Dr. Stockmann is a vigorously-projected character, Hialmar
Ekdal a piece of searching psychology. Finally, my point could scarcely
be better illustrated than by a comparison--cruel but instructive
--between Rebecca in _Rosmersholm_ and the heroine in _Bella
Donna_. Each is, in effect, a murderess, though it was a moral, not a
mineral, poison that Rebecca employed. But while we know nothing
whatever of Mrs. Armine's mental processes, Rebecca's temptations,
struggles, sophistries, hesitations, resolves, and revulsions of feeling
are all laid bare to us, so that we feel her to be no monster, but a
living woman, comprehensible to our intelligence, and, however
blameworthy, not wholly beyond the range of our sympathies. There are
few greater achievements of psychology.
Among the playwrights of to-day, I should call Mr. Granville Barker
above all things a psychologist. It is his instinct to venture into
untrodden fields of character, or, at any rate, to probe deeply into
phenomena which others have noted but superficially, if at all.
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