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EUROPEAN 
 DRAMATISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 *• GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: HIS LIFE AND WORKS," 
 
 "MARK TWAIN," "INTERPRETERS 
 
 OF LIFE," ETC. 
 
 CINCINNATI 
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
Copyright, 191 3, by 
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Copyright in England 
 
 ~m~oT~^ 
 
 ist edition December, 1913 
 2nd edition August, 1914 
 

 
 TO 
 
 "MUDZIE" 
 -the loveliest lady who ever added the wisdom of 
 the new thought to the charm of the old 
 manner - this discussion of the 
 newest thinkers is dedi- 
 cated in love and 
 admiration. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The first essay In the present volume has not 
 hitherto appeared in print. The four following 
 essays, fully revised, are reprinted from my *'Inter- 
 preters of Life, and the Modern Spirit," now out of 
 print. The last essay appeared in the Forum (New 
 York) and the Mercure de France (Paris). For 
 permission to reproduce fragments of essays form- 
 erly published I am indebted to the editors of the 
 Deutsche Revue (Stuttgart and Berlin), Mercure de 
 France (Paris), La Societe Nouvelle (Ghent and 
 Paris), Finsk Tidskrift (Helsingfors), Illustreret 
 Tidende (Stockholm), Atlantic Monthly (Bos- 
 ton), Arena (Boston), North American Review 
 (New York), Bookman (New York), Sewanee Re- 
 view (Sewanee and New York). 
 
 Archibald Henderson. 
 
 Fordell 
 
 Chapel Hill, N. C. 
 
^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 August Strindberg 3 
 
 Henrik Ibsen 75 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck i99 
 
 Oscar Wilde 253 
 
 Bernard Shaw 323 
 
 Granville Barker . ..: ..: ..: :.j ;• .... 365 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 The supreme goal of the great literature of our 
 era has been and remains the expression, in some 
 form of final artistic denotement, of the struggle of 
 the ego at self-realization. This recurrent note in 
 the eternal symphony of life rings out again and 
 again in the authentic, harmonic intuitions of the 
 supermen of contemporary thought, philosophy and 
 art. This dionysian searching after the divine in 
 the human, this headlong struggle for the exaltation 
 of the individual soul to the heights of superhuman 
 conquest and super-moral ethics, is the sign-manual 
 of the daemonic dissonance and spiritual chaos of 
 to-day. That free and daring individualist, philo- 
 sophic progenitor of Nietzsche and contemporary 
 anarchism, Max Stirner, repudiated the claims of the 
 species in behalf of the ideal of Man, the individual. 
 The realization of man as the generally human was 
 abandoned for the sake of the realization of man 
 as the anarchic unit of life. " I am my own species, 
 without law, without model " — such is the clamant 
 individualism of Stirner. 
 
 From Stirner and his ultimate philosophy of the 
 
 8 
 
4 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 autonomous will, stem the clamant and revolutionary 
 forms of contemporary egoism, Individualism and 
 spiritual anarchism. With Nietzsche entered into 
 modern consciousness the sense of a superhuman 
 ideal for man, springing phoenix-like from the ashes 
 of universal illuslonism, the relativity of the con- 
 cepts of good and evil, the fundamental amoralism 
 of Nature. In Halvard Solness, Ibsen presents the 
 disquieting figure of the superman in embryo, vainly 
 seeking that freedom which Nietzsche defined as the 
 will to be responsible for one's self. The happiest 
 of the optimists, Maeterlinck, who suavely wrests 
 consolation from the very thought of dissolution, 
 has succumbed to the pressure of the new ideal in 
 the words : " There is more active charity in the 
 egoism of a strenuous, far-seeing soul than in all the 
 devotion of a soul that is helpless and blind.'' Ber- 
 nard Shaw, the Socialist, with his inherent sense of 
 the Inter-dependence of all the units of society, never- 
 theless Is driven to the Ideal of the human tempera- 
 ment, guided by passion and operating instinctively. 
 From the Life Force of Shaw, the elan vital of Berg- 
 son, emerges the Identical concept of creative evolu- 
 tion — the individual soul, continually creating be- 
 yond himself, " rising above himself to himself," in 
 the struggle to attain the supreme, Ineluctable pur- 
 poses of Life. 
 
 From the study of the work of August Strindberg, 
 the spiritual autobiography of the greatest subjec- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 A 
 
 t iyist of m odem times, there emerges the Inevitable 
 conviction that here is, in a spiritual sense, a tenta- 
 tive incarnation of the superhuman ideals of con- 
 temporary thought and sensibility. Above all the 
 dissonances of that inharmonious and jangled ex- 
 istence sounds the clear strain of persistently lofty 
 [idealism. This figure of strenuous mental vitality, ^ 
 of transcendent spiritual energy, thrilled with the 
 towering ambition of the individual will, tumultuous, 
 passionate, unstable. And yet the alluring contours 
 of his art-work are chiseled with the cold, merciless 
 steel of the sculptor-analyst. In conjunction with 
 this towering ambition is discernible the supersensi- 
 tiveness of the shy, wild, primitive creature, cower- 
 ing beneath " all the weary weight of this unintel- 
 ligible world." In inexplicable union are found the 
 arrogant individualist, shyly naive even to very char- 
 latanry, and the intuitive subjectivist, ruthlessly ex- 
 posing to view the tragedies of humanity and the 
 antinomies of his own soul. Strindberg is the con- 
 genital dualist of our epoch — a dualist in every 
 faintest manifestation of his nature. In him the 
 spirit eternally warred against the flesh, the flesh 
 against the spirit. The incarnation of that pure 
 energy, dionyslan In origin, which Blake described as 
 eternal delight, Strindberg shrinklngly sought refuge 
 from the storms of life in the haven of mysticism 
 and occultism. As artist, the paradox of his dualism 
 is no less astounding; for the integrity of his in- 
 
^ 
 
 6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tellect, in achieving the realism of fact, is equalled 
 only by the Intuitive power of his artistry, in sensing 
 the Illusory and the romantic. His whole life was 
 a passionately defiant assertion of the individual will; 
 and yet he eternally bore the burden of the disillu- 
 sioned idealist, sardonically delineating the dread- 
 ful, inescapable obligations of contemporary civiliza- 
 tion. With high, tragic mien he walked the painful 
 path to the scene of his own self-crucifixion, search- 
 ing for God if haply he might find Him ; and yet this 
 relentless searcher for the good had his gaze 
 eternally fixed upon evil and the source of evil. 
 Like another Dante, he haunted the shades of a 
 modern Inferno ; but, unlike Dante, in searching for 
 God he found the devil. In his sympathetic con- 
 templation of the tragedy of human destiny, is felt 
 the strange, sweet pathos of one who is somehow 
 strong and good; yet evil, the knowledge of evil, so 
 obsessed his consciousness that he stands forth to- 
 day as that artist of modern times whose power of 
 painting the evil genius of humanity, of turning up 
 the seamy side of the garment of life for our horri- 
 fied yet fascinated contemplation, is unique and in- 
 comparable. In his lifetime, he sought to annex the 
 entire domain of the human spirit; and yet this 
 search for cosmopolitan culture, for the highest, 
 deepest reaches of the artistic consciousness, left him 
 as it found him, a plebeian of the soul. It Is scarcely 
 an exaggeration to affirm that Strindberg is the 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 7 
 
 diarist, one had almost said, the journalist of per- 
 sonal consciousness. A great artist with all the 
 allure of genius — tainted with the dross of char- 
 latanry and arrogance. Like another Knute, he 
 bade the waves of life to recede; but for all his cate- 
 gorical imperative, life in the event still obdurately 
 refused to do his imperious bidding. He was like 
 a brilliant comet out of the North, flaming across 
 the contemporary consciousness with radiant corus- 
 cations, leaving behind, in its extinguishment, a 
 deeper, more chaotic gloom. 
 
 II 
 
 This country has for long paid the penalty for the 
 popular, insistent demand that, in analyzing the great 
 contemporary writers who have given rise to the in- 
 tellectual and spiritual ferment of modern Europe, 
 our native critics must carefully skirt the deeper 
 sources and causes of the peculiar manifestations, 
 indicia, hallucinations, stigmata, of genius. Ac- 
 companying this pressure of public opinion is the 
 equally Insistent convention that European figures 
 must be presented to us solely as leaders in ten- 
 dency, specialists In morbidity, heralds and promul- 
 gators of aberrant and distorted theories of conduct i ^ 
 and philosophies of life. In consequence, the mean- | 1 
 ing and significance of so important a spiritual mani- 
 festation as was August Strindberg is totally evaded 
 and missed. In particular by those who seek to pan- 
 
8 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 der to popular standards by emasculating him of the 
 barbaric, virile qualities which constitute his most 
 persistent temperamental fascination. In the dry, 
 hard silhouette, projected for American inspection, 
 there has been no adequate perspective, no subtle 
 delineation, no rendition of the composite and mul- 
 tiple shades of his nature, character, and spiritual 
 physiognomy. From time to time one has heard 
 faint rumors of a Swedish madman who was married 
 thrice In proof of his hatred of women; a gruesome 
 naturalist who was so obsessed with the mania of 
 sex aversion that he achieved European notoriety by 
 depicting all women as beasts of prey ; an hallucinated 
 mystic who found his Intellectual level In the fumts- 
 teries of Sar Peladan; an egoist who was so self- 
 assertive, so dogmatic In his assertions, so ineffably 
 vain that he devoted his life to heaping scorn and 
 ridicule upon all the rest of the world, pouring out 
 upon them the vials of his vulgar wrath and con- 
 tempt. At last, the moment Is arriving when the 
 first promise of adequate Interpretation and appre- 
 ciation of Strindberg is coming to fulfil itself. 
 Plays revealing various sides of his multiplex genius, 
 the burning Intensity, the marvellous realism, sub- 
 limated by the Inspiration of a hidden mystic feel- 
 ing, the ruthless naivete Irradiated with powerfully 
 vibrant temperament, are now accessible to Ameri- 
 can readers, through the painstaking labor of de- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 9 
 
 voted translators.^ Less rarely now are given, 
 under semi-professional or even experimental, popu- 
 lar conditions, productions of the plays least foreign 
 to the taste presumed to be characteristically Ameri- 
 can, notably The Father, Miss Julia, The Stronger, 
 and Pariah. The promise of translations of the 
 most significant and self-revelatory of the novels and 
 short stories, now being realized, may go far to- 
 wards giving form and color to the figure of Strind- 
 berg, and enabling us to arrest and fix the alterna- 
 tions of light and shade, the fluctuations and play of 
 motives, the spiritual chiaroscuro of his intimately 
 confessed, tragic, morbid life. It may then dawn 
 upon the consciousness of the English-speaking 
 world that this red specter, Strindberg, the bogy of 
 feminist hysteria, was a soul " wind-beaten, but as- 
 
 1 The pioneering work of Mr. Edwin Bjorkraan, the Swedish- 
 American critic, both as interpreter and translator, is deserving 
 of high praise. He has achieved terse, clear-cut translations, at 
 times deficient in the flexibility of conversational English, at times 
 too colloquial in tone. As an interpreter, he is lucid and sympa- 
 thetic; yet toward the grave shortcomings of his fellow country- 
 man, Strindberg, whom he seems to regard as an Olympian " tend- 
 ency " phenomenon, he is too insistently apologetic. A debt of 
 gratitude we owe to Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard for her im- 
 portant service in accentuating the bright, cheerful side of Strind- 
 berg in the selection for translation of Lucky Pehr, Easter and 
 some of the more charming sketches; her translations are singu- 
 larly free and graceful. There are other translators of Strind- 
 berg's plays; their contributions, by no means negligible, are in the 
 main quite lacking in literary distinction. 
 
lo EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 cending " ; a creative thinker essentially strong in 
 character if not always delicate in tone; an Investi- 
 gator with a scientific equipment of no mean order; 
 a seeker, a delver in the mysteries of both matter and 
 soul; critic, historian, philosophic experimentalist, a 
 titan in imagination. This titanic figure, embodying a 
 life of truly protean productivity, roughly ex- 
 pressed in the fifty odd volumes of his works now 
 publishing, has entered into the world-consciousness 
 of modern Europe, bequeathing to this and subse- 
 quent generations the herculean task of elucidating 
 countless unsolved problems, hazards, dubieties, hy- 
 potheses, riddles, and enigmas. 
 
 Ill 
 
 *^_The life of August Strlndberg is so predominantly 
 chaotic^ the lines of his career run in such amazing 
 zig-zag, his personality is so rich, his temperament 
 so volcanic, that It seems to defy analysis, or even 
 adequate comprehension. The dualism of his nature 
 is so persistently assertive that it is hazardous to 
 attribute to Strlndberg some trait or quality, solely 
 upon the evidence of any single work of his, how- 
 ever authentic or artistically final. It is only after 
 the whole amazing drama of his variegated life and 
 disparate achievements lies before us in its entirety 
 that we are enabled to gather up the far-flung and 
 scattered threads, to weave them into some sort of 
 credible pattern which may serve as the design of 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG ii 
 
 his life. For his was a life compact of struggle 
 and resignation, conflict and reconciliation. Only 
 through the most precise, sympathetic and unpreju- 
 diced contemplation can we chart the shifting vital 
 currents of his psychic evolution by the moored 
 buoys of his written works. 
 
