen's statement of the conflict he meant to portray         
between the male and female conscience, one cannot but feel that he         
somewhat shirked the issue in making Nora's crime a formal rather than      
a real one. She had no intention of defrauding Krogstad; and though it      
is an interesting point of casuistry to determine whether, under the        
stated circumstances, she had a moral right to sign her father's name,      
opinion on the point would scarcely be divided along the line of            
sex. One feels that, in order to illustrate the "two kinds of               
conscience," Ibsen ought to have made his play turn upon some point of      
conduct (if such there be) which would sharply divide masculine from        
feminine sympathies. The fact that such a point would be extremely          
hard to find seems to cast doubt on the ultimate validity of the            
thesis. If, for instance, Nora had deliberately stolen the money            
from Krogstad, with no intention of repaying it, that would                 
certainly have revealed a great gulf between her morality and               
Helmer's; but would any considerable number of her sex have                 
sympathised with her? I am not denying a marked difference between the      
average man and the average woman in the development of such                
characteristics as the sense of justice; but I doubt whether, when          
women have their full share in legislation, the laws relating to            
forgery will be seriously altered.                                          
   A parallel-text edition of the provisional and the final forms of A      
Doll's House would be intensely interesting. For the present, I can         
note only a few of the most salient differences between the two             
versions.                                                                   
   Helmer is at first called "Stenborg"; * it is not till the scene         
with Krogstad in the second act that the name Helmer makes its first        
appearance. Ibsen was constantly changing his characters' names in the      
course of composition- trying them on, as it were, until he found           
one that was a perfect fit.                                                 
-                                                                           
   * This name seems to have haunted Ibsen. It was also the original        
name of Stensgard in The League of Youth.                                   
-                                                                           
   The first scene, down to the entrance of Mrs. Linden, though it          
contains all that is necessary for the mere development of the plot,        
runs to only twenty-three speeches, as compared with eighty-one in the      
completed text. The business of the macaroons is not even indicated;        
there is none of the charming talk about the Christmas-tree and the         
children's presents; no request on Nora's part that her present may         
take the form of money, no indication on Helmer's part that he regards      
her supposed extravagance as an inheritance from her father. Helmer         
knows that she toils at copying far into the night in order to earn         
a few crowns, though of course he has no suspicion as to how she            
employs the money. Ibsen evidently felt it inconsistent with his            
character that he should permit this, so in the completed version we        
learn that Nora, in order to do her copying, locked herself in under        
the pretext of making decorations for the Christmas-tree, and, when no      
result appeared, declared that the cat had destroyed her handiwork.         
The first version, in short, is like a stained glass window seen            
from without, the second like the same window seen from within.             
   The long scene between Nora and Mrs. Linden is more fully worked         
out, though many small touches of character are lacking, such as            
Nora's remark that some day "when Torvald is not so much in love            
with me as he is now," she may tell him the great secret of how she         
saved his life. It is notable throughout that neither Helmer's              
aestheticism nor the sensual element in his relation to Nora is nearly      
so much emphasised as in the completed play; while Nora's tendency          
to small fibbing- that vice of the unfree- is almost an                     
afterthought. In the first appearance of Krogstad, and the                  
indication of his old acquaintance with Mrs. Linden, many small             
adjustments have been made, all strikingly for the better. The first        
scene with Dr. Rank,- originally called Dr. Hank- has been almost           
entirely rewritten. There is in the draft no indication of the              
doctor's ill-health or of his pessimism; it seems as though he had          
at first been designed as a mere confidant or raisonneur. This is           
how he talks:-                                                              
-                                                                           
   HANK. Hallo! what's this? A new carpet? I congratulate you! Now          
     take, for example, a handsome carpet like this; is it a luxury? I      
     say it isn't. Such a carpet is a paying investment; with it            
     underfoot, one has higher, subtler thoughts, and finer feelings,       
     than when one moves over cold, creaking planks in a comfortless        
     room. Especially where there are children in the house. The race       
     ennobles itself in a beautiful environment.                            
