ther play of Ibsen's attains the extraordinary compactness and
swiftness of 'Ghosts,' several of them approach closely to this
standard, the 'Master-Builder,' for example, 'Little Eyolf' and more
especially 'Rosmersholm,'--in which the author did not display on the
stage itself more than a half of the strong series of situations he had
devised to sustain the interest of the spectator and to elucidate his
underlying thesis. But Ibsen does not hold himself restricted to any one
formula; and sometimes he prefers, as in the 'Enemy of the People,' to
let the whole story unroll itself before the audience. Only slowly did
Ibsen come to a mastery of his own methods; and he had begun, in the
'League of Youth' and in the 'Pillars of Society' by doing what every
great dramatist had done before him,--by accepting the form worked out
by his immediate predecessors and adjusted to the actual theater of his
own time. Just as Shakspere followed the patterns set by Kyd and
Marlowe, by Lyly and Greene, just as Moliere copied the model ready to
his hand in the Italian comedy-of-masks, so Ibsen began by assimilating
the formulas which had approved themselves in France, the land where the
drama was flourishing most luxuriantly in the middle of the nineteenth
century, formulas devised by Scribe and only a little modified by Augier
and the younger Dumas.

III

For threescore years, at least, Scribe was the salient figure in the
French theater; and his influence endured more than twoscore years after
his death. He can be considered from discordant standpoints; to the men
of letters Scribe seems wholly unimportant, since his merits were in
great measure outside of literature; to the men of the theater Scribe is
a personality of abiding interest, since he put his mark on the drama of
his own day in almost every one of its departments. In the course of his
active career as a playwright he made over farce, first of all, then the
comedy-of-intrigue, and finally the comedy-of-manners; he tried his hand
at the historical play; and he was the chief librettist of the leading
French composers of opera, both grand and comic. He might lack style;
he might be barren of poetry; he might be void of philosophy; his
psychology might be pitifully inadequate; his outlook on life might be
petty;--but he was pastmaster of the theater, and from him were hidden
none of the secrets of that special art.

It was in Scribe's hands that there was worked out the formul