The play consists of a
crisis in three lives, passively, though sympathetically, contemplated
by what is in effect a Chorus of two men and two women. It would be
interesting to inquire why, in this particular play, such an abuse of
the confidant seems quite admissible, if not conspicuously right.]
[Footnote 12: Dryden, in his _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, represents this
method as being characteristic of Greek tragedy as a whole. The tragic
poet, he says, "set the audience, as it were, at the post where the race
is to be concluded; and, saving them the tedious expectation of seeing
the poet set out and ride the beginning of the course, they suffer you
not to behold him, till he is in sight of the goal and just upon you."
Dryden seems to think that the method was forced upon them by "the rule
of time."]
[Footnote 13: It is a rash enterprise to reconstruct Ibsen, but one
cannot help wondering how he would have planned _A Doll's House_ had he
written it in the 'eighties instead of the 'seventies.
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