   NORA. Oh, how often I have felt the same, but could never express        
     it.                                                                    
   HANK. No, I dare say not. It is an observation in spiritual              
     statistics- a science as yet very little cultivated.                   
-                                                                           
   As to Krogstad, the doctor remarks:-                                     
-                                                                           
     If Krogstad's home had been, so to speak, on the sunny side of         
     life, with all the spiritual windows opening towards the               
     light,... I dare say he might have been a decent enough fellow,        
     like the rest of us.                                                   
   MRS. LINDEN. You mean that he is not....?                                
   HANK. He cannot be. His marriage was not of the kind to make it          
     possible. An unhappy marriage, Mrs. Linden, is like small-pox: it      
     scars the soul.                                                        
   NORA. And what does a happy marriage do?                                 
   HANK. It is like a "cure" at the baths; it expels all peccant            
     humours, and makes all that is good and fine in a man grow and         
     flourish.                                                              
-                                                                           
   It is notable that we find in this scene nothing of Nora's glee          
on learning that Krogstad is now dependent on her husband; that fine        
touch of dramatic irony was an afterthought. After Helmer's                 
entrance, the talk is very different in the original version. He            
remarks upon the painful interview he has just had with Krogstad, whom      
he is forced to dismiss from the bank; Nora, in a mild way, pleads for      
him; and the doctor, in the name of the survival of the fittest, *          
denounces humanitarian sentimentality, and then goes off to do his          
best to save a patient who, he confesses, would be much better dead.        
This discussion of the Krogstad question before Nora has learnt how         
vital it is to her, manifestly discounts the effect of the scenes           
which are to follow: and Ibsen, on revision, did away with it               
entirely.                                                                   
-                                                                           
   * It is noteworthy that Darwin's two great books were translated         
into Danish very shortly before Ibsen began to work at A Doll's House.      
-                                                                           
   Nora's romp with the children, interrupted by the entrance of            
Krogstad, stands very much as in the final version; and in the scene        
with Krogstad there is no essential change. One detail is worth             
noting, as an instance of the art of working up an effect. In the           
first version, when Krogstad says, "Mrs. Stenborg, you must see to          
it that I keep my place in the bank," Nora replies: "I? How can you         
think that I have any such influence with my husband?"- a natural           
but not specially effective remark. But in the final version she has        
begun the scene by boasting to Krogstad of her influence, and               
telling him that people in a subordinate position ought to be               
careful how they offend such influential persons as herself; so that        
her subsequent denial that he has any influence becomes a notable           
dramatic effect.                                                            
   The final scene of the act, between Nora and Helmer, is not              
materially altered in the final version; but the first version              
contains no hint of the business of decorating the Christmas-tree or        
of Nora's wheedling Helmer by pretending to need his aid in devising        
her costume for the fancy dress ball. Indeed, this ball has not yet         
entered Ibsen's mind. He thinks of it first as a children's party in        
the flat overhead, to which Helmer's family are invited.                    
   In the opening scene of the second act there are one of two              
traits that might perhaps have been preserved, such as Nora's               
prayer: "Oh, God! Oh, God! do something to Torvald's mind to prevent        
him from enraging that terrible man! Oh, God! Oh, God! I have three         
little children! Do it for my children's sake." Very natural and            
touching, too, is her exclamation, "Oh, how glorious it would be if         
I could only wake up, and come to my senses, and cry, 'It was a dream!      
