Here we have, I repeat, a typically dramatic theme: a
great crisis, bringing out vivid manifestations of character, not only
in the bankrupt himself, but in those around him, and naturally
unfolding itself through a series of those lesser crises, which we call
interesting and moving scenes. The play is scarcely a great one, partly
because its ending is perfunctory, partly because Bjoernson, poet though
he was, had not Ibsen's art of "throwing in a little poetry" into his
modern dramas. I have summarized it up to its culminating point, because
it happened to illustrate the difference between a bankruptcy, dramatic
in its nature and treatment, and those undramatic bankruptcies to which
reference has been made. In _La Douloureuse_, by Maurice Donnay,
bankruptcy is incidentally employed to bring about a crisis of a
different order. A ball is proceeding at the house of a Parisian
financier, when the whisper spreads that the host is ruined, and has
committed suicide in a room above; whereupon the guests, after a moment
of flustered consternation, go on supping and dancing![4] We are not at
all deeply interested in the host or his fortunes.
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