nts of just so much and no more of the soul.

Yet there are no great characters in Ibsen; and do not great characters
still exist? Ibsen's exceptional people never authenticate themselves as
being greatly exceptional; their genius is vouched for on a report which
they are themselves unable to confirm, as in the inarticulate poet
Loevborg, or on their own assertion, as with John Gabriel Borkman, of
whom even Dr. Brandes admits, 'His own words do not convince me, for
one, that he has ever possessed true genius.' When he is most himself,
when he has the firmest hold on his material, Ibsen limits himself to
that part of the soul which he and science know. By taking the average
man as his hero, by having no hero, no villain, only probable levels, by
limiting human nature to the bounds within which he can clinically
examine it, he shirks, for the most part, the greatest crisis of the
soul. Can the greatest drama be concerned with less than the ultimate
issues of nature, the ultimate types of energy? with Lear and with
Oedipus? The world of Shakespeare and of the Greeks is the world; it
is universal, whether Falstaff blubbers in the tavern or Philoctetes
cries in the cave. But the world which Ibsen really knows is that little
segment of the world which we call society; its laws are not those of
nature, its requirements are not the requirements of God or of man; it
is a business association for the capture and division of profits; it
is, in short, a fit subject for scientific study, but no longer a part
of the material of poetry. The characteristic plays of Ibsen are rightly
known as 'social dramas.' Their problem, for the main part, is no longer
man in the world, but man in society. That is why they have no
atmosphere, no background, but are carefully localised.

The rhythm of prose is physiological; the rhythm of poetry is musical.
There is in every play of Ibsen a rhythm perfect of its kind, but it is
the physiological rhythm of prose. The rhythm of a play of Shakespeare
speaks to the blood like wine or music; it is with exultation, with
intoxication, that we see or read _Antony and Cleopatra_, or even
_Richard II_. But the rhythm of a play of Ibsen is like that of a
diagram in Euclid; it is the rhythm of logic, and it produces in us the
purely mental exaltation of a problem solved. These people who are seen
so clearly, moving about in a well-realised world, using probable words
and doing necessary things, may owe some of th