table enough. The saner part of Ellida's will was always on
Wangel's side; and a merely verbal undoing of the "bargain" with which
she reproached herself might quite naturally suffice to turn the scale
decisively in his favour. But what may suffice for Ellida is not enough
for the audience. Too much is made to hang upon a verbally announced
conversion. The poet ought to have invented some material--or, at the
very least, some impressively symbolic--proof of Wangel's change of
heart. Had he done so, _The Lady from the Sea_ would assuredly have
taken a higher rank among his works.

Let me further illustrate my point by comparing a very small thing with
a very great. The late Captain Marshall wrote a "farcical romance" named
_The Duke of Killiecrankie_, in which that nobleman, having been again
and again rejected by the Lady Henrietta Addison, kidnapped the obdurate
fair one, and imprisoned her in a crag-castle in the Highlands. Having
kept her for a week in deferential durance, and shown her that he was
not the inefficient nincompoop she had taken him for, he threw open the
prison gate, and said to her: "Go! I set you free!" The moment she saw
the gate unlocked, and realized that she could indeed go when and where
she pleased, she also realized that she had not the least wish to go,
and flung herself into her captor's arms. Here we have Ibsen's situation
transposed into the key of fantasy, and provided with the material
"guarantee of good faith" which is lacking in _The Lady from the Sea_.
The Duke's change of mind, his will to set the Lady Henrietta free, is
visibly demonstrated by the actual opening of the prison gate, so that
we believe in it, and believe that she believes in it. The play was a
trivial affair, and is deservedly forgotten; but the situation was
effective because it obeyed the law that a change of will or of feeling,
occurring at a crucial point in a dramatic action, must be certified by
some external evidence, on pain of leaving the audience unimpressed.

This is a more important matter than it may at first sight appear. How
to bring home to the audience a decisive change of heart is one of the
ever-recurring problems of the playwright's craft. In _The Lady from the
Sea_, Ibsen failed to solve it: in _Rosmersholm_ he solved it by heroic
measures. The whole catastrophe is determined by Rosmer's inability to
accept without proof Rebecca's declaration that Rosmersholm has
"ennobled" her, and that she is no