Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 6).djvu/25

 Woman's Rights, and despiser of all feminine graces and foibles. But in the end it appears that her devotion to Bernick has been no less deep and enduring than Martha's devotion to Johan. Her "old friendship does not rust" is a delightful speech; but it points back to the Ibsen of the past, not forward to the Ibsen of the future. Yet this is not wholly true: for the strain of sentiment which inspired it never became extinct in the poet. He believed to the end in the possibility and the beauty of great self-forgetful human emotions; and there his philosophy went very much deeper than that of some of his disciples.

In consistency of style, and in architectural symmetry of construction, the play marks a great advance upon The League of Youth. From the end of the first act to the middle of the last, it is a model of skilful plot-development. The exposition, which occupies so much of the first act, is carried out by means of a somewhat cumbrous mechanism. No doubt the "Kaffee-Klatsch" is in great measure justified as a picture of the tattling society of the little town. It does not altogether ignore the principle of economy. But it is curious to note the rapid shrinkage in the poet's expositions. Here we have the necessary information conveyed by a whole party of subsidiary characters. In the next play, A Doll's House,—we have still a set exposition, but two characters suffice for it, and one the heroine. In the next play again—that is to say, in Ghosts—the poet has arrived at his own peculiar formula, and the exposition is indistinguishably merged in the action. Still greater is the contrast between the conclusion of Pillars of Society and that of A Doll's House. It would be too much to call