Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 7).djvu/18

 originally to have schemed a "happy ending," like that of The League of Youth or Pillars of Society. No doubt it is convenient, even for the purposes of the play as it stands, that all fear of hostile action on Krogstad's part should be dissipated before Nora and Helmer settle down to their final explanation; but is the convenience sufficiently great to account for the invention, to that end alone, of Mrs. Linden's relation to, and influence over, Krogstad? I very much question it. I think the "happy ending" which is actually reached when Krogstad returns the forged document was, in Ibsen's original conception, intended to be equivalent to the stopping of the Indian Girl, and the return of Olaf, in Pillars of Society—that is to say, it was to be the end of the drama properly so called, and the rest was to be a more or less conventional winding-up, a confession of faults on both sides, accompanied by mutual congratulations on the blowing-over of the threatened storm. This is the end which, as we see, every one expected: the end which adapters, in Germany, England, and elsewhere, insisted on giving to the play. There was just a shade of excuse for these gentlemen, inasmuch as the poet himself seemed to have elaborately prepared the way for them; and I suggest that the fact of his having done so shows that the play, in embryo, passed through the phase of technical development represented by Pillars of Society—the phase to which its amenders would have forced it to return. Ibsen, on the other hand, when he proceeded from planning in outline to creation in detail, found his characters outgrow his plot. When the action, in the theatrical sense, was over, they were only on the threshold of the essential drama; and in that drama, compressed