 The will of those who are no more, Anatole 
 France has said, is imposed upon those who still are. 
 It is the dead who live. They are to be found in the 
 habits, in the lives of us all. Our destiny sleeps 
 with us in our cradles. We are not straining 
 credulity in attributing Strindberg's profound ethical 
 and moral sense to that ancestor of his who preached 
 to the peasants of Strinne, whence was formed the 
 family name; nor in finding cause for his barbaric, 
 headlong martial spirit in that ancestor who was a 
 captain, descendant of one of that splendid band 
 of victorious fighters who served under Gustavus 
 Adolphus, and received knighthood at his hands.^ 
 The mingled strains of his ancestry warrant the 
 assertion that he was the incarnation of the Pan- 
 Germanic spirit. In the portrait of his grandfather, 
 Zacharias Strlndberg (175 8-18 29), a dramatist of 
 considerable talent, we may trace the lines of virile 
 intellectuality and artistic sensibility. It is how- 
 ever to his mother, a creature of sentimentality, 
 tender and passionate, that he owes more immedi- 
 ately the vibrant sensitivity and innate subjectivism 
 
 i"Die Familic Strindberg": Das Neue Magazine; 75, 16. 
 
-^ 
 
 12 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of his nature. For her he felt the tenderest attach- 
 ment, which reveals itself in his later confession; but 
 the blight of his origin, he being born two months 
 after the marriage of his mother, cast a lasting 
 gloom over his soul.^ 
 
 Oskar Strlndberg, a steamship agent, had entered 
 into a free union with Eleonora Ulrike Norling, a 
 poor girl of the servant class by whom he had three 
 children before August was born. Early In life, 
 August came to feel the most devitalizing and de- 
 pressing Influences which can come Into the life of a 
 child. The family were in very straitened circum- 
 stances, and the father flung himself unstintedly 
 Into the struggle to raise his family to the position 
 which his own forbears had held In life; and In con- 
 sequence the children were neglected by the father 
 — when they were not beaten. The sense of shame 
 in his parentage, it Is scarcely to be doubted, bred 
 In August a shyness, a supersensltlveness, already in- 
 herent in his nature. The conditions of the family 
 life were little elevated above the squalid. As 
 Strlndberg put It, there was " a surplusage of popula- 
 tion, baptisms and funerals. There were not two 
 christenings without a funeral In between." His 
 first gloomy Impressions of existence were received 
 in such an atmosphere of joylessness and unsanitary 
 overcrowding — eleven persons In three rooms. 
 
 Under happier surroundings with real parental 
 
 1 August Strlndberg was born in Stockholm, January la, 1849. 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 13 
 
 oversight — Impossible in such conditions — August 
 might have blossomed out and expanded normally. 
 But he was repressed, left undeveloped, rendered 
 morbid and shy by the treatment he received. 
 
 " My rearing consisted in cuffings, scoldings and 
 being made to obey. The child had no rights; only 
 duties. Everyone^s wishes but his own were heeded : 
 his were stifled. He could touch nothing without 
 being at fault, stand nowhere without being in the 
 way, utter no word without making himself a nui- 
 sance. His highest duty, his highest virtue, was — • 
 to sit on a chair and keep still." 
 V It was no wonder that Strindberg came to regard 
 the family envisaged in his youthful consciousness 
 as the home of all the social faults. To this dark 
 experience of home as " the hell of all children " we 
 may doubtless attribute the repellent qualities of the 
 developed individual — Intractability, rebelliousness, 
 violence and habitual reaction against the Influence 
 or domination of others. This was a wonderfully 
 precocious child who brooded again and again, in 
 later life, over the bitter humiliation of his childhood 
 in having his word doubted and then being goaded 
 into making a false confession of his guilt. At the 
 age of eight he even contemplated suicide, driven to 
 the thought by his feeling of love for a young girl 
 he was afraid to address; and the thought and intent 
 of suicide reverted to him at intervals throughout 
 his life. 
 
14 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 There is nothing new in the spectacle of incipient 
 genius repressed and retarded in an unsympathetic 
 and harsh environment. It was fortunate in a sense 
 that this timid child, with nerves stretched almost 
 to the breaking point, felt the violent normal symp- 
 toms of reaction ; for otherwise such discipline might 
 well have resulted in arrested ethical development. 
 The crassly pietestic tendencies of his mother, 
 crossed with excessive sentimentality, seems in some 
 measure to explain the self-torturing religious tend- 
 encies of the later Strindberg. If religion on the 
 one hand gave him some consolation for the harsh- 
 ness of his conditions, on the other his rebellion 
 against such a dicipline awoke in him the note of 
 social revolt — revolt against that type of education 
 railed at by Huxley, the senseless drilling and regi- 
 menting of individuals into mere dummies, me- 
 chanically playing their part in a mechanistic civiliza- 
 , tion. The man who could declare of his youth that 
 ^ " life, a terrible depressing burden weighed down 
 upon me every day '* — that man was but expressing 
 a state of mind which was so deeply impressed upon 
 
 / his nature that he carried it with him his life long. 
 
 / As a child, as a youth, as an old man — it was al- 
 
 / ways the same : he never ceased to " go about with 
 
 I a guilty conscience. 
 
 V In his studies of Nature — flower and tree, animal 
 and stone — he found keen intellectual satisfaction. 
 Such consolation was very necessary for one who 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG ij 
 
 was left to mourn his mother at the age of thirteen; 
 and when, nearly a year later, his father married 
 the former housekeeper, his cup was full, since his 
 efforts to establish sympathetic relations with her 
 went all for naught. Again, more hopelessly than 
 before, the spontaneous wells of instinctive love and 
 longing were dammed back; and he was left to 
 brood solitary over his loneliness. His early ex- 
 periences at school were unfortunate; and even be- 
 fore he left school the lines of character had already 
 set their mark upon his impressionable nature. 
 When in May, 1867, he took his examination pre- 
 paratory to matriculation at the University of 
 Upsala, he had only a tiny sum which he himself 
 had earned by tutoring; his father curtly packed him 
 off with a " pocketful of cigars and the injunction 
 to look out for himself." 
 
 Strindberg afterwards used to maintain that the 
 one solid residuum of his first university course was 
 a smart tailored coat, which bespoke cultured social 
 experience. As a tutor in the family of a wealthy 
 Jewish physician, he came to take interest in and 
 even to study medicine ; but the society with which he 
 mingled there — artists, singers, people of social 
 distinction — soon turned his thoughts in another 
 direction, the direction of the stage. The glamour 
 of the footlights obsessed him; and he vigor- 
 ously devoted his energies to the one purpose 
 of becoming an actor. He made his debut at the 
 
1 6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Dramatiska Theatre in 1869 In Bjornson's Mary 
 Stuart y playing the part of a lord who has but one 
 line to speak. After two months, desperation 
 seizes hinfl; he demands and receives a hearing. 
 The rehearsal is disastrous, and Strindberg is sternly 
 commended to the care of a teacher In expression — 
 a result which drove him to attempted suicide. As 
 chance would have it, the attempt did not prove 
 fatal. He was in despair over his failure as an 
 actor, for he felt the Irresistible urge towards the 
 artistic life without the ability to gratify it. Again 
 and again he seemed to feel the stirring of the crea- 
 tive impulse ; but — there was no creation, the muse 
 was mute. But one day, to his vast astonishment, 
 as he was lying upon the sofa, his stereoscopic fancy 
 began to function; the scenes played themselves out 
 upon the stage of his brain; and by a spurt of crea- 
 tive productivity, he wrote out in two hours the 
 scenario for two acts of a comedy. Four days more 
 — and we see the completion of Strlndberg's first 
 creative effort. It is the beginning of his life. If 
 not of his career. Although not produced, It won 
 commendation — and Strindberg knew at last that 
 he had " saved his soul alive." 
 
 Now he yields to the hectic spell of his new-found 
 talent; and within two months he has finished two 
 comedies, and a tragedy In verse, Hermione, show- 
 ing a marked advance in talent, — a play which was 
 afterwards produced. His great promise as a dra- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 17 
 
 matlst led him to return to the University, in the 
 effort to secure the degree deemed so desirable for 
 anyone purposing to become a man of letters. Dur- 
 ing this year (1870) he wrote a one-act play, In 
 Rome, based upon an incident In the life of Thor- 
 waldsen, which was anonymously produced in 
 August at the Dramatiska Theatre, Stockholm. 
 His next play, written under the influence of 
 Bjornson, entitled The Outlaw, upon its production 
 won him the favor of King Carl XV, who generously 
 granted him a stipend of eight hundred riksdaler 
 a year from his private purse. 
 
 \ The second period of university study, though it 
 did not lead to his securing the coveted degree, is 
 a period of distinct acquisition. In the atmosphere 
 of knowledge, Strlndberg, the genius in embryo, 
 comes to some definite realizations of the obligations 
 of scholarship, artistic creation and culture. There 
 dawns upon him the realization of his epoch, of 
 the streams of consciousness In art. He prefigured 
 himself In Imagination as the transitional link be- 
 tween two epochs of art. The Influences of his 
 studies and wide reading were Ineffaceable and so 
 determinative of the course of his future develop- 
 ment. The scientific precision of Darwin tempered 
 the strain of sentiment and naive feeling due to his 
 Swedish origin ; the high ethical postulates of Kirke- 
 gaard, whose Either-Or affected him powerfully, 
 stirred In him the larger humanistic concern so pre- 
 
1 8 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 dominant in certain of his greatest works, and ef- 
 fectively gave them the note of the art work of the 
 future — art for life's sake. The rationalistic 
 clarity of Henry Thomas Buckle, his Insistence upon 
 the superior claims of the Intelligence, his Nietz- 
 schean faith In the relativity of truth, his Marxian 
 doctrine of the materialistic conception of history, 
 as set forth in his History of Civilization in Eng- 
 land — all these conceptions came to abide with 
 Strindberg and are refracted, prismatically, from the 
 mirror of his works. Most profound of all these 
 influences was Eduard Von Hartmann's Philosophy 
 of the Unconscious, with its doctrine of constitu- 
 tional pessimism, the seeing in life an immitigable 
 complex of woes, which must be borne even though 
 we fail to fathom the meaning of such a freak of 
 fate. In a letter to Tolstoi, Bernard Shaw once 
 hazarded the irreverent suggestion that the universe 
 might be " only one of God's jokes." It was some 
 such mad conception as this which obsessed Strind- 
 berg during his life, but he always seemed to feel that 
 God, like the Englishman, jested sadly. Never did 
 so young a man show himself so pervasively Impres- 
 sionable to the influences of his studies and his read- 
 ing. At the same time, it must be sharply stressed 
 that Strindberg absorbed and made these ideas thus 
 deeply imbibed an Integral part of his own concep- 
 tion and interpretation of life. If he became ethical 
 in tone, the mystic remained always the realist, the 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 19 
 
 artist In temperament. If he became a pessimist, 
 his was a pessimism not of disillusionment but of 
 contemplation. If he became a rationalist, his was 
 the rationalism of passion and of sentiment. If he 
 can be called a philosophic spirit at all, it is only in 
 the very special sense that he remained always a 
 persistent and relentless seeker after truth, the ulti- 
 mate truth, recking not of consequences either to him- 
 self or to others. f 
 
 The attempt to base an interpretation of Strind-f 
 berg's character upon the unique basis of Strind-^ 
 berg's dramas of contemporary life proceeds from 1 
 a basic failure to comprehend the true meaning of j 
 his life. These plays, in many instances, reveal 
 either transitional phases of his own temperamental 
 and cultural evolution, or else embody his efforts to 
 arrive at some philosophical generalization upon the 
 problems of human existence and human destiny. 
 Strindberg Is the arch-sub jectivist of our era. In 
 his novels and his short stories, and in particular the 
 works confessedly autobiographical, shall we rather 
 discover the inner workings of this tortured soul, 
 seeking some ultimate forms of self-realization 
 through self-expression and intimate confession. For 
 Strindberg declaimed fiercely against the conven- 
 tional approbation of the static character, the per- 
 sonality forever fixed and unalterable, rotating end- 
 
?* 
 
 20 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 lessly within the circle of his own limitation. 
 Progress with Strlndberg was synonymous with flux 
 — with perpetual alteration and transition from one 
 phase of psychical experience to another. To 
 Strlndberg, the soul of man was rich and wonderful 
 in proportion to its potentiality for change, for 
 transition, for elemental evolutionary cataclysms. 
 The entire life of this strenuous, dynamic creature 
 IS marked by just such a series of volcanic cataclysms. 
 Little heed has been paid to Strlndberg's early 
 dreams for social betterment, as embodied in his 
 Swiss Tales, They form a cardinally suggestive 
 link In the chain of his spiritual evolution; for after 
 this one flight into the blue of social Idealism, Strlnd- 
 berg reverts to the passionate Individualism which 
 signalizes his greatest work throughout his career. 
 Yet, it is something added to our conception of 
 Strlndberg, this knowledge that Strlndberg fiercely 
 protested against the human servitude imposed by 
 the material conditions of modern life. Civiliza- 
 tion has been paid for too dearly — thus early 
 Strlndberg speaks In resonant tones. As a social 
 reformer, Strlndberg showed himself to be pure 
 communist. Abolish private ownership, and re- 
 quire of every man all that in reason and in con- 
 science he can bring himself to contribute. The 
 European dynasties must go, in the Interest of the 
 future of the average man; militancy must yield to 
 the visionary ideal of world-peace. This strange 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 21 
 
 anomaly of the Berserker-like Strindberg pre- 
 visaging the tranquil communist state of the far 
 future has a certain piquant charm — the charm of 
 naive inconsistency. The optimistic spirit of the 
 utopist expires in the bosom of the temperamental 
 pessimist. The later Strindberg sinks to the mean 
 level of crass actuality and of individual strife, 
 bafflement and trial. 
 
