Perhaps the most striking peripety in Ibsen is
Stockmann's fall from jubilant self-confidence to defiant impotence in
the third act of _An Enemy of the People_. Thinking that he has the
"compact majority" at his back, he assumes the Burgomaster's insignia of
office, and lords it over his incensed brother, only to learn, by blow
on blow of disillusionment, that "the compact majority" has ratted, that
he is to be deprived of his position and income, and that the commonest
freedom of speech is to be denied him. In _A Doll's House_ there are two
peripeties: Nora's fall from elation to despair in the first scene with
Krogstad, and the collapse of Helmer's illusions in the last scene
of all.
A good instance of the "great scene" which involves a marked peripety
occurs in Sardou's _Dora_, once famous in England under the title of
_Diplomacy_. The "scene of the three men" shows how Tekli, a Hungarian
exile, calls upon his old friend Andre de Maurillac, on the day of
Andre's marriage, and congratulates him on having eluded the wiles of a
dangerous adventuress, Dora de Rio-Zares, by whom he had once seemed to
be attracted.
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