I am not holding up _The Vikings_
as a great masterpiece; it has many weaknesses both of substance and of
method; but in this particular art of indistinguishably blending the
drama of the present with the drama of the past, it is already
consummate. _The Pretenders_ scarcely comes into the comparison. It is
Ibsen's one chronicle-play; and, like Shakespeare, he did not shrink
from employing a good deal of narrative, though his narratives, it must
be said, are always introduced under such circumstances as to make them
a vital part of the drama. It is when we come to the modern plays that
we find the poet falling back upon conventional and somewhat clumsy
methods of exposition, which he only by degrees, though by rapid
degrees, unlearns.
_The League of Youth_, as we have seen, requires no exposition. All we
have to learn is the existing relations of the characters, which appear
quite naturally as the action proceeds. But let us look at _Pillars of
Society_. Here we have to be placed in possession of a whole antecedent
drama: the intrigue of Karsten Bernick with Dina Dorf's mother, the
threatened scandal, Johan Toennesen's vicarious acceptance of Bernick's
responsibility, the subsidiary scandal of Lona Hessel's outburst on
learning of Bernick's engagement to her half-sister, the report of an
embezzlement committed by Johan before his departure for America.
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