Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/32

xxviii does Ibsen do? He is not even content with the comparatively rational account of the matter given by Gregory within a few months of its occurrence. He adopts Ammian's later and much exaggerated account; he makes Jovian, who had nothing to do with the affair, avouch it with the authority of an eye-witness; and, to give the miracle a still more purposeful significance, he represents it as the instrument of the conversion of Jovian, who was to be Julian's successor, and the undoer of his work. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a quite admissible re-arrangement of history, designed to save the introduction of another character. But the very fact that the poet is, throughout the play, so obviously sacrificing dramatic economy and concentration to historic accuracy, renders this heightening of the alleged miracle something very like a falsification of evidence. It arises, of course, from no desire to be unjust to Julian, for whom Ibsen's sympathy remains unmistakable, but from a determination to make him the tragic victim of a World-Will pitilessly using him as an instrument to its far-off ends.

But this conception of a vague external power interfering at all sorts of critical moments to baffle designs of which, for one reason or another, it disapproves, belongs to the very essence of melodrama. Therefore the incident of the Temple of Jerusalem brings with it painful associations of The Sign of the Cross; and still more suggestive of that masterpiece is the downfall of the Temple of Apollo at Daphne which brings the second act of the Second Part to a close. Here the poet deliberately departs from history for the sake of a theatrical effect. The temple of Apollo was not destroyed by an earthquake, nor in any way that even suggested a miracle. It was simply