 There is no other striking or revolutionary event 
 in the period from 1872 to 1877 which furnishes 
 indicative prophecy of the later Strindberg. Per- 
 haps some suggestion-s of later tendencies and dis- 
 positions are found here and there. Strindberg is 
 essentially a pathological phenomenon; as subjec- 
 tivist, his instinct for self-revelation arises from the 
 felt need to express his own development as it is 
 affected by the personalities of others, or by new 
 social and religious influences. Those are prophetic 
 words which he speaks at the farewell banquet on 
 leaving the University, words foreshadowing the 
 philosophy of acquisitiveness associated with Strind- 
 berg: ** A personality does not develop from itself, 
 but out of each soul It comes In conta,ct with It sucks 
 a drop, just as the bee gathers Its honey from a mil- 
 lion flowers, giving it forth eventually as its own." 
 
 It Is customary to speak of Master Olof, written 
 in 1872, as Strindberg's first great drama; but its 
 distinction was and is, not international, but local. 
 It marked an epochal development In the literature 
 
22 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of Sweden, as we can easily recognize to-day; but 
 at the time, criticism was scathingly derogatory. 
 Once more, the creative impulse in Strindberg 
 seemed to be stifled, throttled for a time by the 
 powerful hand of hostile criticism. After failures 
 one after another to win success in journalistic hack- 
 writing, Strindberg finally secured a post as assistant 
 at the Royal Library.' This position, of modest but 
 assured income, enabled him to devote his leisure 
 hours to research — notably among Chinese parch- 
 ments as yet uncatalogued. The restless energy of 
 the man is betrayed in his study of the Chinese 
 language, and the monographs which he wrote deal- 
 ing with the relations between China and Sweden in 
 the eighteenth century — which won him recogni- 
 tion from scientific bodies, such as the French Insti- 
 tute and the Russian Geographical Society. 
 
 Now supervenes one of those crucial events which 
 affects a revolution in the life of a man, so deeply 
 personal in his art and feeling as was Strindberg. 
 This was the acquaintanceship formed by Strindberg 
 with the wife of Baron Wrangel. The attachment 
 instantaneously formed became more intimate; and 
 finally the divorce of the Baroness enabled Strind- 
 berg to exchange the role of lover for that of hus- 
 band, the marriage taking place December 30, 1877, 
 when Strindberg was twenty-eight years old. When, 
 in the following year. Master Olof was at last ac- 
 cepted for publication, Strindberg gave free vent to 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 23 
 
 his suppressed resentment over the long delayed 
 recognition of his genius, in the tremendous satire 
 The Red Room, This was a " work of conflict," 
 a satirical protest against cultural conditions in the 
 Sweden of that day. Surcharged with the sardonic 
 spirit of the scorner, it is a great pang of reaction 
 against a world driven by the force of " vital lies.'* 
 Its ruthless exposure of contemporary social strata 
 vitiates it as a work of art. Yet we are left with 
 the startled consciousness that here is a great per- 
 sonality, shooting up out of the sea of mediocrity, 
 and aiming terrible blows at modern degeneracy in 
 character, motive, and impulse. Its trenchant 
 motto, after Voltaire, in view of Strindberg's 
 threatened neglect, was astutely chosen: Rien rCest 
 si desagreahle que s^etre pendu ohscurement, ^^-^' ^': 
 The first years of Strindberg's married life were 
 undoubtedly happy — certainly in the passional 
 sense, if not in the restful consciousness of hallowed 
 union. There is a naive admission of the character 
 of the union in his description of himself as being 
 in a " happy erotic state." If the cloud on the do- 
 mestic horizon was no bigger than a man's hand, 
 there were fierce storms of controversy about his 
 head which finally decided him to leave Sweden in 
 1883. He lived for a time in France, later re- 
 moving to Switzerland, where he wrote the two re- 
 markable collections of stories published under the 
 title of Marriage, 
 
24 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 At this period, Strlndberg was moved to conscious 
 revolt against the extravagant Idealization of woman 
 which was sweeping over Europe In the wake of 
 Ibsen's A DolVs House. His own marital rela- 
 tions — for Strlndberg was always essentially per* 
 sonnel — were likewise a stimulant cause for his 
 choice of subject. As he looked about him, he saw 
 women everywhere living parasitical lives — taking 
 no real part In the work of civilization. Under nor- 
 mal conditions, the social growth of woman was 
 dependent upon their acquisition of the suffrage — 
 this he frankly realized and advocated. His real 
 attack was directed against the type of women 
 lauded by those who were ever3rwhere advancing 
 the " equality madness " — women who In their un- 
 reasoning struggle for liberty were forsaking the 
 privileges and the obligations of their sex. Strlnd- 
 berg made his first Intimate studies of women and 
 marriage, inspired by no hatred for the • sex, but 
 urged by a sort of Innate reverence for woman as 
 the mother of the race, the creative and regenera- 
 tive force of civilization. He saw a generation 
 making a religion of the woman-cult; and his own 
 words adequately describe his point of view: '* God 
 was the remotest source; when He failed they 
 grasped at the next, the Mother. But then they 
 should at least choose the real mother, the real 
 woman, before whom, no matter how strong his 
 spirit, man will always bow when she appears with 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 25 
 
 her life-giving attributes. But the younger genera- 
 tion had pronounced contempt for the mother, and 
 In her place had set up the loathsome, degenerate 
 Amazon — the blue-stocking! " In his almost old- 
 fashioned veneration for woman as the creative 
 force of life, he totally lost sight of the cruel in- 
 equality imposed upon woman by a man-made civil- 
 ization. That Is a secret shape of reaction which 
 pretends to see in woman, under contemporary con- 
 ditions, a free agent, the co-equal of man in the 
 struggle for existence. Woman to-day is not only 
 the creature which man, through his Innate greed, 
 vanity and selfishness persisted in for all the 
 centuries, has made of her: she Is, in no small meas- 
 ure, the creature which she has allowed herself to 
 be made into by man. Woman, In Meredithian 
 phrase. Is the last creature that will be civilized by 
 man — since he will fight bitterly with all his 
 weapons against that " civilization." 
 
 The criminal proceedings started against the pub- 
 lisher of this book, actually for Its excessive frank- 
 ness In dealing with sexual relations, ostensibly for 
 sacrilegious treatment of the established religion, 
 eventuated In a verdict of " not guilty," after the 
 case had been strenuously fought by Strlndberg him- 
 self. The result was to give Strlndberg a pre-emi- 
 nent position In Sweden as a man of letters. Yet 
 his satisfaction over the result of the case was sadly 
 marred by the consciousness that his purpose In 
 
26 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 writing Marriage^ essentially a worthy one, had 
 been so grossly misunderstood. 
 
 The condemnation of Strindberg as a rank pessi- 
 mist and thorough-paced misogynist aroused in him 
 a spirit of violent, volcanic opposition. In the first 
 volume of Marriage, he had left many things un- 
 said which he felt needed to be said about the re- 
 lation of the sexes. Moreover, he felt a growing 
 sense of disillusionment in his own marital venture. 
 These two motives, as well as his revolt against 
 the feminist movement in Scandinavia set in motion 
 by Ibsen and Bjornson, influenced him to publish a 
 second volume of stories, also entitled Marriage^ 
 which appears at first sight to be nothing short of 
 virulent in its animus against woman. It is with 
 the publication of this book in 1886, that Strind- 
 berg began to be obsessed with the monomania of 
 animadversion against the female sex. The eman- 
 cipation he posits for woman is only a partial one 
 — since he regards man and woman as funda- 
 mentally disparate. It is not equality with man 
 which woman needs — social and economic equality; 
 but a limited freedom to realize herself within a 
 circle defined by the obligation of motherhood. He 
 holds it rank heresy to advocate for woman com- 
 plete equality with man, with its inevitable corol- 
 laries of the right to hold property and the right 
 to work at any trade for which she fits herself 
 by training. Strindberg is the powerful leader of 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 27 
 
 a whole world of reactionary conservatives, who 
 vehemently maintain that woman should " devote 
 her entire interest to the family which man works 
 to maintain." 
 
 This second volume of stories, entitled Marriage, 
 was the intermediary between those two remarka- 
 ble characters, so like in many respects, yet in the 
 course of their development so remote — each 
 touched with the blight of dementia — Strindberg 
 and Nietzsche. In a letter to Peter Cast, Nietzsche 
 remarked : " Strindberg has written to me, and for 
 the first time I sense an answering note of universal- 
 ity." It was at this period that Strindberg con- 
 ceived the idea of composing a chain of autobio- 
 graphical confessions which might serve as the lay- 
 ing bare of a modern soul. His assertion that 
 great art must be fundamentally autobiographical 
 — a remarkable assertion which finds support in 
 the confessions of Ibsen and the latest researches in 
 regard to Shakspere — lay at the back of his con- 
 ception of such a series of novels. The Bond- 
 woman's Son is an unforgettable picture of the evo- 
 lution of personal consciousness in an individual — 
 Strindberg — through a minutely detailed succes- 
 sion of sordid and squalid happenings. If it is an 
 " evangel of the lower classes," certainly it portrays 
 m all their dark intimacy the devitalizing and re- 
 pressive influences emanating from the class in which 
 he was born — the atmospheric and actual produc- 
 
28 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tive causes of certain dominant traits and qualities 
 In his own nature. The one clear note sounding 
 above the discordant clash of harsh memories Is the 
 proclamation by Strlndberg of conscious superiority 
 to the conditions out of which he rose. Strlnd- 
 berg's realization, with certain of the leading spirits 
 of the age, of the possibilities of a higher type of 
 being, of the superman, found Its origin less In 
 Nietzsche than In Strindberg's own clear conscious- 
 ness of differentiation In himself — the great man 
 shooting up above the mean level, the illegitimate 
 genius born of the bondwoman. 
 
 There was much attraction for Strlndberg, with 
 his strenuous Individualism, In the conception of the 
 far-sighted, self-contained, tolerant type, free with 
 the freedom which Nietzsche has defined as the will 
 to be responsible for oneself. In his own career 
 we seem at times to discern his effort to rise above 
 the plane of slave-morality and the herd-man, driven 
 by primitive Impulses and ruled by chaotic passions. 
 Strindberg's ablest artistic formulation of the philos- 
 ophy of the superman Is his novel At the Edge of 
 the Sea, published In 1890, which Hans Land has 
 pronounced to be the only work of art, in the do- 
 main of NIetzschean morals, yet written which is 
 destined to endure. True to his instincts, Strlnd- 
 berg has expressed In the person of Borg his own 
 most Intense convictions and ideals. Animated 
 with an exalted sense of his own superiority, Borg 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 29 
 
 revels in lording it over the world of beings made 
 of commoner clay. In Nietzsche's conception of 
 the Superman, there is something at once lyrical 
 and fantastic — the product of decadent romanti- 
 cism. Strindberg's incarnation in Borg is more valid 
 and comprehensible as a human figure — remind- 
 ing us of the Superman shadowed by Bernard 
 Shaw, not " beyond man," but Superman in the 
 making, the " moral aristocrat " in transition., 
 Strindberg leaves us oppressed with a grim sense 
 of the desperate nature of this new quest — to rise 
 superior, under present conditions, to the sheer 
 materialism of the " damned compact majority." 
 Borg is not the laughing philosopher, but the pre- 
 sumptuous egoist — a magnificent, tragic moral 
 ** high-brow," toppled over by the arrant madness 
 of his own individualism. Strindberg, the sincere 
 artist, here proves his weakness as a social philoso- 
 pher; his system falls to pieces of its own unbal- 
 anced weight. Here, as elsewhere, Strindberg 
 reveals himself the disillusioned idealist, acknowl- 
 edging the tragedy of social necessity, and unshrink- 
 ingly delineating the hideous, yet inevitable, pen- 
 alties of contemporary civilization. Antipodal to 
 the reflective and anemic mollycoddle, Strindberg 
 glorifies the red corpuscle in art, and dares take the 
 consequence of inconsequence. 
 
