structive to compare the scene
between Hedda and Thea, in the first act, with the scene between Nora
and Mrs. Linden. Both are scenes of exposition: and each is, in its way,
character-revealing; but the earlier scene is a passage of quite
unemotional narrative; the later is a passage of palpitating drama. In
the plays subsequent to _Hedda Gabler_, it cannot be denied that the
past took the upper hand of the present to a degree which could only be
justified by the genius of an Ibsen. Three-fourths of the action of _The
Master Builder_, _Little Eyolf_, _John Gabriel Borkman_, and _When We
Dead Awaken_, consists of what may be called a passionate analysis of
the past. Ibsen had the art of making such an analysis absorbingly
interesting; but it is not a formula to be commended for the practical
purposes of the everyday stage.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: Writing of _Le Supplice d'une Femme_, Alexandre Dumas
_fils_ said: "This situation I declare to be one of the most dramatic
and interesting in all drama. But a situation is not an idea. An idea,
has a beginning, a middle and an end: an exposition, a development, a
conclusion. Any one can relate a dramatic situation: the art lies in
preparing it, getting it accepted, rendering it possible, especially in
untying the knot."]

[Footnote 2: This is what we regard as peculiarly the method of Ibsen.
There is, however, this essential difference, that, instead of narrating
his preliminaries in cold blood, Ibsen, in his best work, _dramatizes_
the narration.]

[Footnote 3: See Chapter XII.]

[Footnote 4: This must not be taken to imply that, in a good
stage-version of the play, Fortinbras should be altogether omitted. Mr.
Forbes Robertson, in his Lyceum revival of 1897, found several
advantages in his retention. Among the rest, it permitted the retention
of one of Hamlet's most characteristic soliloquies.]

[Footnote 5: I omit all speculation as to the form which the story
assumed in the _Ur-Hamlet_. We have no evidence on the point; and, as
the poet was no doubt free to remodel the material as he thought fit,
even in following his original he was making a deliberate
artistic choice.]

[Footnote 6: Shakespeare committed it in _Romeo and Juliet_, where he
made Friar Laurence, in the concluding scene, retell the whole story of
the tragedy. Even in so early a play, such a manifest redundancy seems
unaccountable. A narrative of things already seen may,