It was a dream!'" A week, by the way, has passed, instead of a              
single night, as in the finished play; and Nora has been wearing            
herself out by going to parties every evening. Helmer enters                
immediately on the nurse's exit; there is no scene with Mrs. Linden in      
which she remonstrates with Nora for having (as she thinks) borrowed        
money from Dr. Rank, and so suggests to her the idea of applying to         
him for aid. In the scene with Helmer, we miss, among many other            
characteristic traits, his confession that the ultimate reason why          
he cannot keep Krogstad in the bank is that Krogstad, an old                
schoolfellow, is so tactless as to tutoyer him. There is a curious          
little touch in the passage where Helmer draws a contrast between           
his own strict rectitude and the doubtful character of Nora's               
father. "I can give you proof of it," he says. "I never cared to            
mention it before- but the twelve hundred dollars he gave you when you      
were set on going to Italy he never entered in his books: we have been      
quite unable to discover where he got them from." When Dr. Rank             
enters, he speaks to Helmer and Nora together of his failing health;        
it is an enormous improvement which transfers this passage, in a            
carefully polished form, to his scene with Nora alone. That scene,          
in the draft, is almost insignificant. It consists mainly of                
somewhat melodramatic forecasts of disaster on Nora's part, and the         
doctor's alarm as to her health. Of the famous silk-stocking scene-         
that invaluable sidelight on Nora's relation with Helmer there is           
not a trace. There is no hint of Nora's appeal to Rank for help,            
nipped in the bud by his declaration of love for her. All these             
elements we find in a second draft of the scene which has been              
preserved. In this second draft, Rank says, "Helmer himself might           
quite well know every thought I have ever had of you; he shall know         
when I am gone." It might have been better, so far as England is            
concerned, if Ibsen had retained this speech; it might have                 
prevented much critical misunderstanding of a perfectly harmless and        
really beautiful episode.                                                   
   Between the scene with Rank and the scene with Krogstad there            
intervenes, in the draft, a discussion between Nora and Mrs. Linden,        
containing this curious passage:-                                           
-                                                                           
   NORA. When an unhappy wife is separated from her husband she is not      
     allowed to keep her children? Is that really so?                       
   MRS. LINDEN. Yes, I think so. That's to say, if she is guilty.           
   NORA. Oh, guilty, guilty; what does it mean to be guilty? Has a          
     wife no right to love her husband?                                     
   MRS. LINDEN. Yes, precisely, her husband- and him only.                  
   NORA. Why, of course; who was thinking of anything else? But that        
     law is unjust, Kristina. You can see clearly that it is the men        
     that have made it.                                                     
   MRS. LINDEN. Aha- so you have begun to take up the woman question?       
   NORA. No, I don't care a bit about it.                                   
-                                                                           
   The scene with Krogstad is essentially the same as in the final          
form, though sharpened, so to speak, at many points. The question of        
suicide was originally discussed in a somewhat melodramatic tone:-          
-                                                                           
   NORA. I have been thinking of nothing else all these days.               
   KROGSTAD. Perhaps. But how to do it? Poison? Not so easy to get          
     hold of. Shooting? It needs some skill, Mrs. Helmer. Hanging?          
     Bah- there's something ugly in that....                                
   NORA. Do you hear that rushing sound?                                    
   KROGSTAD. The river? Yes, of course you have thought of that. But        
     you haven't pictured the thing to yourself.                            
-                                                                           
   And he proceeds to do so for her. After he has gone, leaving the         
letter in the box, Helmer and Rank enter, and Nora implores Helmer          
to do no work till New Year's Day (the next day) is over. He agrees,        
but says, "I will just see if any letters have come "; whereupon she        
rushes to the piano and strikes a few chords. He stops to listen,           
and she sits down and plays and sings Anitra's song from Peer Gynt.         
When Mrs. Linden presently enters, Nora makes her take her place at         
the piano, drapes a shawl around her, and dances Anitra's dance. It         
must be owned that Ibsen has immensely improved this very strained and      
arbitrary incident by devising the fancy dress ball and the                 
necessity of rehearsing the tarantella for it; but at the best it           
remains a piece of theatricalism.                                           
   As a study in technique, the re-handling of the last act is              
immensely interesting. At the beginning, in the earlier form, Nora          
rushes down from the children's party overhead, and takes a                 
significant farewell of Mrs. Linden, whom she finds awaiting her.           
