The one scene is outside
the real action, the other is an integral part of it. The one belongs to
Ibsen's tentative period, the other ushers in, one might almost say, his
period of consummate mastery.[13]
_Rosmersholm_ is so obviously nothing but the catastrophe of an
antecedent drama that an attempt has actually been made to rectify
Ibsen's supposed mistake, and to write the tragedy of the deceased
Beata. It was made by an unskilful hand; but even a skilful hand would
scarcely have done more than prove how rightly Ibsen judged that the
recoil of Rebecca's crime upon herself and Rosmer would prove more
interesting, and in a very real sense more dramatic, than the somewhat
vulgar process of the crime itself. The play is not so profound in its
humanity as _The Wild Duck_, but it is Ibsen's masterpiece in the art of
withdrawing veil after veil. From the technical point of view, it will
repay the closest study.
We need not look closely at the remaining plays. _Hedda Gabler_ is
perhaps that in which a sound proportion between the past and the
present is most successfully preserved.
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