 The next great spirtual crisis through which 
 Strindberg passed is revealed in that marvellous, 
 
30 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 yet glaringly personal, revelation, A Fool's Confes- 
 sion (1888). As his animus against the female 
 sex, fortified by the attacks upon him by the ad- 
 vocates of the woman's rights movement in Scan- 
 dinavia, became settled into an idee fixe, the re- 
 lations between him and his wife became strained 
 to the breaking point. He fretted against the 
 matrimonial bond, seeking again and again to break 
 away. The struggle was a titanic one — for deep 
 seated within him, preserved intact from childhood, 
 was his love for his mother which gave rise to his 
 veneration for the conception of motherhood. The 
 indestructible link which binds man to woman — 
 the children — held him constant for a time ; but 
 at last the breaking point was reached. The dread- 
 fully astute analysis of the torturing conflicts in that 
 harassed household is the content of A Fool's Con- 
 fession. 
 
 The unblushing frankness of this confession can 
 only shock, with its basic indiscretion, the American 
 reader, nurtured upon ideals of chivalry towards 
 woman and shielded by Anglo-Saxon convention 
 from the indiscretions of artistic autobiography. 
 Even Strindberg himself felt the need of disclaim- 
 ing responsibility for what he described as a " ter- 
 rible book " ; for he avers, correctly it is believed, 
 that it was published in Swedish without his consent, 
 and even without his knowledge. Nevertheless, it 
 is the most significant exemplification which Strind- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 31 
 
 berg has left of his esthetic doctrine that art is a 
 vast arena for experimentation with self. Indeed, 
 it may fairly be said that he used all experiences as 
 esthetic material for self-justification. It was the 
 fatal weakness of his temperament, as well as of 
 his esthetic creed, to generalize from personal data, 
 to identify the Individual with the universe. It Is 
 the fundamental weakness of all thesis-literature: 
 to put the part for the whole. Like a camera held 
 too close to the object, Strlndberg throws into 
 ghastly disproportion that which is nearest to him. 
 No artist of modern times has been so pre-emi- 
 nently successful in the shattering of perspective. 
 This confession of a fool is not misnamed — Its 
 mood Is splenetic, atrablliar, repulsive. Even the 
 wonderful psychological skill in recreating experi- 
 ences, the diabolic accuracy of the portrayal, cannot 
 atone for its lack of refinement. Its essential coarse- 
 ness. If there can be any justification for this ex- 
 posure of the life of a woman, his wife for thirteen 
 years, the mother of his children. It Is neither moral 
 nor social. It Is an esthetic plea for realistic free- 
 dom In art. But even an artist's sincere effort to 
 depict the struggles of a highly intellectual person 
 to emancipate himself from the obsession of sex 
 does not excuse the grossest violation of the sancti- 
 ties of personality. 
 
 The divorce from his wife In 1892 — a step un- 
 dertaken only after many struggles and great stress 
 
 v/ 
 
32 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS y 
 
 of feeling, was momentous In a permanent sense.' 
 It IS the preliminary to the supreme crisis In Strind- 
 berg's life. Strlndberg was thrice married — the 
 second time, to Frida Uhl, a young Austrian writer, 
 in 1893, with whom he lived only a few years; 
 and the third time to Harriet Bosse, the Norwegian 
 actress, In 1901, from whom he was divorced three 
 years later. These two unions appear to have been 
 episodes in Strlndberg's life — stages in the course 
 of his spiritual development. For we must realize 
 this truth about Strlndberg — that life with him 
 I was a form of excuse for art. An investigator, a 
 iresearch-worker in the laboratory of the soul, he was 
 ;wllllng to pay the price of the intensest emotional 
 \ experiences for the sake of their value as art-stuff. 
 Inescapable is the conviction that in Strlndberg is 
 presented the dour tragedy of one surrendered to 
 self-torture in behalf of art. His life continually 
 lay shattered in pieces about him because of his 
 passionate convictions. Strlndberg makes many an 
 arresting gesture of singularly alluring grace in his 
 marvellous writings — but how dearly bought, how 
 bitterly expiated these rapt ecstasies, these alluring 
 gestures of fitful passion and melancholic despair! 
 If he was ever witty, we feel that Strlndberg — to 
 employ a phrase of Benedetto Croce — was but 
 laughingly snatching a nail from a gaping coffin. 
 
 The stress and dissonance of Strlndberg's second 
 marriage and subsequent divorce was the ultimate. 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 33 
 
 the immediate signal for the crisis of the " great 
 climacteric " in his life. If we glance for a moment, 
 also, at the contemporary spirit with which Strind- 
 berg was vitalized, we shall attain to an intuitive 
 comprehension of the subsequent confusion, groping 
 and ultimate reconciliation of his spirit. From 
 childhood, feeling reaction against his environment, 
 conscious of his vast superiority to those about him, 
 he feverishly struggled to elevate himself to the 
 heights. Along with this titanic ambition went the 
 hectic dream of Idealism — the fanatical search for • 
 happiness. Guided by titanic ambition, he cast off 
 the shackles of provinciality for the freedom of 
 cosmopolitanism — seeking to realize himself as a 
 great modern master, now in Switzerland, now in 
 Germany, now in France. When Germany finally 
 hailed him as one of the pre-eminent figures of the 
 era, it was a Germany chaotically revolutionary in 
 art, in a state of confused transition between head- 
 long repudiation of the old, uncertain grasping after 
 the unrealized new. The old beauties were no 
 longer beautiful, the new truths no longer true. 
 With the fierce zeal of the creator, the pioneer in 
 art, Strindberg produced works which enraptured 
 Germany and Europe, not less for their highly- 
 colored tendency than for their artistic depth and 
 validity as creations of enduring art. Without 
 stressing the features of the change, it Is Indubitable 
 that Strindberg finally reached the stage of disillu- 
 
34 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 sionment. Of life, he demanded happiness, the hap- 
 piness of the marital state, with wife and children; 
 but he forfeited the happiness that might perhaps 
 have been his because he was never able to accept 
 things as they are, never willing to surrender him- 
 self to life's immitigable conditions. For him, it 
 was an impossibility, in Nietzsche's phrase, to say 
 Aye to the Universe. One only hazards the sur- 
 
 ^ mise that, had Strindberg been capable of such self- 
 abnegation, he might have developed into a great, 
 
 • strong, sweet soul, profoundly sympathetic with his 
 fellow-beings, vibrant with comprehension of, com- 
 miseration for, human foibles and frailties. There 
 were depths, profundities in Strindberg's nature, 
 both as man and artist, which called to answering 
 depths, profundities in human consciousness. His 
 recognition of the ultimate futility of his marital ex- 
 periences was no less pronounced in his career than 
 his recognition of the instability of naturalism in art 
 as a formula. At last he came to the full realiza- 
 tion of the discrepancy between what life and the 
 era had to offer him, a realization of the profoundest 
 potentialities of his own nature and genius. 
 
 It was in this spirit — the spirit of one who flees 
 to sanctuary — that Strindberg sought Paris in 
 1894. His old absorption in chemistry, the desire 
 to surprise the mystery of atom, molecule and ele- 
 ment, once more came over him. Along with it 
 came the stirrings of the equally imperious impulse 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 35 
 
 — to surprise the mystery of faith, conscience and 
 religion, and to merge himself in that spiritual world- 
 consciousness which William Blake many years be- 
 fore had foreshadowed with the power and imagina- 
 tion of the seer. It was only another phase of i 
 Strindberg's life of disillusion that Paris had not 
 to give him that which he sought. With this period 
 of his career, it is virtually impossible to speak with 
 critical authority, for there is no tracing, accurately, 
 the thin line demarking the sound, the sane, from 
 the obsessed, the hallucinated. There Is abundant 
 evidence of his lack of balance in his feverish wan- 
 derings in the mazes of the cruder forms of occult- 
 ism. A Strindberg caught fast in the meshes of a 
 weird complex of French mysticism and American 
 theosophy ! 
 
 To follow Strindberg through the Slough of De- 
 spond of his Paris days and after, one should read 
 those strange, harassing books, Inferno^ Legends, 
 and Alone, Wonderful as are these works, viewed 
 as the autobiographic confessions of a great creative 
 artist, they chiefly serve as records of mental and 
 spiritual obsession. Surely, here was madness to 
 genius close allied. For it was not legitimate re- 
 search in which Strindberg was absorbed, but 
 pseudo-scientific superstition; not chemistry, but al- 
 chemy. His concentration upon the problem of the 
 transmutabllity of elements, however, is just now be- 
 ginning to appear in a more rational light, in view of 
 
36 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the Interpretation, by Sir William Ramsay, of some 
 of his own discoveries. Strlndberg's fascinated con- 
 centration upon the problem of religion, salvation 
 and the future life is of a piece with his studies in 
 alchemy — both are pathological symptoms. Shaken 
 to the very centre of his spiritual existence by a close 
 study of Swedenborg, Strlndberg groped vainly about 
 for spiritual consolation and the poetic certitudes of 
 faith. His was a religion of tortured searching 
 after spiritual faith. As he sought scientific truth 
 in alchemy, so now he seeks spiritual truth in the 
 obscurities of a hazy occultism. Surely at this time 
 Strlndberg's intellectual and psychical centres must 
 have been in very unstable equilibrium. It was not 
 the eternal verities of religion which drew him after 
 them, but Its transitory delusions, the speculations 
 of mysticism — psychic states, second sight, tele- 
 phatlc communications, obsessions. There could be 
 no permanent consolation In the problematical 
 phenomena of spiritualism; and In the end Strlnd- 
 berg emerged triumphant from the Slough of De- 
 spond. In answer to his deep spiritual need, his 
 profoundly felt longing for certitude, there finally 
 came to him a gently consolatory faith — that faith 
 which he pathetically describes In Alone as " a con- 
 dition of the soul and not of the mind." With a 
 consciousness fundamentally conscientious, a spirit 
 innately religious, Strlndberg may be said to have 
 spent his life vainly listening for life's harmonies, | 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 37 
 
 vainly endeavoring to discover some latent, internal 
 interdependence between the spiritual forces of the 
 universe. That Inner harmony discovered by Mae- 
 terlinck, the gentle optimist, was forever barred 
 from the vision of Strindberg, the passionate pessi- 
 mist. 
 
 In Strindberg's works of fiction, polemic, social, 
 autobiographical, one seems to follow the errant 
 pilgrimages of a soul distraught with the obsession 
 of existence. It is the ancient cry from the depths : 
 *' Oh I that this too, too solid flesh would melt I " 
 In Strindberg, the dramatist, one encounters the ti- 
 tanic struggles of an almost superhuman intellect, 
 fretting vainly against the bars of life's mysteries. 
 With every concession made to the fatal lack of 
 balance, the futurist distortion of perspective, it 
 must be granted that Strindberg was singularly 
 original in genius and at the same time singularly 
 consistent in his interpretation of the riddle of life. | 
 There is no error so crass as that of presuming, withj 
 hasty generalization, that Strindberg was essentially! 
 eccentric — dementedly swinging off from the cen- ; 
 tral realities of life. This inner meaning of Strind-f 
 berg's temperament lies at the very heart of hisj 
 nature, which pulsed violently in the midst of the| 
 most fantastic realities. Never did artist so per- j 
 sistently cleave to the centre of his own being in his \ 
 
38 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 effort to project for the world's inspection the inner 
 significance of contemporary existence. Strindberg 
 is the most ego-centric dramatist who has ever lived. 
 If Shakspere was actually, as Mr. Frank Harris 
 vehemently implies, the Strindberg of the Eliza- 
 bethan era, by the same token is Strindberg the 
 Shakspere of the Nietzschean age — a supremely 
 daemonic bohemian of the soul. 
 
 It was Strindberg who embodied in his own per- 
 sonality the affirmative answer to Nietzsche's sin* 
 ister query : " Why should not life be intolerable ? " 
 In him was a spirit of divine discontent, of volcanic 
 denial — raging fiercely against the evils revealed 
 to his searching gaze and giving no quarter to his 
 adversaries. One of the most conclusive proofs of 
 his greatness is the fact that no one has yet succeeded 
 in taking the measure of his stature. He is that 
 miracle in the hierarchy of genius — an incommen- 
 surable force in the intellectual and spiritual economy 
 of the universe. Strindberg has been called the 
 only dramatist of genuinely Shaksperean order in 
 modern times — assuredly true in the dramatic 
 sense that in the consciousness of no other contem- 
 porary dramatist do conflicts, antitheses, crises, 
 emanate such trenchant, virile reality. The secret 
 of his marvellous appeal is his headlong participa- 
 tion in the destinies of his dramatic characters. It 
 is because he threw himself so vehemently into the 
 arena of dramatic struggle and dramatized his own 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 39 
 
 tremeudous struggle that his art works seethe with 
 such vital force and energy. 
 