Helmer almost forces her to return to the party; and thus the stage is      
cleared for the scene between Mrs. Linden and Krogstad, which, in           
the final version, opens the act. Then Nora enters with the two             
elder children, whom she sends to bed. Helmer immediately follows, and      
on his heels Dr. Rank, who announces in plain terms that his disease        
has entered on its last stage, that he is going home to die, and            
that he will not have Helmer or any one else hanging around his             
sick-room. In the final version, he says all this to Nora alone in the      
second act; while in the last act, coming in upon Helmer flushed            
with wine, and Nora pale and trembling in her masquerade dress, he has      
a parting scene with them, the significance of which she alone              
understands. In the earlier version, Rank has several long and heavy        
speeches in place of the light, swift dialogue of the final form, with      
its different significance for Helmer and for Nora. There is no             
trace of the wonderful passage which precedes Rank's exit. To               
compare the draft with the finished scene is to see a perfect instance      
of the transmutation of dramatic prose into dramatic poetry.                
   There is in the draft no indication of Helmer's being warmed with        
wine, or of the excitement of the senses which gives the final touch        
of tragedy to Nora's despair. The process of the action is practically      
the same in both versions; but everywhere in the final form a               
sharper edge is given to things. One little touch is very significant.      
In the draft, when Helmer has read the letter with which Krogstad           
returns the forged bill, he cries, "You are saved, Nora, you are            
saved!" In the revision, Ibsen cruelly altered this into, "I am saved,      
Nora, I am saved!" In the final scene, where Nora is telling Helmer         
how she expected him, when the revelation came, to take all the             
guilt upon himself, we look in vain, in the first draft, for this           
passage:-                                                                   
-                                                                           
   HELMER. I would gladly work for you night and day, Nora- bear            
     sorrow and want for your sake. But no man sacrifices his honour,       
     even for one he loves.                                                 
   NORA. Millions of women have done so.                                    
-                                                                           
   This, then, was an afterthought: was there ever a more brilliant         
one?                                                                        
-                                                                           
   It is with A Doll's House that Ibsen enters upon his kingdom as a        
world-poet. He had done greater work in the past, and he was to do          
greater work in the future; but this was the play which was destined        
to carry his name beyond the limits of Scandinavia, and even of             
Germany, to the remotest regions of civilisation. Here the Fates            
were not altogether kind to him. The fact that for many years he was        
known to thousands of people solely as the author of A Doll's House         
and its successor, Ghosts, was largely responsible for the extravagant      
misconceptions of his genius and character which prevailed during           
the last decade of the nineteenth century, and are not yet entirely         
extinct. In these plays he seemed to be delivering a direct assault on      
marriage, from the standpoint of feminine individualism; wherefore          
he was taken to be a preacher and pamphleteer rather than a poet. In        
these plays, and in these only, he made physical disease a                  
considerable factor in the action; whence it was concluded that he had      
a morbid predilection for "nauseous" subjects. In these plays he            
laid special and perhaps disproportionate stress on the influence of        
heredity; whence he was believed to be possessed by a monomania on the      
point. In these plays, finally, he was trying to act the essentially        
uncongenial part of the prosaic realist. The effort broke down at many      
points, and the poet reasserted himself; but these flaws in the             
prosaic texture were regarded as mere bewildering errors and                
eccentricities. In short, he was introduced to the world at large           
through two plays which showed his power, indeed, almost in                 
perfection, but left the higher and subtler qualities of his genius         
for the most part unrepresented. Hence the grotesquely distorted            
vision of him which for so long haunted the minds even of                   
intelligent people. Hence, for example, the amazing opinion, given          
forth as a truism by more than one critic of great ability, that the        
author of Peer Gynt was devoid of humour.                                   
   Within a little more than a fortnight of its publication, A              
Doll's House was presented at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, where Fru      
Hennings, as Nora, made the great success of her career. The play           
was soon being acted, as well as read, all over Scandinavia. Nora's         
startling "declaration of independence" afforded such an inexhaustible      
theme for heated discussion, that at last it had to be formally barred      
at social gatherings, just as, in Paris twenty years later, the             
Dreyfus Case was proclaimed a prohibited topic. The popularity of           
Pillars of Society in Germany had paved the way for its successor,          
which spread far and wide over the German stage in the spring of 1880,      
and has ever since held its place in the repertory of the leading           
theatres. As his works were at that time wholly unprotected in              
Germany, Ibsen could not prevent managers from altering the end of the      
play to suit their taste and fancy. He was thus driven, under protest,      
to write an alternative ending, in which, at the last moment, the           
thought of her children restrained Nora from leaving home. He               
preferred, as he said, "to commit the outrage himself, rather than          
leave his work to the tender mercies of adaptors." The patched-up           
ending soon dropped out of use and out of memory. Ibsen's own               
account of the matter will be found in his Correspondence, Letter 142.      
