IBSEN'S NEW PLAY.*

THAT some of Ibsen's plays are in a high degree interesting and exciting it is impossible to doubt. We may hate their morbid frenzy, we may despise their absence of all heroic feeling, we may be disgusted by their squalid and unholy pessimism, and we may even feel a certain sense of contempt for the "dance of sundry sorts of madmen" which revolves in their scenes and acts, but we cannot deny the fascina- tion that they occasionally exert. In a sense they are intolerable, but in another sense some of them are exceedingly attractive. Whence comes this attraction ? It comes from two facts. In the first place, Ibsen is a great story-teller under dramatic forms. Next, he is keenly interested in the great problems of life,— tiot interested, it may be, in trying to solve them or even in trying to understand them, but in putting them before us in a. striking form,—in tickling our fancies, that is, with all the thoughts that crowd around those problems. Milton makes the devils in his hell debate of "fate

• John Gabriel Borkman : a Play in Four Acts. By Henrik Iloen. Translated from the Norwegian by William Archer. London : W. Heinemann.

and free-will in wandering mazes lost." Doubtless they found the discussion exceedingly fascinating, and so do men and women of all sorts and kinds, good, bad, and indifferent. Ibsen knows this fact, and rightly makes full use of it. But this, it may be said, is elementary. All tragic—nay, all serious dramatic—writers find their material in the problems of existence. The cleverness of Ibsen con- sists in being at the same time a most accomplished story- teller. He first constructs for us a most thrilling and exciting tale, and then, as it were, impregnates the whole with allusions and suggestions that raise the great problems of which we speak. Yet the story is never lost in, or overloaded by, the problems, but is quite capable of standing alone. A man of an earlier generation almost problem-blind-0 fortunate Senex ! —might read an Ibsen play, miss all the inner meanings, and yet be delighted. The plays are thus like a piece of silk which, looked at in one way, seems a plain blue. Looked at in another you see that it is shot through with crimson. To obtain this result Ibsen often has recourse to symbolism. If the suggestion of the great problem is not to be obtained in sufficient quantities by other means, it is secured by a system of symbolical actions, characters, and speeches. But this does not exhaust the artifices by means of which Ibsen fascinates us. If his plays are shot through with problems, they are sometimes shot through with poetry as well. Phrases such as the "harps in the air" of the Master Builder, or the "gold and the green forests" of Little Eyolf, make the surroundings of the dreary and demented inhabitants of suburban Norway glow with the authentic fire of the Edda. Unless it be Shakespeare himself there is no poet who can so suddenly and so inevitably—

nay, even so irrelevantly—call down Apollo's fire from heaven. Most poets cannot work the spell unless they take us into the woods and fields, or place us among heroic souls. Ibsen can filch the fire and set it blazing in the patent iron stove of some middle-class gentleman in a sorry modern villa.

We have said enough to explain Ibsen's occasional power of fascinating and attracting. Whence comes the equally potent power of repulsion which he exercises ? Why does he depress us and make us angry and disgusted even while he interests us so keenly? Why do we rise even from his ablest plays with the feeling that we have seen or read a story of despic- able 'people in a despicable world, told by an art which, in spite of its subtlety and cleverness, is hardly less despicable ? Why, in a word, does he make us feel, as long as we are under the spell, that man is a shameful animal, the world a madhouse or worse, and all human endeavour but the painful and in.. effectual desire of a parasitic insect to feed a little better and lie a little snugger or scramble about a little more wildly and more freely before it returns to the offal from which it sprung ? A. pedantic disciple of Aristotle would tell us it was because Ibsen raises, and raises violently, the emotions of pity and terror without contriving to satisfy them. Hence these emotions tear and rend us till exhausted we are betrayed into the hell of pessimism. Perhaps the pedant would be right. Modern readers will not, however, be satisfied with that answer. In our opinion Ibsen's plays are so intolerable because they are humanly deformed. They entirely leave out some of the greatest factors in existence. Practically the sense of duty is unknown to them. The men and women who command our attention act from love, from hate, from pity, from the will of destiny, from hereditary impulses, from the desire to feel and live more keenly, never from the sense of duty. Poor half- witted Mrs. Solness says that it is her simple duty to buy a supply of clothes for the female cuckoo who has entered her house, but of that sense of duty which in life stands, God be thanked, above creeds and forms, and moves even strong and selfish and evil men, we hear nothing. As a motive force in the world it is ignored. Faith, hope, and charity are equally left outside. They have clearly no place in the universe as reflected in Ibsen's plays. Watery and per- verse reflections of them no doubt sometimes cross the stage, but only for an instant. Of faith that the world, in spite of appearances, is not an ant-heap, and that what is right and true must win at last, there is none. Hope is a contradiction in terms in a realm peopled by Soluess, Hedda Gabler, Rebecca West, or the Borkman family. Charity, the love which is not inspired by instincts such as those of parentage —instincts which, however noble in themselves, are still only instincts—is without meaning for old people whose first desire is to enthral the young, and for young people whose deter-

mination is at all hazards to live their own lives. What have we as a substitute for these great forces, and for the sense of duty ? Nothing but "headlong fate." Destiny, destiny, and again destiny, is Ibsen's final word. Men and women are all immersed in a swift river, which is hurrying them to the waterfall beyond whose edge no eye can pierce. They play, it it true, some fantastic antics as they struggle in the water, and seem to mean much by their struggles; but in reality they are only obeying the eddies in the stream. Some splash in one direction and some in another ; but for each and all there is but one end.