 The primitive force of Strlndberg starts Into eager 
 life In the early play, The Outlaw (1872) and fore- 
 shadows the leonine genius. The delicate beauty 
 of womanhood, the enduring strength of loyalty, 
 the tenacious rectitude of rude, primitive force — 
 all are rendered with trenchant economy of means 
 in this " dramatic experiment." Thus early Strlnd- 
 berg foresaw the virtue of intensive concentration 
 of treatment — fusing an Incohesive, scattered play 
 of five acts Into a single, organic play of a single act. 
 Thorfinn, the heroic Norseman, adamantine in his 
 barbaric strength, Is shattered against the passive, 
 supreme invincibility of the Christian Ideal, the 
 dawning Ideal of the age. Says Orne to Thorfinn: 
 " It Is the age you have warred against, and that 
 has slain you — It Is the lord of the age. It Is God 
 who has crushed you." There Is tragic majesty in 
 the death of Thorfinn, who lacks the superhuman 
 strength " never to regret anything one does "; and 
 in dying, expiates and atones with a blessing upon 
 his daughter, Gunlod, a convert to Christianity, 
 and her lover, Thorfinn's enemy. In yielding to the 
 strength of supreme emotion, he yields in symbol his 
 heart's blood — realizing at the last the divine force 
 of woman's love. For " woman thinks, not with 
 her head, but with her heart. That's why she has a 
 smaller head, but a bigger breast than man." 
 
I 
 
 40 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Upon one occasion, I was conducted by Mrs. Ibsen 
 into her husband's study at the apartment on the 
 Victoria Terrace, in Kristiania ; and there, above the 
 mantel, was hanging a magnificent oil painting of 
 August Strindberg. As presiding genius of the 
 place, this impressive figure with noble head and 
 tragic, haunting eyes seemed to dominate the room. 
 Asked why he gave the place of supreme honor in 
 that laboratory of the dramatic spirit to the titanic 
 Swede, Ibsen — I was told by the querist — replied: 
 " The man has a fascination for me — because he 
 is so subtly, so delicately mad." There was some- 
 thing far deeper than this which caused the electric 
 interaction between these two geniuses — so anti- 
 podal in temperament, yet so cognate in the faculties 
 of intuitive perception and searching introspective- 
 ness. Ibsen, Bjornson, Strindberg — the three 
 Scandinavian geniuses — each felt the mental pres- 
 sure of the others, and responded to it. There 
 yet remains to be written the history of that period 
 in Scandinavian literature which shall reveal the in- 
 fluences these three exerted, the one upon the other. 
 Certainly The Outlaw, if nothing else of Strind- 
 berg's, was suggested by Bjornson's Between the 
 Battles, 
 
 During the period from 1872 to 1884, the strong- 
 est indications appear of the influences Strindberg and 
 Ibsen, more or less consciously, exerted upon each 
 other. In The Pretenders (1862), Ibsen projects 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 41 
 
 the conflict between two strong temperaments — Ha- 
 kon, the Incarnation of Innate confidence, and Skule, 
 the Introspective and brooding Hamlet type; and the 
 latter, after appropriating the former's Intuitional 
 conception and winning temporary success, ultimately 
 goes down in tragic defeat, wrecked through his lack 
 of faith in himself and his consciousness of guilt. 
 This play must have exerted a powerfully sugges- 
 tive Influence upon Strlndberg In the composition of 
 Master Olof, originally entitled, more adequately. 
 The Renegade. In Ibsen's play there is something 
 schematic and artificial In the psychological basis of 
 the action; Strlndberg outstrips Ibsen in portraying 
 a central figure more closely attuned to the temper 
 of modern social feeling. The hero of Strindberg's 
 play Is a renegade because, like Peer Gynt, he yields 
 to the blandishments of compromise, and in order to 
 prepare the way for the ultimate realization of his 
 larger purpose, strikes the banner of his ideal to 
 sheer necessity. The philosophy of expediency of- 
 tentimes yields more tangible, more practically pro- 
 ductive results ; yet the seer, in whom we discern the 
 spiritual lineaments of Strlndberg, holds a renegade 
 he who sacrifices to transient and temporal success 
 the magic, affective force of the ideal. The proto- 
 type of the modern woman, of the Nora of A DolVs 
 House, is found full-fledged in this same play — a 
 remarkable evidence of the prophetic modernity of 
 Strindberg's social vision. Strindberg's anticipation 
 
 \ 
 
42 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of Ibsen, which in this case takes the form of a sin- 
 gle type, is more conclusively evidenced in The Secret 
 of the Guild ( 1880) , written twelve years before the 
 appearance of The Master-Builder. Ibsen's early 
 poem. Architectural Plans, must have been far less 
 germinative for The M aster-Builder than Strind- 
 berg's utilization in The Secret of the Guild of the 
 building of the tower as a creative symbol in dramatic 
 technique. Imperfectly employed by Strindberg, 
 this suggestive symbol was utilized by the more ex- 
 perienced craftsman with magicianly mastery and 
 far-reaching suggestiveness. Austin Harrison goes 
 so far as to assert: " Through Solness Ibsen spoke 
 directly at Strindberg. The much-debated line of 
 The Master-Builder, * It is youth that I fear,' was 
 aimed across the border at the young Swede, in whom 
 Ibsen saw already a peer and a highly dangerous 
 rival." Compliment seldom takes so subtle a form 
 as the bold utilization of an idea, and the expressed 
 dread of the coming supremacy of its originator. 
 Ibsen owed his debt to this young Norwegian rival 
 who fascinated him with his not wholly deranged 
 creative originality! In Lady Margit, with its tor- 
 rential onslaught upon what he regarded as the es- 
 sential defeminization of woman in A DolVs House, 
 Strindberg takes his revenge — a polemic in dramatic 
 form against the coming reign of the matriarch. 
 
 The most radiant proof of the happy, naive side 
 of Strindberg's nature, the grace of his fantasy and 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 43 
 
 the delicacy of his Imagination, Is found in Lucky \ 
 Pehr (1883), an allegorical play In five acts. Itl 
 assuredly Influenced Maeterlinck In the writing of 
 The Blue Bird — each depicting, In allegorical 
 guise, the spiritual progress of youth In the search 
 for happiness. In the play of the lively fancy of 
 the author, we see the young Pehr, endowed with 
 the ring which will gratify all his wishes and under 
 the protective care of the gentle, wisely maternal 
 Lisa, start forth upon his aimless wanderings. In 
 fastastic scenes. Irradiated with shrewd philosophy 
 and kindly humor, young Pehr, callow, innocently 
 selfish, passes alternately from disillusion to disillu- 
 sion — thinking naught of others, vainly seeking the 
 self-gratification which ever eludes him. His friend- 
 ship is sought for his gold, he is betrayed by a 
 temptress; he learns the vanity of society, the shal- 
 lowness of convention. The lawyer, with light 
 cynicism, assures him : " When one through riches 
 has risen to the community's heights, one belongs to 
 the whole '' — a satirical hit at the modern ideal of 
 social service. Pehr sees no deeper than to wish 
 to be a great reformer — that he may be " honored 
 and Idolized by the people, and have his name on 
 everyone's lips" ! He tries to carry out his reforms 
 — but finds every man's hand against him. Even 
 the cobbler objects to having flagstones instead of 
 cobblestones, because, forsooth, It will " hurt busi- 
 ness " — a familiar cry. The pillory is Pehr's final 
 
44 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 refuge as a reformer. His gratified wish to be 
 great and powerful ends in like disaster — for in 
 order to become ruler he finds that he must sacrifice 
 all his ideals for political considerations. There 
 is no real liberty, only Constitutional Despotism; 
 no religious freedom, only the Established Church; 
 no personal liberty, only Court Etiquette; no free- 
 dom to marry, only Considerations of State. 
 Finally he faces Death — and pleads for life that 
 he may search further for happiness among his own 
 kind. Death warns him : " You should not seek 
 human beings, for they cannot help you." When 
 he learns that he who loves only himself can never 
 love another, he is on the brink of discovery. Like 
 Peer Gynt, he learns to slay the craving to make 
 himself the centre around which all others revolve 
 — and in the discovery of unselfishness comes safely 
 to the glad haven of happiness with the tenderly 
 faithful Lisa. The Shadow tolerantly voices 
 Strindberg^s view: " Life is not such as you saw it 
 in your youthful dreams. It is a desert, that is true; 
 but a desert which has its flowers ; it is a stormy sea, 
 but one that has Its havens by verdant Isles." 
 
 VI 
 
 \ Strindberg's headlong plunge into naturalism, 
 
 marked by the appearance of the powerful drama, 
 The Father y In 1887, registers a double turning- 
 point in his life as artist and man. The mono- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 45 
 
 graphic method of Maupassant and the de Goncourts 
 In fiction awoke him to the possibilities of the 
 naturalistic drama; and Zola's dramatized novel, 
 Theresa Raquin, produced by Antolne at his 
 Theatre Libre In Paris In 1887, furnished the clue 
 for the new departure. Strindberg, ever the Inno- 
 vator, the Bahnhrecher, not only realized the dearth 
 of creative genius and the sterility of Invention In 
 the drama, but even stood in fear of the threatened 
 abandonment of the drama as a decaying form, in 
 our time " when the rudimentary. Incomplete 
 thought processes operating through our fancy seem 
 to be developing into reflection, research and 
 analysis." Like Zola, he was ripe for rebellion 
 against the prevailing artificial comedy, " with Its 
 Brussels carpets. Its patent-leather shoes and patent- 
 leather themes, and its dialogue reminding one of 
 the questions and answers of the catechism." 
 
 Strlndberg's revolt was experimental In the deep- 
 est sense — In the same sense In which Zola speaks 
 of the experimental novel. The dramatist of the 
 era seemed to have become a mere absorptive spirit, 
 who vulgarized his art for the sake of rendering 
 it intelligible to and effective with the masses. This 
 reduction of electric genius to so many candle power, 
 in order to penetrate the consciousness of Intellectual 
 mediocrity, revolted Strindberg. His own ideal was 
 the precise reverse — to express his originality with 
 pristine clarity and to achieve the most Intensive, 
 
46 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 concentrated effect through bringing his complex and 
 multiplex ideas to a burning, focal point. 
 
 About him he saw everywhere the predominance 
 of the stereotyped in character-drawing, the prev- 
 alence of the static character — artificial automata, 
 dummies labelled with a tag, incapable of change, 
 development, growth. The hope for the drama — 
 the drama which Ibsen and Bjornson at this time 
 were so triumphantly creating in new, mobile forms 
 — lay in the enlargement of the conception of char- 
 acter, the objectification upon the stage of the 
 dynamically evolutionary modern soul, such as 
 Strindberg felt himself personally to be. Like 
 Nietzsche before him, like Bergson to-day, Strind- 
 berg intuitively felt the pressure of the concept of 
 creative evolution — seeing In the modern human 
 temperament a vast complex of thought currents, 
 emotive Impulses — often self-contradictory, Incon- 
 sequent, atavistic and yet Instinctively vital, fervent, 
 intense. Instead of regarding character as fixed, 
 and the age as stationary, he determined to show 
 both In flux. His characters may justly be described. 
 In a German phrase, as the U ehergangsmenschen 
 etner Uehergangszeit — transitional beings in a 
 transitional era. 
 
 It Is characteristic of Strindberg that. In his effort 
 to portray the most vital, most Intense form of con- 
 flict, he should Instinctively find his dramatic theme 
 In the torturing conflicts of his own family life. 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 47 
 
 Between Strindberg and his first wife, two highly in- 
 dividualized, fundamentally antipathetic characters, 
 vital differences presented themselves — on the 
 subject of feminism, woman's right to unbridled 
 freedom, the direction and control of children, the 
 relative measure of the sexes. In Lady Margit, 
 with the sub-title Sir Bengfs Wife, a historical play 
 of the Reformation period, Strindberg had already 
 revealed. In pitiless, glacial analysis of a woman's 
 soul, his Intolerant attitude towards the modern type 
 of the denaturlzed feminine. And yet, with all its 
 implacability, it does not prepare us for the shock- 
 ing figure of Laura in The Father, Here is re- 
 vealed the fundamental weakness of the thesis- 
 drama; for we cannot accept as representatively 
 human a character reproduced with diabolic exacti- 
 tude from a real person, who was almost certainly'i 
 degenerate, and whom Strindberg hated as the in-' 
 carnation of all that woman, the ideal woman, should 
 not be. 
 
 The Father is a drama of the most powerfully 
 intensive struggle, on the plane of mental sugges- 
 tion — the supreme drama of Its kind. These 
 characters live with feverish and intense vitality 
 — a vitality transfused Into them from Strlndberg's 
 own powerfully vibrant being. Cut them, and they 
 will palpably bleed — the blood of martyrs and im- 
 penitents. We achieve Immortality through the 
 transmission of personality and faith to our posterity 
 
48 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 — the greatest mission, In Strlndberg's eyes, Is the 
 mission of paternity. Hence the tragic conflict — 
 between the father, fixed In his determination to 
 direct and control the future of the child, and the 
 mother, endowed with Indomitable will, infinitely 
 unscrupulous, diabolically cunning. By subtly poi- 
 sonous suggestion, the woman implants in the mind 
 of the distraught man the deranging doubt as to 
 whether he is the father of his child — a doubt 
 which grows into the idee fixe of mania. This tre- 
 mendous drama can only be fully understood in its 
 symbolic guise. It is the terrible plea of the 
 elemental male for the rights of fatherhood, the 
 patriarchal functions of man as the ruler of the fam- 
 
 ^/ ily, holding within his hand the directive control 
 of the future of his posterity. In this drama 
 Strindberg gives free play to his essentially barbaric 
 feelings, and arraigns woman with a ferocity little 
 short of hideous. 
 
