the wretched tittle-tattle of a provincial town embellished with merciless ethical disquisition, having the general effect of a rudimentary moral treatise. Some of his moon-eyed followers have adopted the ridiculous practice of yoking the Tupper of Christiania with the Bard of Avon. Alas, poor Shakespeare! This much of good, however, comes from the hare-brained impertinence,― that observers are reminded of the contrast, and so made to remember that there are single lines in Shakespeare worth whole hecatombs of Ibsen.

"The Pillars of Society" was first produced in America, in the German language, at the Irving Place Theatre, New York, on December 26, 1889, with Ernst von Possart in its central part, that of Consul Bernick, and it was first acted here, in English, at the old Lyceum Theatre, by pupils of the Lyceum Theatre School of Acting, associated with several professional actors, on March 6, 1891. On the latter occasion George W. Fawcett appeared as Bernick, Alice Fischer as Lona Hessel, and Elizabeth Tyree as Drina Dorf. On April 15, 1904, that robust, sincere, forcible, and expert actor Wilton Lackaye revived "The Pillars" at the Lyric Theatre, and appeared as Bernick. Mrs. Fiske brought it out, at the New Lyceum Theatre, appearing as Lona, and presenting Holbrook Blinn as Bernick. Mr. Lackaye's presentation of the play was the best that has been given on our Stage, because his impersonation of Bernick was absolutely faithful to the radically stupid

original. He had the necessary frigidity and the requisite bland, plausible manner of a selfish, selfsatisfied, successful hypocrite, and he expressed effectively the trepidation, in moments of peril, of a scoundrel and liar who dreads impending exposure. There is nothing more that can be done with the part.

"AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE."

It is notable, with regard to "independent," "progressive," and otherwise "advanced" stage societies, that they customarily "progress" by the exploitation of freaks. One of those societies, in New York, having sought the seclusion of the old Berkeley Lyceum, on February 10, 1905, tackled Ibsen's treatise on the rights and wrongs of the Minority, called "An Enemy of the People." That is the only presentment of the play in America which I recall: probably it has been performed elsewhere, by other votaries of fog. It is a colloquial rigmarole relative to a case of imperfect drainage in a small town on the south coast of Norway. Dr. Stockman, who resided in that town, discovered that certain Baths which had been established there, instead of being medicinal and salutary, were poisonous to health, through having become polluted by sewage, and thereupon he wrote a newspaper article on the subject, which a local journalist promised to print. Dr. Stockman's brother, however, who was a local magistrate, and who owned a pecuniary interest in the Baths and did not care

whether they caused illness or not as long as they were used and he derived money from their use, persuaded the journalist not to keep his promise, and Dr. Stockman's article was, therefore, rejected. The Doctor resented this cowardly slight, and thereupon called a public meeting of the townspeople, in order to read his essay to them, thus making known the danger of using the Baths; but his opponents took possession of the hall and "howled him down," and the assembly broke up in a row. Dr. Stockman, subsequently, was discharged from his town office, and "boycotted," as "an enemy of the people," the prosperity of the town being deemed dependent on that of the Baths, and he resolved to open a school for ragamuffins. Ibsen has told this enlivening tale in five acts which have the sprightliness of the mud turtle and the agility of the sloth.

In Robertson's comedy of "School" one of the children, being asked in what way the people rewarded the public services of Belisarius, replies that "they deprived him of his dignities and put his eyes out." The man who tries to serve and improve society often comes to grief: "the property of rain is to wet and of fire to burn." An instructive essay, doubtless, might be written on the blunders of the majority, human selfishness, and the absurdly erroneous postulates that all persons are born equal and that the masses of the people, simply because they are masses, are therefore virtuous, wise, and infallible in judgment. No more

monstrous lie has ever been promulgated and accepted than the lie which declares that "The voice of the People is the voice of God." Ibsen, obviously, was conscious of those elemental truths, and his mind seems to have been distressed on that subject when he wrote "An Enemy of the People." He wished to announce that the majority has might but not right. In doing so, in this instance, through the inappropriate medium of the Stage, his fundamental defect as a dramatist, vagueness made tedious by verbal prolixity (aside from his infatuated devotion to a monotonous and unscientific doctrine of

heredity), is obtrusively manifested. The Regulator loudly vociferates that "the world is out of joint" and seems to feel it a "cursed spite that ever he was born to set it right." It is.

"MASTER BUILDER SOLNESS."

Foggy symbolism, immersed in illimitable prolixity of commonplace dialogue, is the substance of "Master Builder Solness," known to our Stage as "The Master Builder." It is one of the dreariest fabrics of the crotchety Ibsen Muse, being a shallow "psychological study," not a play, and, being a "psychological study," it ought, whether shallow or profound, to be restricted to the library. To find a parallel example of flatulent obfuscation the student must seek the commendatory drivel written on the subject by the crackbrained Maurice Maeterlinck. The reader of "The

Master Builder," if endowed with patience, might derive from its perusal a certain soporific edification: the spectator of it is conscious only of being wearied beyond endurance by the purling prattle of a group of nonentities and invalids. The method of the author, in that work, has been likened to that of Nathaniel Hawthorne; but Hawthorne had style, and, in his "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables," which are representative works, he revealed imagination, and he provided feeling, atmosphere, incident, and interesting character: moreover he did not write for the Stage, and he explicitly stated, in a letter which I once possessed, that he did not consider his writings suitable for dramatic interpretation. Ibsen's method is no more like that of Hawthorne than the flow of sawdust out of a bunghole is like the drift of storm clouds in an autumn sky.

In this Ibsen fabric Mr. Solness is a skilful and successful architect, past the prime of life, and likewise he is an egregious egotist. He possesses "the artistic temperament," and, as frequently happens in such cases, there is in him a strong vein of sensuality. "I know you have known a good many women, in your time," says his medical acquaintance, Dr. Herdal: "Oh, I don't deny it," replies Mr. Solness. He is married to a good woman, whom he has ceased to love, who is a nervous invalid, patient in her suffering, and with respect to whom he entertains a remorseful feeling,-fancying that