in them to an unexpected height of strength, and in them he has left to Norwegian literature works which for all time to come will be reckoned among its greatest classics. 'Brand' is really a protest against the half-heartedness of his countrymen.

"That which thou art, be it completely;

Not merely piecemeal and discreetly."

The hero, the young clergyman Brand, is himself an embodiment of this protest against the spirit of Compromise. With his motto. "Everything or nothing," he scorns the religion of the day and declares a bitter though futile war against it; until, heavy laden with sorrow and defeat but with unbroken will, he is overwhelmed in the snow of the avalanche. 'Peer Gynt,' on the other hand, is the embodiment of the spirit itself against which 'Brand' protests. The hero accordingly is to Ibsen's mind the typical Norseman. It is not a complimentary picture that the poet has so fearlessly painted of the national character, for Peer Gynt is a man of dreams and of idle inaction; he is cynically indifferent, selfish, sordid, superstitious, and withal mendacious. He realizes at the end that he has never been himself; that he is in fact no one, and is only fitted, although his destiny is after all left undecided in the poem, to go into the meltingspoon of the mysterious Button-Molder, who is to melt him over into fresh material from which to stamp new souls. In manner the two poems have but little in common. 'Brand' is solemn and monotonous; 'Peer Gynt' varied and witty. Although both are as Norwegian as well may be, each one is capable of universal application. 'Peer Gynt' has been called the Scandinavian Faust'; for it too, like Goethe's poem, is the story of the human soul.

Ibsen's polemics did not end with these two great poems; but the phase was continued in the prose comedy 'The League of Youth,' which was the next to follow. This is a satire on the politics of Norway, its parties and their motives; and is directed particularly against democracy, which to Ibsen has always been in i favor. 'Emperor and Galilean,' which had been begun and laid aside, was next taken up and completed. The whole is made up of two dramas, 'Cæsar's Apostasy' and the 'Emperor Julian,' each having five acts. It is written throughout in prose. Although perhaps the most ambitious of all of Ibsen's works, it is not as a whole an artistic success. It was the last of the historical dramas; and though apparently far removed from the modern social plays that were now to follow, there is nevertheless a link between it and them. In none of them does he so unmistakably formulate the creed that we find embodied in the action of the later plays.

The dramas of modern life, which outside of Scandinavia are most closely connected with the name of Ibsen, next followed in unbroken succession. Although this is at first sight almost absolutely a new tendency, the poet none the less definitely follows a direction that all through his earlier work is frequently enough indicated. It is found in Catilina,' the first dramatic work, as well as in 'Emperor and Galilean,' the last, and the League of Youth' prefigures it almost completely. In some ways it is however a new development. Henceforth Ibsen is the pathologist who unerringly, and with cruel directness, makes his diagnosis of the ills of the social body; and although the setting of his plays is Norwegian, their application is as universal as are the conditions of modern society itself. The Pillars of Society,' the first of the group, attacks the hypocrisy of the principal supporters of a community, here typified in particular by the rich Consul Bernick, the local magnate in a small Norwegian town. Bernick ultimately avows his real character; he shows how he has brought about his own personal aggrandizement at the expense of the community of which he has been a vaunted pillar, and stands at last for the first time on the firm ground of truth. "The spirits of Truth and Freedom, "- it is declared at the end,-"these are the Pillars of Society."

'A Doll's House,' the next play, is concerned with the problem of marriage as a failure. To answer the question, it furnishes an illustration of the customary sacrifice of the individuality of the woman to that of the man to whom she is married. Nora, the doll of this particular doll's-house, is one of the most distinctive of Ibsen's creations, as is the drama one of his most pronounced successes. She is an undeveloped child in mind and morals, and eventually, unthinking of consequences, sacrifices honor to love, and forges her father's name to a document in order to help her husband. At the end her illusions have all vanished. She sees and understands the doll's-house in which she has lived, and determines for her children's sake and her own to leave it.

'Ghosts' is in some respects a complement to 'A Doll's House.' It shows in reality, in its own way and with wholly different setting, what might have happened had Nora Helmer remained with her husband and children. The play is the most thrilling and dreadful of all of Ibsen's works. Its fundamental idea is the awful consequences of hereditary vices, which are ghosts to revisit the scenes of their past existence. Oswald Alving, the son of a vicious father whose memory has been cloaked by his wife after his death, becomes a mere physical wreck, and begs his mother in the last awful scene to give him the morphia that shall end his torment. It is left uncertain whether this is or is not done, but it scarcely mitigates the horror of

the end.

'Ghosts' raised a howl of protest, but its drastic strength cannot be questioned.

'An Enemy of the People' is to a great extent a personal polemic due to the reception accorded 'Ghosts. Its hero, Dr. Stockmann, simply tells the truth in regard to the corruption of the medicinal waters that had brought visitors and prosperity to a little town in Norway. Every one knows that it is the truth, and he is stoned and driven out for uttering it. The play as a whole is inferior to the

rest.

The Wild Duck' receives its name from a bird that is kept captive in a garret, and is the fondest treasure of a little girl of fourteen, Hedwig. The play is gloomy and despairing. Hedwig, ultimately, instead of killing the wild duck as she is advised to do, turns the bullet into her own heart.

'Rosmersholm' is the story of the clergyman Rosmer, the last of his race, whose wife had committed suicide, and who had fallen under the influence of her former companion Rebecca West. The relationship between them, except in name, is love, tender but passionless. Idle scandals arise, and Rosmer offers marriage, which Rebecca's conscience does not allow her to accept. Both put an end to their confused lives by throwing themselves into the mill-dam.

