The interest of the present
action is throughout very vivid; but it is all rooted in facts and
relations of the past, which are elicited under circumstances of high
dramatic tension. Here again it is instructive to compare the scene
between Hedda and Thea, in the first act, with the scene between Nora
and Mrs. Linden. Both are scenes of exposition: and each is, in its way,
character-revealing; but the earlier scene is a passage of quite
unemotional narrative; the later is a passage of palpitating drama. In
the plays subsequent to _Hedda Gabler_, it cannot be denied that the
past took the upper hand of the present to a degree which could only be
justified by the genius of an Ibsen. Three-fourths of the action of _The
Master Builder_, _Little Eyolf_, _John Gabriel Borkman_, and _When We
Dead Awaken_, consists of what may be called a passionate analysis of
the past. Ibsen had the art of making such an analysis absorbingly
interesting; but it is not a formula to be commended for the practical
purposes of the everyday stage.
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