26 MAY 1906, Page 3

The death of Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian poet and

dramatist, was announced on Wednesday. Though in his early days he wrote much verse of high imaginative quality, he abandoned this medium in middle life, and it was as a prose dramatist that he exerted an almost world-w?de influence, and became the most powerful and disturbing literary force of the last three decades. No author in our time has provoked more discussion or excited more sincere dislike ; no dramatist has more profoundly influenced the technique and methods of those who write for the stage.