'The Lady from the Sea' is the daughter of a light-house keeper who has become the second wife of Dr. Wangel, the physician of a little coast town. She has however been mysteriously betrothed to a seafaring man, a Finn, who finally comes back to claim her. When her husband at her own request leaves her to choose between him and the sailor, and tells her that she must bear the individual responsibility for her action, she decides with rapture to remain.

'Hedda Gabler' seems to be the only one of the social dramas without a problem. Hedda is a woman of the modern literary type, -vain, pleasure-loving, undomestic, and selfish. As the wife of Dr. Tisman she lures back to his destruction her old friend Lövborg, who had once grievously insulted her. When in despair he threatens to kill himself, she offers him one of her pistols. He is afterward found dead with Hedda's pistol discharged, and she, fearful of the scandal that will arise, ends her life with the other.

'Master Builder Solness' tells the story of the price of success: the ruin of many for the benefit of the one, and the impoverishment in heart and affections of the one, who must thus pay the penalty for his successes. Halvard Solness, the builder, step by step has fought his way to success; and in his desire to keep what he has gained he is wary and jealous of any possible competitor, and particularly of the coming generation, whom he recognizes as his enemies. His first concession to youth, in the person of Hilda Wangel, brings about his

own destruction. Hilda challenges him to perform again the feat of his earlier years. He accordingly climbs to the tower of his new house to place the garland upon the top, but grows giddy and falls headlong to the earth.

'Little Eyjolf' presents the problem of a loveless marriage. Little Eyjolf, the crippled son of Allmers and Rita, is drowned in the fjord. There are mutual recriminations, and the husband declares that they must henceforth live apart. Rita however begs that they may still live their lives together, and Allmers decides finally to remain; so that there is a gleam of hope in the dénouement. The problem is fundamentally that of 'A Doll's House,' but the reverse solution is much more hopeful, and possibly truer. This play seems to inculcate too a new principle in Ibsen's philosophy of life. While the others, one and all, turn upon the dissolution of modern society, constituted as it is, this unmistakably looks toward the possibility of its regeneration.

In 'John Gabriel Borkman,' his latest drama, Borkman is a bank official whose great money schemes lead him into dishonesty and disgrace. Estranged from his wife, he regards himself as more sinned against than sinning, and dreams of yet redeeming the past. The wife looks to their son to reinstate their name, but he forsakes her to make a runaway match. Borkman, incensed by both mother and son, wanders out, in a broken state of health, into a snowy winter's night, in company with his wife's sister, a former sweetheart whom he threw over for his ambition's sake; and he perishes there, the two women confronting each other across his body. The play has poetic suggestion, but is hardly plain in purpose,-one implication being that Borkman's greatest mistake was in putting ambition before love.

Ibsen's social dramas have carried his fame throughout the world, and a vast literature of translation and comment has arisen. Many of them, in Norway and out of it, have evoked loud protests of indignation at the drastic presentation of his problems, and he has been assailed as immoral, as a cynic and a pessimist. It is not impossible, however, to absolve him of each and all of these charges. Ibsen's whole problem, as it has well been stated, is the relation of the individual to his social and personal surroundings; these are studies accordingly in human responsibility, and the characters are intended to be types of the race in modern social conditions. Such conditions, moreover, in salient points Ibsen as diagnostician finds to be inherently bad, and fearlessly he puts his finger upon the sore spots to point out the danger they inevitably involve to the whole social body. Ibsen in this is the poet of protest, and his voice is that of one crying aloud against social hypocrisy and sophistry of whatever

sort it may be. He is not immoral, in that no one has ever made vice more repulsive, or by contrast virtue more attractive. When it is urged against him that he destroys but suggests no remedy, his critics have failed to apprehend the positive result of the lessons involved in this very destruction, whose causes he has rendered so apparent. He is not the mere cynic, for there is a whole galaxy of characters to draw upon one's sympathies. "Truth, freedom, and love," says his biographer, "are the three corner-stones of the edifice, noble in proportion and serious in purpose, that the poet has erected." Ibsen in the social dramas in many ways has struck the highest note of modern dramatic art. Primarily his manner of construction is analytic. He begins his plays where another dramatist would have ended them. Often the climax has occurred before the opening of the play, and the consequences accordingly form the subject-matter of the action. There is no place in his dramas for the purely conventional, and they bear characteristically the stamp of reality. Ibsen in all this is the creator of a school, whose teachings have left an indelible mark upon the literature of the century.

The following are the best works on Ibsen for the general reader: 'Henrik Ibsen' in 'Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century,' by Georg Brandes (New York: 1886); Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Biography,' by Henrik Jaeger (Chicago: 1890); A Commentary on the Writings of Henrik Ibsen,' by H. H. Boyesen (New York: 1894); 'Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen,' by R. H. Wicksteed (London: 1892). The most accessible edition of Ibsen's prose dramas is that translated by William Archer, in six volumes (New York: 1890-92).

WmSt. Carpenter.

FROM THE PRETENDERS'

The action passes in the first half of the Thirteenth Century. Present: Skule; Jatgeir the Skald, an Icelander; Paul Flida, a nobleman.

ATGEIR [enters from the back]-Forgive my coming, lord King. King Skule - You come to my wish, Skald!

J

Jatgeir-I overheard some townsfolk at my lodging talking darkly of

King Skule-Let that wait. Tell me, Skald, you who have fared far abroad in strange lands,- have you ever seen a woman love another's child? Not only be kind to it 'tis not that I mean; but love it, love it with the warmest passion of her soul.