 We shall, assuredly, do Strindberg a gross in- 
 justice if we label him. Inconsiderately, a misogynist. 
 Laura is a symbolic figure; not the modern concep- 
 tion of Everywoman, but a super-real personifica- 
 
 L . tlon of the final possibilities of wickedness in woman. 
 Laura is not that " female of the species," more 
 deadly than the male, of which Kipling speaks, 
 but the Incorporation of the Principle of Evil as 
 expressed in the attributes of the specific female. 
 " Not long ago,'* says Strindberg in his remarkable 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 49 
 
 Preface to Miss Julia, " they reproached The 
 Father with being too sad, — just as if they wanted 
 merry tragedies. Everybody is clamoring arro- 
 gantly for * the joy of life,' and all theatrical man- 
 agers are giving orders for farces, as if the joy of 
 life consisted in being silly and picturing all human 
 beings as so many sufferers from St. Vitus' dance 
 or idiocy. I find the joy of .life in its violent and 
 cruel struggles, and my pleasure lies in knowing 
 something and learning something. And for this 
 reason I have selected an unusual but instructive 
 case — an exception, in a word — but a great ex- 
 ception, proving the rule, which, of course, will pro- 
 voke all lovers of the commonplace." 
 
 Strindberg's attacks upon woman, so-called, are 
 repellarit and repulsive in an abnormal degree. It 
 IS no matter for surprise that he has been classified 
 as the arch misogynist, the most radical woman- 
 hater in the post-Schopenhauer era. He struck out 
 ferociously against the woman-ideal of Ibsen's Nora, 
 the " silly, romantic provincialism of Ibsen's epicene 
 squaw." In his revolt against the position of 
 Ibsen, he unhesitatingly said : " My superior intel- 
 ligence revolts against the gyneolatry which is the 
 latest superstition of the free-thinkers." 
 
 He could not regard with patience the movement 
 for woman's emancipation, seeing in it an effort to 
 dethrone Man in favor of Woman. The brute male 
 in him revolted at the thought of seeing man, the 
 
50 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 *' generator of great thoughts," the creator of 
 modern civilization, displaced by woman whose in- 
 tellect, as yet undeveloped, still belonged to the 
 bronze age. He regarded the male as superior in 
 intellect to the female, but weaker as an antagonist, 
 owing to the imperfect and undeveloped moral sensi- 
 bility of the female. 
 
 Comrades, arresting, brutal, is the cheapest thing 
 that Strindberg has done. Again it is an arraign- 
 ment of woman — a lightly sardonic resumption of 
 the idea that woman is inferior to man, incapable 
 of final rectitude, lacking that delicacy of con- 
 science, that " moral elegance," which man wears 
 like a plume! These are admirably drawn, burn- 
 ingly living, yet repulsively ignoble figures — it 
 would be nothing short of farcical to see in each a 
 typical specimen of their respective sexes — man, 
 honorable, sympathetic, self-sacrificing; woman, 
 treacherous, deceptive, feline. It is the philosophy 
 of the cave man done over In modern terms; and the 
 primitive woman actually likes It here when the cave 
 man uses the club ! The Strindberg woman is cap- 
 tivated, won by man-handling — she would he; but 
 Imagine the result of brute force tried on a gentle- 
 woman ! 
 
 It Is, however, the gravest error to confuse 
 Strlndberg's attitude towards woman, carried to 
 abnormal extremes of polemic In his fierce reaction 
 against the " new woman " propaganda of Scan- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 51 
 
 dinavia, with his own personal attitude towards 
 woman of the ideal type present in his own conscious- 
 ness. That abnormal sexuality which Laura Mar- 
 holm attributes to Strindberg, resulting in funda- 
 mental sex-aversion, was probably only an apparent, 
 and not an actual, abnormality of nature. Like the 
 youthful Tolstoi, Strindberg as a young man in- 
 dulged In orgiastic sexual excesses, with the in- 
 evitable result of brushing off forever the bloom 
 from the surface of erotic life. The whole course 
 of Strindberg's works shows him essentially clean, 
 if subtly plebeian, in his feelings about sex. 
 
 Miss Julia is one of the most startling, most 
 shocking plays of our era; but Its ugly theme Is Its 
 chief reason for existence. In his notable Preface, 
 St;rindberg — who really seems to have Influenced 
 Bernard Shaw In several striking respects — gives 
 the most elaborate explications of the purpose, 
 meaning, and significance of the tragedy. And yet, 
 after all, the preface Is a tricky means of eking out 
 the deficiencies of the play. It may well be Imagined 
 that Julia would never have yielded had it not been 
 for her condition; yet never a hint of It is found in 
 the play Itself. Then there Is the artificial conflict 
 suggested by the two strata of society — artificial 
 because whilst Julia falls, even to' death, a victim 
 of progressive inbreeding of diseased stocks, Jean 
 climbs not at all, Instlnctly servile, cringing at the 
 sound of the master's bell. This " half-woman," 
 
52 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 as Strindberg calls her, Is a vanishing type, perish- 
 ing eventually " either from discord with real life, 
 or from the Irresistible revolt of her suppressed In- 
 stincts, or from foiled hopes of possessing the man.'* 
 Miss Julia Is no stranger to America, often piqued 
 to forbidden curiosity by the spectacle of the woman 
 of society eloping with her chauffeur. 
 
 It was the tragedy of Strlndberg's life never to 
 rise above the sex-disillusionment which came from 
 early excess. This was the penalty paid In full 
 measure by one thrice married and thrice divorced. 
 He was never able to awake In another a pas- 
 sion as Intense as his own. In becoming the su- 
 preme specialist In modern eroticism he sacrificed 
 the possibility of making the great discovery — of 
 simple, enduring human love. There Is no more 
 tragic figure in modern times than this Knight of the 
 Sorrowful Countenance, with pallid lips and stricken 
 gaze, " dementedly wandering from Venusburg to 
 Venusburg." 
 
 In his own consciousness, woman was worthy of 
 all veneration — a veneration Instinctive in him 
 from his earliest childhood. Life itself cruelly per- 
 sisted In the effort to shatter that illusion of his 
 youth. ^The artist, the Idealist In Strindberg ro- 
 mantically endowed woman with the supreme virtues 
 — loyalty, faith, devotion, rectitude, moral in- 
 tegrity — and painted her as man's equal in intel- 
 ligence, his superior In nobility. When life betrayed 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 53 
 
 his faith, and the age threatened to enthrone above 
 man this creature Strindberg had discovered to be 
 so full of weakness and frailty, he burst forth in 
 passionate protest, which was only a secret form of 
 vindication of his own ideal of woman/^i His atti- 
 tude towards woman — towards the type to-day ex- 
 pressed In the term militant suffragette — was not 
 only ungallant, unchlvalric: it was splenetic, atra- 
 billar. In his view of the sexes, woman is man's in- 
 ferior in the life-scale — as yet undeveloped in intel- 
 lect, artistic perception, and moral power; but he 
 considers this biological inferiority counterbalanced 
 by other specific indicia of the female — fixity of pur- 
 pose,^endless endurance, subtle calculation. Strind- 
 berg pays woman the high honor of holding her to 
 be a foeman worthy of the sharpest steel of man. 
 He holds woman fully worthy of man as an antagon- 
 ist in the duel of sex. In his plays, woman fights for 
 her own hand with unlimited will-power and in- 
 tellectual skill. 
 
 Strindberg can only be properly understood if we 
 realize that the duel of sex is not always a contest for 
 sex supremacy. It is a contest, as Strindberg so 
 diabolically shows in Creditors, of the woman 
 for the right to illicit* gratification of her own 
 instincts — regardless of honor, fidelity, or modesty. 
 Or It may be, as in The Link, a mortal strug- 
 gle for the possession of the child. There was 
 
 never a more realistic fragment of concentrated life 
 • ^ 
 
54 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 than TJie Link — a virtual replica of Strindberg's 
 own suit for divorce from his first wife. One by 
 one, the curtains are drawn aside; and these two 
 human souls, fighting like animals for the child that 
 binds them together, stand at last in utter nakedness 
 — separated by an abyss like a yawning hell. In 
 the words of the pilgrim to his former wife, in 
 Damascus: "We love. Yes, and we hate. We 
 hate each other, because we love one another; we 
 hate each other because we are linked together; 
 we hate the link, we hate love ; we hate what is most 
 lovable because it is also the most bitter, we hate 
 the very best which gives us this life." In the 
 haunting words of Oscar Wilde: 
 
 " Some kill their love when they are young, 
 
 And some when they are old ; 
 Some strangle with the hands of Lust, 
 
 Some with the hands of Gold: 
 The kindest use a knife, because 
 
 The dead so soon grow cold." 
 
 It is almost incredible that Strindberg never set 
 his ideal woman before us on the stage. Previsions 
 of this feminine ideal are found in certain of the 
 early plays — in such a character, for example, as 
 Giinlod in The Outlaw, And yet this ideal of 
 Strindberg's may definitely be disengaged, after a 
 study of his works. For Strindberg has the antique, 
 patriarchial conception of the family, with its ven- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 55 
 
 eration for the woman as wife and mother. Sur- 
 passing man in tenderness, in temperamental clever- 
 ness, with greater breadth of horizon, wider human- 
 itarian concern, woman must nevertheless remain, 
 in Strindberg's view, within the boundary of her 
 own " sphere." Woman is a tremendously power- 
 ful original source of human energy, to which man 
 must ever recur to escape annihilation — the inter- 
 mediary between man and the child, upon which the 
 world's iuture depends. 
 
 Having, then, this genuine ideal of womanhood, 
 this old-fashioned conception of woman as mother 
 and mate, Strindberg seems strangely illogical in 
 giving us a gallery of hideous female types — in- 
 carnations of beasts of prey, deadly monsters, the 
 hyena woman, the blue-stocking cocotte. The rea- 
 son is not far to seek — inexplicable and damning 
 as is the evidence to the contrary. With an im- 
 perfectly developed historic sense, so far certainly 
 as concerned the subject of woman's economic and 
 spiritual evolution, Strindberg was too arrant a wor/ 
 shipper of man as the creator of all that civilization 
 has wrung from barbarism, ever to see that womanj 
 as she is to-day, is in large measure the handiwork, 
 the creature of this same admirable myth — the 
 perfect man. If Strindberg's women are charac- 
 teristic and representative figures of our era — 
 which God forbid ! — man cannot shirk the responsi- 
 bility for these damning symptoms of man-made 
 
f 
 
 ^ 
 
 S6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 civilization. Strindberg's women are not typical of 
 the female species, symbolic representations of 
 Everywoman. They are specific, isolated, yet none 
 the less actual, existent, types of feminine degenera- 
 tion, fatally symptomatic of our own era in world- 
 civilization. They are the most eloquent briefs 
 in behalf of militant suffragism. Woman rightly 
 seeks to shatter man's control over the processes of 
 civilization, and to share it with him — to obviate 
 the recurrence of the types of women which Strind- 
 berg has projected into the focus of modern con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 VII 
 
 The historian of the contemporary drama of the 
 past quarter of a century must recognize in August 
 Strindberg a creative and original genius, of many- 
 hued, radiant brilliance. In particular, his achieve- 
 ment in the field of the one-act drama on the stage 
 of an intimate theatre has been nothing less than 
 epoch-making. His method of focal concentration, 
 of magnification of interest through intenslveness of 
 treatment, imparts to even his briefest efforts the 
 most complete illusion of reality. In his esthetic 
 creed, the dramatist must be a magician, .a hypnotist, 
 weaving about the spectator a spell of atmospheric 
 illusion which holds his attention with the utmost 
 fixity. By the elimination of all superfluity in the 
 stage sets and the scenery, the dramatic figures ap- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 57 
 
 pear as integral, organic parts of their surroundings. 
 These one-act plays of Strlndberg's are essentially 
 psychological, even psychical, or fantastic In tone; 
 they may present an allegory or a realistic glimpse 
 of life at a crucial point. The " stage-business " of 
 the mechanical order Is virtually eliminated ; the play 
 of emotion, the movements In the depths of char- 
 acter, are portrayed less by outcries or by violent 
 gestures, than by the play of facial expression, in- 
 dicative through mobility. 
 
 Strlndberg's one-act plays have a strong cast of 
 Maeterlinck about them — they are soul-interiors 
 thrown for a brief space into glaring Illumination. 
 The Stronger, in which only two female characters 
 appear, one remaining silent throughout reading a 
 newspaper, is a remarkable dramatic monologue — 
 the thoughts passing through the mind of the silent 
 one mirrored as it were in the words of the speaker. 
 The one actress in a flash of intuition, realizes the 
 price she has paid for her husband — who is the 
 lover of the other actress. All her tender little 
 acts of solicitude for her husband — hideous 
 mockery ! — were indirectly suggested by the taste 
 of the " other woman " — even to the tulips em- 
 broidered on his slippers. But she will never break 
 with her husband — because the other woman seeks 
 and desires it. This it is to be the stronger. 
 