   It took ten years for the play to pass beyond the limits of              
Scandinavia and Germany. Madame Modjeska, it is true, presented a           
version of it in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1883, but it attracted no         
attention. In the following year Messrs. Henry Arthur Jones and             
Henry Herman produced at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, a play      
entitled Breaking a Butterfly, which was described as being "founded        
on Ibsen's Norah," but bore only a remote resemblance to the original.      
In this production Mr. Beerbohm Tree took the part of Dunkley, a            
melodramatic villain who filled the place of Krogstad. In 1885, again,      
an adventurous amateur club gave a quaint performance of Miss Lord's        
translation of the play at a hall in Argyle Street, London. Not             
until June 7, 1889, was A Doll's House competently, and even                
brilliantly, presented to the English public, by Mr. Charles                
Charrington and Miss Janet Achurch, at the Novelty Theatre, London,         
afterwards re-named the Kingsway Theatre. It was this production            
that really made Ibsen known to the English-speaking peoples. In other      
words, it marked his second great stride towards world-wide, as             
distinct from merely national, renown- if we reckon as the first            
stride the success of Pillars of Society in Germany. Mr. and Mrs.           
Charrington took A Doll's House with them on a long Australian tour;        
Miss Beatrice Cameron (Mrs. Richard Mansfield) was encouraged by the        
success of the London production to present the play in New York,           
whence it soon spread to other American cities; while in London itself      
it was frequently revived and vehemently discussed. The Ibsen               
controversy, indeed, did not break out in its full virulence until          
1891, when Ghosts and Hedda Gabler were produced in London; but from        
the date of the Novelty production onwards, Ibsen was generally             
recognised as a potent factor in the intellectual and artistic life of      
the day.                                                                    
   A French adaptation of Et Dukkehjem was produced in Brussels in          
March 1889, but attracted little attention. Not until 1894 was the          
play introduced to the Parisian public, at the Gymnase, with Madame         
Rejane as Nora. This actress has since played the part frequently, not      
only in Paris but in London and in America. In Italian the play was         
first produced in 1889, and soon passed into the repertory of Eleonora      
Duse, who appeared as Nora in London in 1893. Few heroines in modern        
drama have been played by so many actresses of the first rank. To           
those already enumerated must be added Hedwig Niemann-Raabe and             
Agnes Sorma in Germany, and Minnie Maddern-Fiske and Alla Nazimova          
in America; and, even so, the list is far from complete. There is           
probably no country in the world, possessing a theatre on the European      
model, in which A Doll's House has not been more or less frequently         
acted.                                                                      
   Undoubtedly the great attraction of the part of Nora to the average      
actress was the tarantella scene. This was a theatrical effect, of          
an obvious, unmistakable kind. It might have been- though I am not          
aware that it ever actually was- made the subject of a picture-poster.      
But this, as it seems to me, was Ibsen's last concession to the             
ideal of technique which he had acquired, in the old Bergen days, from      
his French masters. It was at this point- or, more precisely, a little      
later, in the middle of the third act- that Ibsen definitely outgrew        
the theatrical orthodox of his earlier years. When the action, in           
the theatrical sense, was over, he found himself only on the threshold      
of the essential drama; and in that drama, compressed into the final        
scene of the play, he proclaimed his true power and his true mission.       
