Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 2).djvu/33

 purely romantic ideals; but how exquisitely human is Margrete in comparison with the almost entirely conventional Dagny! The criticism of life, too, which in The Vikings is purely sentimental, here becomes intense and searching. The only point of superiority in The Vikings—if it be a point of superiority—is purely technical. The action of the earlier play is concentrated and rounded. It has all the "unity," or "unities," that a rational criticism can possibly demand. In a word, it is, in form as well as essence, an ideal tragedy. The Pretenders, on the other hand, is a chronicle-play, far more close-knit than Shakespeare's or Schiller's works in that kind, but, nevertheless, what Aristotle would call "episodic" in its construction. The weaving of the plot, however, is quite masterly, betokening an effort of invention and adjustment incomparably greater than that which went to the making of The Vikings. It was doubtless his training in the school of French intrigue that enabled Ibsen to depict with such astonishing vigour that master wire-puller, Bishop Nicholas. This form of technical dexterity he was afterwards to outgrow and bring into disrepute. But from The Vikings to Pillars of Society he practised, whenever he was writing primarily for the stage, the methods of the "well-made play"; and in everything but concentration, which