 There is the fascination of psychological detec- 
 tion of crime in Pariah, a dialogue between two men. 
 
58 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Mr. X and Mr. Y, — which In a few brief exchanges 
 of ideas gives a complete presentment of two well- 
 defined characters — one, the man of courage and 
 essential Integrity, who has killed another and feels 
 no pangs of conscience because he realizes Its acci- 
 dental character; the other, the coward and con- 
 temptible blackmailer, who has forged a note and 
 cannot find within himself the saving grace of self- 
 exculpation. There is the kindly, yet sharp, accent 
 of satire in Debit and Credit — the man who has 
 reached the pinnacle of fame in his profession sud- 
 denly finding all the obligations of his past rising with 
 accusing hands before him — his brother demands 
 the payment of the loan which he has long evaded; 
 his fiancee Is proven faithless; his former mistress 
 appears to add the last drop of bitterness to his cup. 
 A still darker theme — the germ Idea of Shaw's 
 Mrs, JVarren^s Profession — is presented in Mother- 
 Love. By degrees, half accident, half design, the 
 young girl's faith in her mother i^ destroyed, by 
 overheard gossip and by the confession of her girl- 
 chum, the legitimate daughter of her own father. 
 Lacking the businesslike hardness of Vivie Warren, 
 this young girl feels life turn black before her in the 
 face of the hideous discovery — that she has no 
 " father," not because he was faithless to her mother, 
 but because her mother, even as his mistress, was 
 faithless to him. In all these plays, life rises up for 
 one dread instant and speaks its dread lesson — in 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 59 
 
 The Burned Lot, that sardonic picture of the shat- 
 tering of youthful ideals in the discovery of their 
 essential falsity, based on lies and fostered by de- 
 ceit; Simoon, sinister paean of revenge, pitched on 
 a key of religious fanaticism; The Spook Sonata, 
 with its morbidly fascinating concept of the room 
 where falsity reigns and life's ugly shams are piti- 
 lessly revealed; The Storm, with its autobiographical 
 ring — no more women, no more taking of mates 
 who prove faithless — only peace and the drowning 
 of memories. There is wide versatility of talent, a 
 fingering of many themes, in these little intimate 
 plays, this dramatic form which Strindberg created 
 as distinctively as Maupassant and Poe created the 
 form of the short-story — masters who exerted a 
 powerful influence upon Strindberg. 
 
 To me it has seemed most singular that so gentle 
 and beautiful a work of the imagination as Easter 
 should have found among American critics no inter- 
 preter. Indeed, among English-speaking critics 
 this unique art work has found no one to grasp its 
 purport or to disengage its meaning. Yet this Is 
 the play which gives the clue to the unilluded, bal- 
 anced Strindberg, instinct with the Christian spirit 
 of tolerance, teaching a lesson of life which, had he 
 been able to be his own pupil, would have saved 
 him from unspeakable anguish. Strindberg's 
 "Plays of the Seasons" — Easter, Midsummer, 
 Christmas — are significantly representative of the 
 
6o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 three-fold nature of his temperament, as well as of 
 his genius. Raster in its modernity of view-point 
 — a sort of Swedish anticipation of the Emmanuel 
 Movement — reveals Strindberg teaching the ad- 
 vanced lesson of psychic suggestion — the imaginary 
 character of so many of our woes, the efficacy of 
 certain desired, induced mental states. ' It is vastly 
 superior to Christmas, suggestive of the influence 
 of Maeterlinck, dour in tone, unrelieved by beauty, 
 sweetness and light; or to the almost frivolous 
 comedy of Midsummer — in which the bubble of 
 youthful folly is pricked to the accompaniment of 
 a peal of not unkindly laughter. 
 
 With a sadness not unlightened by subtly humor- 
 ous perception, we are shown in EasUz^ a family 
 living under the shadow of disgrace, from the em- 
 bezzlement of the funds of children and widows 
 which have been entrusted to the father of the fam- 
 ily. With restrained art of the most unobtrusive 
 simplicity, the characters stand forth in chiselled dis- 
 tinctness — rich in homely virtues, patient, conscien- 
 tious, energetic, but all narrowed by the cheap ideas 
 of familiar convention, seeing heroes and heroines 
 in each other and regarding their critics and creditors 
 as the conventional demons and villains of popular 
 melodrama. The mother Is harassed with the ob- 
 session of loyalty — the self-Induced conviction that 
 her husband was Innocent or at least that there 
 must have been some flaw In the legal procedure 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 6i 
 
 which condemned him. Her son Elis, the young 
 scholar, distrusts his friend and rival, frets over 
 his lot In the most feebly womanish way, and lacks 
 faith even In his betrothed, Christina, who tries to 
 lift the depressing burden as best she may. Even 
 little Benjamin, committed to the charge of the fam- 
 ily because of the father's embezzlement of his prop- 
 erty, IS an Indirect victim of the abnormal strain 
 Imparted to the family's vision — he falls at school 
 In his examination. As Easter approaches, a crisis 
 seems Imminent; the " old gentleman " to whom they 
 owe " so much money " Is seen regarding the house 
 fixldly, and a darker gloom settles down over the 
 household In anticipation of the foreclosure. On 
 Holy Thursday, the little daughter Eleanora, who 
 has been confined to a home for the mentally de- 
 ficient, suddenly returns, to work the holy miracle of 
 faith, hope, resurrection. She Is a psychic of mar- 
 vellous powers of Insight, whose former violence 
 now takes the guise of spirituality, re-enforced by 
 the wisdom of the Scriptures, mystic passages from 
 which are ever upon her tongue. Undfr the min- 
 istration of this gentle spirit, the Illusions of con- 
 vention vanish away; the scales fall from the eyes of 
 all. The old gentleman — with his terrifying blue 
 document — breaks down the false pride of Elis by 
 forcing him, under threat of foreclosure, to do the 
 right, however bitterly his conventional pride and 
 false sense of dignity may protest. This, truly, is 
 
62 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 one of the most impressive dramas of suggestion 
 ever written — a work of genius in anticipation of 
 the later variations on the same theme, of a more 
 conventional symbolism, The Servant in the House, 
 and The Passing of the Third Floor Back. This ex- 
 quisite drama has the movement of psychic forces 
 only — the material action is virtually nil. There 
 is a profound life-lesson in this play — it is not the 
 part of wisdom, nor even of sanity, in the larger 
 signification, to live under the obsessions of self-pity, 
 penny-plain convention, melodramatic views of con- 
 duct, false pride. As the glad mother exclaims: 
 " Eleanora the child of sorrow, has come back with 
 joy, but not the joy of this world! Her unrest has 
 been turned into peace, which she shares. Sane or 
 not, for me she is wise ; for she understands how to 
 bear the burdens of life as we do not." 
 
 Through the subtle suggestiveness of the spirit 
 of faith, hope, charity, all regain in the end that 
 happy balance which the sane life demands — and 
 can look hopefully forward toward the future, a 
 future of promise, of readjustment, of manful facing 
 of life's grim realities. As Velma Swanston 
 Howard, the sympathetic translator of Easter has 
 said: " No trace of the old bitterness and hatred is 
 to be found here. The author reveals a broad 
 tolerance, a rare poetic tenderness augmented by 
 an almost divine understanding of human frailties, 
 as marking certain natural stages in the evolution of 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 63 
 
 the soul. * Clear thoughts, like clear fountains, do 
 not seem as deep as they are; the turbid seem most 
 profound.' These words of Richard Lander might 
 well be applied to Strindberg. His finest and 
 deepest thoughts are as simple as the Gospels whilst 
 it is his turbid thoughts which seem the most pro- 
 found.*' 
 
 VIII 
 
 The seriesjpi fairy plaj^, symbolic in guise and 
 confessedly initiated under the influence of Maeter- 
 linck, reveals the fundamental bent of Strindberg 
 towards dramatic empiricism. Essentially an inno- 
 vator, an experimentalist in form, Strindberg here 
 exhibits his genius in appropriating a given genre, 
 conceived In a chosen mood, and by a course of ex- 
 perimentation, more or less tentative and Imitative, 
 achieving a final form peculiarly his own. In The 
 Crown Bride, a folk-lore play, reminiscent of 
 Heljermanns In richness of local coloring, of Maeter- 
 linck and Ibsen In the use of symbolic figures, we 
 follow the bitter punishment of a young girl who 
 has drowned her offspring before marriage. The 
 poor creature is hounded down by her husband's 
 relatives, and suffers the remorse and torture of the 
 damned. There Is an atmosphere of unreality 
 about the incidents — Strlndberg's persistent realism, 
 his almost grotesque denotement of the grim naivete 
 and mediaeval superstition of the fisher-folk accord 
 
64 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ill with the symbolic paraphernalia of the piece. 
 The finale Is In brighter key, with Its promise of 
 salvation for the pitiful girl through the redemptive 
 power of love. For her, " faith Is born In hope," 
 when she discovers the " greatest thing In life, the 
 love of all living creatures, great and small." 
 
 The Inequality so apparent In The Crown Bride is 
 totally absent from Swanwhite, the " fairy drama " 
 published In 1902, and intended as a medium 
 for the histrionic genius of Strindberg's third wife, 
 the actress, Harriet Bosse. The play has all the 
 fanciful stage-properties so familiar In The Princess 
 Maleine and other plays of Maeterlinck In his first 
 period. Indeed, Strindberg Is unusually lavish In 
 stage directions; and one almost senses parody in his 
 Imperfect employment of the significant brevity, the 
 almost puerile monosyllables of Maeterlinck. There 
 Is beauty here, faint yet tender; and as In Joyzelle, 
 love Is all-triumphant, redeeming even the " wicked 
 stepmother " and recalling the " fairy prince " from 
 the dead — a play, truly, for children, since the 
 symbolism Is of the most elementary and obvious 
 sort. Produced by a Gordon Craig, with splendid* 
 scenic effects, Swanwhite might well win popular 
 success In a Juvenile Theatre. 
 
 Through this experimental and imitative period, 
 Strindberg was slowly forging towards a form of his 
 own, far greater and more profound than the models 
 before him. The realm of the higher fantasy had 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 65 
 
 always beckoned to him — that realm where life in 
 all Its manifestations Instinctively assumes the form 
 of parable and prophecy. The most astounding 
 testimony to the versatile greatness of Strindberg 
 Is that he, the most distinctive naturalist which the 
 modern dramatic movement has furnished, could 
 also write the marvellous fantasy entitled The 
 Dream Play. Into it has gone at once his blighted 
 faith in the consolations life can afford and his dis- 
 illusionment over the sanctifying and redemptive as- 
 pects of existence. This philosophy of life takes 
 mystic form through the unrollment of the panorama 
 of human destiny — love, marriage, faith, science, 
 religion — before the eyes of a daughter of the 
 gods who descends to earth. The infinite sadness 
 of human life, the eternal recurrence of Its devas- 
 tating duties, the everlasting return of self on self, 
 the rythmic dissonance and discord, the perpetual 
 bafflement and struggle — all this Is revealed through 
 the strangest of mediums. It is the macrocosm In 
 the microcosm — the dream within a dream. All 
 Is Inconsequence; thoughts ramble concentrically. 
 Strange designs emerge with singular distinctness 
 from the crazy-quilt patch-work of life. 
 ^JThe atmosphere Is perfectly reflected In the 
 author's Prefatory Note : " Anything may happen; 
 everything Is possible and probable. Time and 
 space do not exist. On an Insignificant background 
 of reality, Imagination designs and embroiders novel 
 
66 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 patterns: a medley of memories, experiences, free 
 fancies, absurdities and improvisations. The char- 
 acters split, double, multiply, vanish, solidify, blur, 
 clarify. But one consciousness reigns above them 
 all — that of the dreamer; and before it there are 
 no secrets, no incongruities, no scruples, no laws. 
 There Is neither judgment nor exoneration, but 
 merely narration. And as the dream is mostly pain- 
 ful, rarely pleasant, a note of melancholy and of 
 pity with all living things runs right through the 
 wabbly tale." The play transpires In the hazy, twi- 
 light zone of mystic feeling. It Is the dramatization 
 of unconscious cerebration. The daughter of the 
 gods feels In all their force the pangs of life — and 
 returns to heaven to lay all human grievance before 
 the throne. There seems to be no conception here 
 of life as creative evolution, pushing towards higher 
 spheres. Life, as Strindberg sees It, Is hopeless 
 because It Is static, immutable — the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and forever. In the depth and reach of the 
 Imagination, the genius to interpret reality through 
 the medium of unreality, this is assuredly one of the 
 most marvellous dramatic achievements of modem 
 times — unique, incomparable. 
 
