Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 9).djvu/22

 series, it no less distinctly foreshadows the transition to the psychological series. Rosmer and Rebecca (or I am greatly mistaken) stand out from the social background much more clearly than their predecessors. They seem to grow away from it. At first they are concerned about political duties and social ideals; but, as the action proceeds, all these considerations drop away from them, or recur but as remembered dreams, and they are alone with their tortured souls. Then we cannot but note the intrusion of pure poetry—imagination scarcely deigning to allege a realistic pretext—in the personage of Ulric Brendel. He is of the same kindred as the Stranger in The Lady from the Sea, and the Rat-Wife in Little Eyolf. He marks Ibsen's final rebellion against the prosaic restrictions which, from Pillars of Society onwards, he had striven to impose upon his genius.

He was yet to write plays more fascinating than Romersholm, but none greater in point of technical mastery. It surpasses The Wild Duck in the simplicity of its material, and in that concentration which renders its effect on the stage, perhaps, a little monotonous, and so detracts from its popularity. In construction it is a very marvel of cunning complexity. It is the consummate example in modern times of the retrospective method of which, in ancient times, the consummate example was the Œdipus Rex. This method has been blamed by many critics; but the first great critic of English drama commended it in the practice of the ancient poets. "They set the audience, as it were," says Dryden, "at the post where the race is to be concluded." "In unskilful hands," I have said elsewhere, "the method might doubtless become very tedious; but when, as in Rosmersholm, every phase of the retrospect has a definite reaction upon the