Shorter Notices
A FIRST-CLASS production of such a play as A Doll's House or The Lady from the Sea reveals many " moments of truth "—those deep and rewarding flashes of insight which both unclothe and prepare the human soul. Ibsen had the gift of being able to offer such moments in abundance ; and Dr. Northam, in this incisive, scholarly and detailed study, analyses the means by which he consciously strove to create so many of them. Ibsen, as dramatists have often done, created on several levels within a play at the same time ; and thus it was that while he created magnificent plays he uncovered, by the sheer intensity of his multilateral efforts, many of the effects he hoped he would produce. But there was much more to it than that. The subtle undertones, which embellished his plays and which have always stirred the senses of his audiences, were pro- duced by artifice—and also by a process of trial and error. It is the artifice and the trial and error which Dr. Northam investigates so carefully. Ibsen's plays are masterpieces because the author spared no trouble to make the smallest action of his characters significant. He created a sense of suggestion by the appropriate and telling use of costume, lighting effect, symbolical movement, stage setting and parallel situation. Dr. Northam has been able to find examples of symbolism in almost every stage direction, in almost every piece of stage property, and in every enigmatical remark. Twelve of lbsen's most famous plays are dissected in this book; and we are shown how the plays were evolved from notes and drafts (in the case of Hedda Gabler the notes were particularly ex- tensive). We are also shown how pains- takingly Ibsen worked and how profound an artist he was. The analysis we are offered is exhaustive ; but it is not an analysis that chills. The plays become, as a result of Dr. Northam 's lucidly expressed findings, all the more interesting and—it is a most pleasing fact—all the more consolatory.
D. S.
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