ors have time to grasp the
reasons for these deeds, which therefore appear to be arbitrary. There
is a hectic flush of romanticism in this play, not discernible in any
other of Ibsen's social dramas, a perfervidness, an artificiality,
which may not interfere with the interest of the story but which must
detract from its plausibility at least and from its ultimate value.

VII

Whatever inconsistencies may be detected now and again by a minute
analysis of motive,--and after all these inconsistencies are slight and
infrequent,--the characters that Ibsen has brought upon the stage have
one unfailing characteristic: they are intensely interesting. They are
not mere puppets moved here and there by the visible hand of the
playwright; they are human beings, alive in every nerve, and obeying
their own volition. The breath of life has been breathed into them; they
may be foolish or morbid, headstrong or perverse, illogical or fanatic,
none the less are they real, vital, actual. And this is the reason why
actors are ever eager for the chance to act them. Where Scribe and
Sardou and the manufacturers of the "well-made play" give the performers
only effective parts, to be presented as skilfully as might be, Ibsen
has proffered to them genuine characters to get inside of as best they
could,--characters not easy to personate, indeed, often obscure and
dangerous. Because of this danger and this doubt, they are all the more
tempting to the true artist, who is ever on the alert for a tussle with
technical difficulty. The men and women who people Ibsen's plays are
never what the slang of the stage terms "straight parts"; they are never
the traditional "leading man" and "leading woman"; in a sense they are
all of them, male and female, young and old, "character parts," complex,
illusive, alluring. They are not readily mastered, for they keep on
revealing fresh possibilities the more searchingly they are studied; and
this is why the reward is rich, when the actor has been able at last to
get inside of them.

Even when he has done this, when he has put himself into "the skin of
the personage" (to borrow the illuminating French phrase), the actor
cannot be certain that his personation is finally right. No one of
Ibsen's characters is presented in profile only, imposing its sole
interpretation on the baffled performer. Every one of them is rounded
and various, like a man in real life, to be seen from contradictory
angles and to be approac