This is a more important matter than it may at first sight appear. How
to bring home to the audience a decisive change of heart is one of the
ever-recurring problems of the playwright's craft. In _The Lady from the
Sea_, Ibsen failed to solve it: in _Rosmersholm_ he solved it by heroic
measures. The whole catastrophe is determined by Rosmer's inability to
accept without proof Rebecca's declaration that Rosmersholm has
"ennobled" her, and that she is no longer the same woman whose
relentless egoism drove Beata into the mill-race. Rebecca herself puts
it to him: "How can you believe me on my bare word after to-day?" There
is only one proof she can give--that of "going the way Beata went." She
gives it: and Rosmer, who cannot believe her if she lives, and will not
survive her if she dies, goes with her to her end. But the cases are not
very frequent, fortunately, in which such drastic methods of proof are
appropriate or possible. The dramatist must, as a rule, attain his end
by less violent means; and often he fails to attain it at all.
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