   How impossible, in his subsequent work, would be such figures as         
Mrs. Linden, the confidant, and Krogstad, the villain! They are not         
quite the ordinary confidant and villain, for Ibsen is always Ibsen,        
and his power of vitalisation is extraordinary. Yet we clearly feel         
them to belong to a different order of art from that of his later           
plays. How impossible, too, in the poet's after years, would have been      
the little tricks of ironic coincidence and picturesque contrast which      
abound in A Doll's House! The festal atmosphere of the whole play, the      
Christmas-tree, the tarantella, the masquerade ball, with its               
distant sounds of music- all the shimmer and tinsel of the background,      
against which Nora's soul-torture and Rank's despair are thrown into        
relief, belong to the system of external, artificial antithesis             
beloved by romantic playwrights from Lope de Vega onward, and               
carried to its limit by Victor Hugo. The same artificiality is              
apparent in minor details. "Oh, what a wonderful thing it is to live        
to be happy!" cries Nora, and instantly "The hall-door bell rings" and      
Krogstad's shadow falls across the threshold. So, too, for his              
second entrance, an elaborate effect of contrast is arranged,               
between Nora's gleeful romp with her children and the sinister              
figure which stands unannounced in their midst. It would be too much        
to call these things absolutely unnatural, but the very precision of        
the coincidence is eloquent of pre-arrangement. At any rate, they           
belong to an order of effects which in future Ibsen sedulously              
eschews. The one apparent exception to this rule which I can                
remember occurs in The Master Builder, where Solness's remark,              
"Presently the younger generation will come knocking at my door,"           
gives the cue for Hilda's knock and entrance. But here an                   
interesting distinction is to be noted. Throughout The Master               
Builder the poet subtly indicates the operation of mysterious,              
unseen agencies- the "helpers and servers" of whom Solness speaks,          
as well as the Power with which he held converse at the crisis in           
his life- guiding, or at any rate tampering with, the destinies of the      
characters. This being so, it is evident that the effect of                 
pre-arrangement produced by Hilda's appearing exactly on the given cue      
was deliberately aimed at. Like so many other details in the play,          
it might be a mere coincidence, or it might be a result of inscrutable      
design- we were purposely left in doubt. But the suggestion of              
pre-arrangement which helped to create the atmosphere of The Master         
Builder was wholly out of place in A Doll's House. In the later play        
it was a subtle stroke of art; in the earlier it was the effect of          
imperfectly dissembled artifice.                                            
   The fact that Ibsen's full originality first reveals itself in           
the latter half of the third act is proved by the very protests,            
nay, the actual rebellion, which the last scene called forth. Up to         
that point he had been doing, approximately, what theatrical orthodoxy      
demanded of him. But when Nora, having put off her masquerade dress,        
returned to make up her account with Helmer, and with marriage as           
Helmer understood it, the poet flew in the face of orthodoxy, and           
its professors cried, out in bewilderment and wrath. But it was just        
at this point that, in practice, the real grip and thrill of the drama      
were found to come in. The tarantella scene never, in my experience-        
and I have seen five or six great actresses in the part- produced an        
effect in any degree commensurate with the effort involved. But when        
Nora and Helmer faced each other, one on each side of the table, and        
set to work to ravel out the skein of their illusions, then one felt        
oneself face to face with a new thing in drama- an order of                 
experience, at once intellectual and emotional, not hitherto                
attained in the theatre. This every one felt, I think, who was in           
any way accessible to that order of experience. For my own part, I          
shall never forget how surprised I was on first seeing the play, to         
find this scene, in its naked simplicity, far more exciting and moving      
than all the artfully-arranged situations of the earlier acts. To           
the same effect, from another point of view, we have the testimony          
of Fru Hennings, the first actress who ever played the part of Nora.        
In an interview published soon after Ibsen's death, she spoke of the        
delight it was to her, in her youth, to embody the Nora of the first        
and second acts, the "lark," the "squirrel," the irresponsible,             
butterfly Nora. "When I now play the part," she went on, "the first         
acts leave me indifferent. Not until the third act am I really              
interested- but then, intensely." To call the first and second acts         
positively uninteresting would of course be a gross exaggeration. What      
one really means is that their workmanship is still a little                
derivative and immature, and that not until the third act does the          
poet reveal the full originality and individuality of his genius.           
                                                                            
                              