lmost
immediately in Denmark, Sweden and Norway; it had the good fortune to
be taken up warmly in Germany. What Ibsen's idea was, in the new sort of
realistic drama which he was inventing, was, in fact, perceived at once
by German audiences, although it was not always approved of. He was the
guest of the theatromaniac Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and _The Pillars of
Society_ was played in many parts of Germany. In Scandinavia the book of
the play sold well, and the piece had some success on the boards, but it
did not create anything like so much excitement as the author had hoped
that it would. Danish taste pronounced it "too German."

For the fact that _The Pillars of Society_, except in Scandinavia and
Germany, did not then, and never has since, taken a permanent hold
upon the theatre, Mr. William Archer gives a reason which cannot be
controverted, namely, that by the time the other foreign publics had
fully awakened to the existence of Ibsen, he himself had so far outgrown
the phase of his development marked by _Pillars of Society_, that the
play already seemed commonplace and old-fashioned. It exactly suited
the German public of the eighties; it was exactly on a level with their
theatrical intelligence. But it was above the theatrical intelligence of
the Anglo-American public, and... below that of the French public. This
is of course an exaggeration. What I mean is that there was no possible
reason why the countrymen of Augier and Dumas should take any special
interest in _Pillars of Society_. It was not obviously in advance of
these masters in technical skill, and the vein of Teutonic sentiment
running through it could not greatly appeal to the Parisian public of
that period.

The subject of _The Pillars of Society_ was the hollowness and
rottenness of those supports, and the severe and unornamented prose
which Ibsen now adopted was very favorable to its discussion. He was
accused, however, of having lived so long away from home as to have
fallen out of touch with real Norwegian life, which he studied in the
convex mirror of the newspapers. It is more serious objection to _The
Pillars of Society_ that in it, as little as in _The League of Youth_,
had Ibsen cut himself off from the traditions of the well-made play.
Gloomy and homely as are the earlier acts, Ibsen sees as yet no way
out of the imbroglio but that known to Scribe and the masters of the
"well-made" play. The social hypocrisy of Consul Bernick is condoned by