Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 9).djvu/33

 Escholiers," produced La Dame de la Mer in 1892. It was afterwards played, both in Paris and on tour, by the Théâtre de l'Œuvre. I find no record of performances in other countries.

The discovery that The Lady from the Sea was planned so early as 1880 is particularly interesting in view of the fact that, in technical concentration, and even, one is inclined to say, in intellectual power, it falls notably below the level of its immediate predecessors, The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm, and its immediate successors, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder. It would scarcely be going too far to call it the weakest thing Ibsen produced between A Doll's House and John Gabriel Borkman, both inclusive. I well remember the sense of slackening dramatic fibre with which I read it on its first appearance; the fear that age was beginning to tell upon the poet; and the relief with which I found him, in Hedda Gabler, once more at the very height of his power. Some readers may take exception to this view, and declare that they prefer The Lady from the Sea to several of the plays which I would rank above it. In point of amenity and charm, it doubtless ranks high among Ibsen's works; its poetic merits are great; but the comparative laxity of its technique seems to me quite unmistakable. The main interest—the Ellida-Wangel interest, let us call it—is constantly being interrupted by two subsidiary interests: the Arnholm-Boletta interest, and the Boletta-Hilda-Lyngstrand interest. These lines of interest touch each other, but are not effectually interwoven. In no other play of Ibsen's, in fact, since The League of Youth, is there such a marked sub-plot, or, rather, two sub-plots; and, for my part, judging them by the high Ibsen standard, I find neither of these sub-plots particularly interesting.