These two are _The League of Youth_ and _An Enemy of the
People_. In neither of these have any antecedents to be stated; neither
turns upon any disclosure of bygone events or emotions. We are, indeed,
afforded brief glimpses into the past both of Stensgaard and of
Stockmann; but the glimpses are incidental and inessential. It is
certainly no mere coincidence that if one were asked to pick out the
pieces of thinnest texture in all Ibsen's mature work, one would
certainly select these two plays. Far be it from me to disparage _An
Enemy of the People_; as a work of art it is incomparably greater than
such a piece as _Pillars of Society_; but it is not so richly woven,
not, as it were, so deep in pile. Written in half the time Ibsen usually
devoted to a play, it is an outburst of humorous indignation, a _jeu
d'esprit_, one might almost say, though the _jeu_ of a giant _esprit_.
Observing the effect of comparative tenuity in these two plays, we
cannot but surmise that the secret of the depth and richness of texture
so characteristic of Ibsen's work, lay in his art of closely
interweaving a drama of the present with a drama of the past.
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