Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 9).djvu/19

 constitute the originality and greatness of the play is to be found in the actual circumstances. He remodelled the whole episode; it was plastic as a sculptor's clay in his hands; but doubtless it did give him something to seize upon and re-create. For the character of Rebecca, it is believed (on rather inadequate grounds, it seems to me) that Ibsen borrowed some traits from Charlotte Stieglitz, who committed suicide in 1834, in the vain hope of stimulating the intellectual activity of her husband, a minor poet.[1] For Ulric Brendel, Dr. Brahm relates that Ibsen found a model in an eccentric "dream-genius" known to him in Italy, who created only in his mind, and despised writing. But Brendel is so clearly a piece of the poet's own "devilment" as he used to call it, that it is rather idle to look for his "original." The scene of the play is said to have been suggested to Ibsen by an old family seat near Molde. Be this as it may, Dr. Brandes is certainly mistaken in declaring that there is no such "castle" as Rosmersholm in Norway, and thence arguing that Ibsen had begun to write for a cosmopolitan rather than a Norwegian audience. Rosmersholm is not a "castle" at all; and old houses such as Ibsen describes are far from uncommon.

Published on November 23, 1886, Rosmersholm was first acted in Bergen in January 1887, in Gothenburg in March, in Christiania and Stockholm not till April. Copenhagen did not see it until November 1887, when it was acted by a Swedish travelling company. Its first production in Germany took place at Augsburg in April 1887, the poet himself being present. It was

1 See note (in the Norwegian and German editions) to Ibsen's Letters, No. 146. As to Charlotte Stieglitz, see Brandes' Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, vol. vi., p. 296 (London, Heinemann, 1905).