But we must not forget that our object is rather to take note of Ibsen's new play, John Gabriel Borkman, than to make a general study of Ibsen. Let us say without further delay that it is a most characteristic work. The story is one well suited to dramatic narrative, and is told with a, superb mastery of the dramatic art. We defy any critic, however dexterous or ingenious, to say how the plot chosen could have been better or more tellingly unfolded. We will not tell the story of the play, except to note that its motive is the struggle between youth and age. A group of people—a father, a mother, and a maiden aunt—Ibsen is never afraid of the commonplace—for various reasons each desire that the young man of the piece shall take up a certain attitude. The father, who is a fraudulent bank director, wants his son to help him to regain his power ; the mother, who hates the father, wants her son to restore the name and fame of the family by becoming a man of good and high repute ; the aunt, who brought the boy up, and loves him, wants him to take her name and her money, and to live under her influence. On the night on which all these desires are focussed on the boy, and he is asked to choose his part, he announces that he is just about to elope with a married woman. He wants to lead his own life, he pleads, to get happiness if he can, and not to be buried in any other personality. This is the baldest possible skeleton of the play. It leaves out the fact that the fraudulent banker had first been engaged to marry the maiden aunt, but had renounced her hand and bad married her sister instead, because he wanted to gain the help of a certain man who loved his first love. He sacrificed his love to a business con- nection. The dialogue in which this fact is conveyed is one of the ablest pieces of writing in the play :— " BORKMAN. Deserted you, you say ? You must know very well that it was higher motives—well then, other motives that com- pelled me. Without his support I couldn't have done anything.

ELLA RENTIIEIM. [Controlving herself.] So you deserted me from—higher motives.

BOEICATAN. I could not get on without his help. And he made you the price of helping me.

ELLA RENTHEIM. And you paid the price. Paid it in full— without haggling.

BoiticatAN. I had no choice. I had to conquer or fall.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [In a trenthling voice, looking at him.] Can what ycn tell me be true—that I was then the dearest thing in the world to you ?

BORKMAN. Both then and afterwards—long, long after.

ELLA RENTHEIM. But you bartered me away none the less ; drove a bargain with another man for your love. Sold my love for a—for a directorship.

BORKMAN. [Gloomily and bowed down.] I was driven by inexorable necessity, Ella.

ELLA RENTMEIII. [Rises from the sofa, quivering with passion.] Criminal !

BORIOLAN. [Starts, but controls himself.] I have heard that word before.

ELLA RENTHEIM. Oh, don't imagine I'm thinking of anything you may have done against the law of the land ! The use you made of all those vouchers and securities, or whatever you call them—do you think I care a straw about that ! If I could have stood at your side when the crash came- BORBMAN. [Eagerly.] What then, Ella ? ELLA RENTHEIX. Trust me, I should have borne it all so gladly along with you. The shame, the ruin—I would have helped you to bear it all—all !

BOREMAN. Would you have had the will—the strength ? ELLA RENTHEIM. Both the will and the strength. For then I did not know of your great, your terrible crime. BOI1EMAN. What crime ? What are you speaking of ? ELLA RENTHEIM. I am speaking of that crime for which there is no forgiveness. BonitiaAN. [Staring at her.] You must be out of your mind. ELLA RENTHEIX. [Approaching him.] You are a murderer ! You have committed the one mortal sin ! Ella!BORKMAN. [Palling back towards the piano.] You are raving, ELLA RENTHEIH. You have killed the love-life in me. [Still nearer him.] Do you understand what that means ? The Bible apeaks of a mysterious sin for which there is no forgiveness. I have never understood what it could be ; but now I understand. The great, unpardonable sin is to murder the love-life it a human soul. BOERMAN. And you say I have done that ?

ELLA RENTHEIM. You have done that. I have never rightly understood until this evening what had really happened to me. That you deserted me and turned to Gunhild instead—I took that to be mere common fickleness on your part, and the result of heartless scheming on hers. I almost think I despised you a little, in spite of everything. But now I see it ! You deserted the woman you loved ! Me, me, me ! What you held dearest in the world you were ready to barter away for gain. That is the double murder you have committed ! The murder of your own soul and of mine !

BORKMAN. [With cold self-control.] How well I recognise your passionate, ungovernable spirit, Ella. No doubt its natural enough that you should look at the thing in this light. Of course, you're a woman, and it appears that your own heart is the one thing you know or care about in the world. ELLA RENTHEIM. Yes, yes it is.

BM:LEMAN. Your own heart is the only thing that exists for you. ELLA. RENTHEIM. The only thing ! The only thing ! You're right there.

BOHEMIAN. But you must remember that I am a man. As a. woman, you were the dearest thing in the world to me. But if the worst comes to the worst, one woman can always take the place of another.

ELLA RENTHEIM. [Looks at him with a smile.] Was that your experience when you had made Gunhild your wife ?

B0E/KHAN. No. But the great aims I had in life helped me to bear even that. I wanted to have at my command all the sources of power in this country. All the wealth that lay hidden in the soil, and the rocks, and the forests, and the sea— I wanted to gather it all into my hands, to make myself master of it all, and so to promote the well-being of many, many thousands."

With this much of notice we mint close our account of a very remarkable and a very unpleasant play. Who can doubt that the dialogue we have just quoted is full of the genius of dramatic narrative ?