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APPENDIX

I.

IBSENITES AND IBSENISM.

"And that which is not good is not delicious
To a well-govern'd and wise appetite."

-MILTON.

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CONSIDERATION of the dramatic movement in America requires that some attention be given to the works of Henrik Ibsen, the influence they have exerted, and the views and proceedings of those persons who have approved, advocated, and practically participated in making them known to our reading and theatre-going publics.

Henrik Ibsen was born at Skein, Norway, on March 20, 1828, and he died at Christiania, on May 23, 1906. In youth he felt the rigor of extreme poverty. At one time he was apprentice to an apothecary. Later he was for a brief period a medical student,-facts which, perhaps, account, at least in part, for his propension for morbid, clinical subjects and for the pseudo-scientific medical elements which occur in several of his most widely known compositions. In 1857 he became man

ager of the Norwegian Theatre, in Christiania,—a position from which he retired in 1862, the theatre being thrown into bankruptcy. In 1864 he withdrew from his native land, in high dudgeon, having been refused a pension from the government. In 1866 he produced, in Rome, his play of "Brandt," which was accepted as an arraignment of Norwegian morality, and the government pension, granted to him in that year, is said to have resulted because of it. After leaving Norway he dwelt for extended periods in Rome, Munich, and Dresden, but eventually returned to Christiania. There are at least five biographies of Ibsen published, in English, -the chief being those of Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen and Georg Brandes.

Ibsen's first play was "Catiline," written in 1849: his last, "When We Dead Awaken," published in 1900. In the interim of fifty-one years he contributed articles to several periodicals, participated in political controversies and disturbances, sought to influence social development by advocating social theories which, practically applied, would destroy Society, and he concocted about thirty verbal fabrics in the Play form. His earlier plays are sometimes called "romantic and poetical." Romantic they are, in a certain degree, because they mingle wildly improbable incidents in a maze of extravagant fancy and tumid verbiage. Of poetical quality they contain nothing, unless it may consist in a verbal felicity of their original form, which does not appear in the translations.

He wrote poetry, however, and is esteemed as a poet.

The chief example of Ibsen's earlier writings that has been made known on the American Stage is "Peer Gynt," produced, 1906-'07, by the late Richard Mansfield, the exertions incident to whose endeavor to vitalize that nonsense having hastened his untimely death. "Peer Gynt" was presented in many cities, in 1907-'08, by Louis James,-who, also, soon afterward perished. The mortality among auditors is unknown; presumably it was extensive.

The works of Ibsen upon which, chiefly, the claim is based that he is a great thinker, a great dramatist, and destined to exert a great influence on posterity, are his "Sociological Dramas," the more prominent of which are "The Pillars of Society," "A Doll's House," "Ghosts," "An Enemy of the People," "The Wild Duck," "Rosmersholm," "Hedda Gabler," "Master Builder Solness," "Little Eyolf," "John Gabriel Borkman," and "When We Dead Awaken."

"Rosmersholm" and "Hedda Gabler" have been considered in this work, in the section devoted to the acting of Mrs. Fiske, the most intellectual, able, and influential performer identified with Ibsenism on the American Stage. Other actors, beside those already mentioned, who have ventured on that murky sea are Helena Modjeska, Beatrice Cameron (Mrs. Richard Mansfield), Kate Reignolds Winslow, Janet Achurch, Elizabeth Robins, Mary Shaw,

Florence Kahn, Ethel Barrymore, Alla Nazimova, Wilton Lackaye, and Frederick Lewis. Ibsen has found other conspicuous advocates, in America, in the allied spheres of criticism and drama. Those whose views are most germane to this work are persons directly associated with the Theatre. Such of Ibsen's "sociological dramas" as are here to be considered can most conveniently be examined in the chronological order of their important presentation in the American metropolis. The first of them, accordingly, is

"A DOLL'S HOUSE."

There are no infallible rules for play-writing, but certain principles of dramatic composition are simple / and obvious. Either a play is intended for the Stage, or it is intended for the Closet. Either it is meant to be acted, or it is meant to be read. If intended for the Stage it must possess action. If intended for the Closet it must possess literature. There are plays which are good to act and also good to read, because they contain both action and literature, but such plays are few, and whenever they are acted much of their literature has to be cut out of them. A complete play,—a play that can be acted,—is an interesting story of human nature and human life, actual or ideal, delicately exaggerated, and told by means of action more than by means of words. An incomplete play,—a play that cannot be acted, is a narrative, put into the form of dialogue and

embellished by virtues and graces that are solely literary. "Othello" and "The School for Scandal" stand at the one pole; "Comus" and "Festus" at the other.

Ibsen's play called "A Doll's House" is good neither for the Stage nor the Closet, for it is slow and tiresome when acted and trivial when read. It contains one dramatic situation, but one dramatic situation is not enough to animate the structure of a three-act piece. In 1883 “A Doll's House" was produced, in Louisville, Kentucky, under the name of "Thora," by Helena Modjeska, who acted the heroine, but, although the brilliant talents of that actress were then at their meridian, it was a failure. In 1888 it was tried in London, under the auspices of a few crotchety writers, and there it gained some favor with the Mrs. Leo Hunter class. Since Beatrice Cameron's revival of it,-in Boston, October 30, 1889; in New York, January 28, 1891,—it has been sporadically revived and has achieved a kindred favor with a kindred class. A few superior persons, especially in Boston, have declared it surcharged with superlative meaning,—such, of course, as transcends the comprehension of all except the elect.

In "A Doll's House" Ibsen directs attention to a case of domestic trouble. The scene is a dwelling-house in Norway. The time is 1879. The chief persons are Mr. and Mrs. Helmer, who have lived together eight years, who love each other, have children, and are in comfortable circumstances. They have a male friend,

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