 In the key of The Dream Play are written aI§o 
 two other plays of his, so singular In their treatment, 
 so fascinating In their power, as to set them apart 
 from all the rest of his work. First of these Is 
 There are Crimes and Crimes ^ where fantasy and 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 67 
 
 inconsequence play their crucial roles, though with 
 subtle unobtrusiveness. This play, along with Ad- 
 vent, was originally published under the title In a 
 Higher Court — a title singularly apt In expressing 
 the quintessential meaning. The play is rich with 
 the seductive brilliance of life at Its most effervescent 
 moments — a symbol of that intoxication which shat- 
 ters balance and causes man madly to sin against 
 the light. " The * higher court,' In which are tried 
 the crimes of Maurice, Adolphe, and Henriette,* 
 says Mr. Bjorkman, the translator, " Is, of course, 
 the highest one that man can Imagine. And the 
 crimes of which they have all become guilty are 
 those which, as Adolphe remarks, * are not men- 
 tioned In the criminal code ' — In a word, crimes 
 against the spirit, against the impalpable power that 
 moves us, against God. The play, seen in this light, 
 pictures a deep-reaching spiritual change, leading us 
 step by step from the soul adrift on the waters of 
 life to the state where It Is definitely oriented and 
 Impelled." This play Is deserving of the popularity 
 which It has achieved — of high constructive power, 
 Instinct with a profoundly salutary injunction for 
 human guidance. It Is a dramatization of the 
 workings of conscience — a realization of that uni- 
 versal phenomenon to which all human nature is 
 heir, the revolutionary Illumination of the soul which 
 comes through divination of the distinction between 
 right and wrong. It has rare interest, subjectively, 
 
68 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 as a reflection of the revolution wrought In Strind- 
 berg's own attitude — mirroring a sense of faith, 
 hope and love — certitude in the higher reality of the 
 divine. " Only through religion," Strindberg has 
 confessed, " or the hope of something better, and 
 the recognition of the innermost meaning of life as 
 that of an ordeal, a school, or perhaps a penitentiary, 
 will it be possible to bear the burden of life with 
 suflUcient resignation." 
 
 The second of these realistic dramas, transfused 
 with mysticism, is The Dance of Death — a work so 
 powerful in detail, yef so Inconclusive in totality, as 
 to leave one with a haunting sense of a masterpiece 
 unrealized. In statellness, sweep, and grandeur, It 
 ranks with the masterpieces of the Greek drama; 
 in naturalism, modernity of outlook, and gripping 
 power, it stands unsurpassed in the dramatic liter- 
 ature of the era. Life, In a setting of diabolical 
 ferocity and hideous struggle, is set nakedly before 
 us — in two separate plays, the second but the 
 shadow, the reflection of the first. We see the 
 drama of existence played out before our stricken 
 gaze — the terrible struggles for self-realization, 
 arising out of inequalities In condition, incompati- 
 bility in temperament; the duel of sex, a duel to the 
 death, because of the futPe struggle to realize 
 unity through diversity, the foreordained tragedy 
 inevitable when one individual strives to attain su- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 69 
 
 premacy through the frenzied effort to shatter the 
 integrity of another's character. Strlndberg has not 
 read his Darwin in vain — painting In garish colors 
 the blind, relentless warfare of existence, waged 
 upon the individual by the Immitigable conditions of 
 environment. Nor does the clue to life's hopeless- 
 ness elude us ever — the pitiless monotony, the re- 
 currence and repetition, of spiritual and mental ex- 
 perience In the face of all the chances and changes 
 of this mortal life. There Is no escape from the 
 cyclic rhythm of life — as the Captain says: *' Wipe 
 out — and pass on." Marvellous, tragic Image — 
 wrought of the Incoherence and pitiless sameness of 
 experience — Inconclusive, as life Is Inconclusive, 
 without enduring, unshaken faith. 
 
 IX 
 
 There is one phase of Strlndberg's monumental 
 activity beyond the scope of the present inquiry — 
 the field of national, historical drama. Time will 
 show whether the vitality of Strlndberg's characters 
 will energize works dealing with remote, wellnigh 
 forgotten periods of Swedish history. Certain it 
 is that these plays are wonderful, not as re-creations 
 of historical figures and epochs, but as verisimilar, 
 life-like denotements of forceful character In epochal 
 situations. Individual and national. In every domain 
 of art, Strlndberg has always succeeded In project- 
 
70 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS ^ 
 
 Ing tremendously vital characters — tensely alive, 
 subtly neuropathic, strenuous in mental and spiritual 
 cerebration. 
 
 Nor can it profit us here to study the mystic wan- 
 derings and desert pilgrimages of that most pro- 
 foundly philosophic work, most confusing medley 
 of allegory, parable, autobiography, confession and 
 self-exculpation, the trilogy To Damascus, Such a 
 work defies even the genius of a Reinhardt in pro- 
 duction — blurring the vision of the "average 
 spectator " with its kinetoscopic heterogeneity of 
 spiritual films. Yet from it, colossal In its incom- 
 mensurability, we learn perhaps best of all the inner 
 meaning of Strindberg's nature and soul. 
 
 Strindberg is the supreme universalist of our 
 modern era. With all the virile force of his per- 
 sonality, the richness of his temperament as artist, 
 Strindberg is in essence an analyst, a research- 
 worker in the domain of the human spirit. In 
 doubt, in the questioning, I had almost said the 
 querulous, attitude towards life and the universe, 
 Strindberg found the real clue to spiritual progress. 
 Beginning as an individualist, with that supreme 
 arrogance which he described as the last trace of 
 Man's Godlike origin, Strindberg felt for a time 
 the Socialist call of the era — only to lapse again 
 into a more arrant and confirmed individualism, in 
 his effort to realize the superhuman ideals of an age 
 which produced a Nietzsche and a Blake. A con- 
 
AUGUST STRINDBERG 71 
 
 firmed sceptic, he frankly accepted the doctrine of 
 the relativity of truth, and 'sought through experi- 
 mentation and self-examination those spiritual real- 
 ties which engender freedom of spirit and en- 
 franchisement of soul. Ego-centric, jaundiced, 
 moody, full of torturing discontent, he finally paid 
 the penalty in the paranoia of that terrible five- 
 year interval, obsessed with the chimera of exag- 
 gerated egoism, the delusion of referential ideas. 
 In his search for the realities of the spiritual life, 
 he achieved the miracle of resignation and acceptance 
 — abandoning the search for happiness and seeking 
 only the strength to endure his fate. Overmastered 
 by his dominant weakness, which he described as 
 ** sensitiveness to pressure," he turned frantically, 
 now this way, now that, in the blind effort to achieve 
 moral certitude; but finally he came to rest, or at 
 least resignation, in the consciousness that life is a 
 complex of interaction, and that the individual, 
 as part of the universe, has no inalienable 
 personal " rights '' to pleasure and happiness.- 
 His life-work Is essentially moral in its nature; 
 his nature was essentially Christian. However 
 splenetic and arrogant his mood, however jaundiced 
 and macabre his tone, we nevertheless recognize in 
 him a supreme artist, whose ideal was cultural de- 
 velopment; a moral force In the universe, seeking 
 the ultimate redemption of the human soul. Re- 
 actionary, primitive in his attitude towards woman, 
 
72 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 at one period in his career painting woman as fiend 
 in human form, he was none the less Imbued with a 
 love for his mother bordering on reverence, a senti- 
 ment of deep tenderness for his children. An ideal- 
 Ust however misguided, it was his tragic fate never 
 to realize or even to comprehend that the clue to 
 human happiness is not strife, struggle, doubt and 
 denial, but gently humorous acceptance of personal 
 limitations and human frailties. Perhaps a vision 
 came in the end; for on his deathbed, he said: 
 " Now, everything personal Is blotted out.'' Strok- 
 ing his daughter's hand, he whispered, " Dear, dear 
 Greta ! " The Bible which he asked for being 
 placed In his hand, he murmured: "Now I have 
 finished with the book of this world!" His last 
 words — the ultimate confession of the catholic 
 Christian spirit — as he pressed the Bible to his 
 heart, were : " Here is to be found the only true ex- 
 pression." 
 
 \ 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 
 
''/« reality my development is thoroughly con- 
 secutive, I myself can indicate the various threads 
 in the whole course of my development, the unity of 
 my ideas, and their gradual evolution and I . , , 
 shall prove to the world that I am the same person 
 to-day that I was on the day I first found myself/* 
 Henrik Ibsen to Lorentz Dietrichson. 
 
 I 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 
 The Evolution of His Mind and Art 
 
 From the standpoint of present-day America, with 
 its gospel of the strenuous life, its tendency to hero- 
 worship with the masterful captain of industry for 
 hero, its Roosevelts and its Pearys, Henrik Ibsen 
 may be said to have lived a singularly uneventful, 
 marvellously secluded life. His future biographer 
 — for no one has yet succeeded, or even made a 
 legitimate attempt to succeed, in mirroring the fea- 
 tures of this placid exterior life of crowded Inner 
 tumultuousness — must match Ibsen himself In pa- 
 tience, detachment and single-mlndedness. Until 
 now, it may fairly be said that the literature con- 
 cerned with the life and art of Henrik Ibsen deals 
 almost solely with a traditionary figure. This leg- 
 endary being is a little crabbed old man, taciturn, 
 uncommunicative, even bearish, who occasionally 
 broke the silence only to advance his own interests, 
 to lash out with envenomed rage at his enemies, or 
 else to affront gratuitously the friends and admirers 
 who sought to do him public honor. Now that we 
 
 75 
 
 \ 
 
76 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 are left alone with memories — and reminiscences 
 both kindly and malicious, — the spiritual lineaments 
 of the Norwegian seer tend to define themselves to 
 vision. For the first time, In the light of the reminis- 
 cences of his friends and acquaintances, is It becom- 
 ing possible to discover the man in his works, and 
 to trace some of the many vital threads in the close- 
 meshed fabric of his art. In the light, too, of his 
 literary remains — piously collected and astutely 
 edited by Koht and Ellas — one may at last follow 
 his work consistently from first to last in a chain of 
 unbroken sequence, and test the validity of Ibsen's 
 claim that his development as artist is consistent, uni- 
 form, evolutional. Heretofore, the salient details 
 of Ibsen's exterior life have been recorded with 
 mediate accuracy; and numerous efforts, brilliant, 
 mediocre, futile, have been made towards achieving 
 the biography of Ibsen's mind. The great work 
 which yet remains to be done is to relate the man 
 to his work, to discover the real human being who 
 lurks behind the cartoons of Vallotton, Laerum and 
 Scotson-Clark, the real human heart beating beneath 
 the formidable frock-coat of the " little buttoned-up 
 
 man." 
 
 II 
 
 America has been prolific In studies which betray 
 crass unfamiliarity with the surroundings from which 
 Ibsen sprang, as well as imperfect comprehension 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 77 
 
 of the streams of European thought which pro- 
 foundly affected his spiritual development. The 
 real contributions to the knowledge of Ibsen on the 
 part of American scholars and critics have been 
 concerned, in the main, with Ibsen's technical ability 
 and with those inalienable qualities of his art which 
 Tiave rendered him, as a dramatist, unique and dis-, 
 tinctive. To Ibsen, the countries which have shown 
 most profound regard for his significance gave a 
 defining title and character : Norway thought of him 
 first as a conservative and later as a radical; Ger- 
 many was widely divided between those who classed 
 him, respectively, as naturalist, individualist, and 
 socialist; and France abhorred his anarchy while cele- 
 brating his symbolism.. Despite the admirable and 
 scholarly work of Archer, Gosse, Herford, Wick- 
 steed and others, the brilliant polemics of Bernard 
 Shaw, the elevated but sporadic performances of 
 Janet Achurch, Elizabeth Robins, and other ex- 
 emplars of the modern school of acting, and lastly 
 the dignified work of the societies for the promotion 
 of the modern drama, Ibsen has never laid the 
 " great public " in England under his spell nor as- 
 sumed. In the eyes of the reading-.public, the dignity 
 of a classic. 
 
 There are many and cogent reasons why America 
 has never profited by the lessons Ibsen presented §0 
 unmistakably to his own and to future generations. 
 As Individualist, Ibsen could hope to create no up- 
 
78 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 roar in a country which surpasses the countries of " 
 the Ibsen social dramas in the production of self- 
 assertive individualists. In America there was — ' 
 and is — no school of acting, classic in finish, classic 
 In tradition, to interpret the complex harmonies of ^ 
 the Ibsenian dramas. The New Theatre proved 
 a failure. Mansfield's production of Peer Gynt 
 was a half-hearted concession to what he regarded 
 as a popular craze for the bizarre and the ab- 
 normal; and the brilliant performances of Mrs. 
 Fiske as Hedda Gabler and of Miss Mary Shaw 
 as Mrs. Alvlng, to mention the most notable achieve- 
 ments, reeked too strongly of the unhealthy and the 
 distorted to conquer permanently the prejudices of 
 American audiences which are nightly flattered with 
 the display of brilliant costumes, beautiful but In- 
 competent " stars," and heroic-looking, but wooden, 
 " matinee Idols " for their delectation. Nazlmova 
 demonstrated that there was an audience in America 
 that really relished Ibsen; and the lists of the most 
 popular books at public libraries In America contain 
 the plays of Ibsen as a stock number. 
 
 In two notable respects, Ibsen should mean much 
 for the present and for the future of American dra- 
 matic art. No fear of misunderstanding prevents 
 the statement that Ibsen was the first and greatestl 
 of the literary muck-rakers of modern drama| 
 From the turbulent squabbles of Norway as well as 
 from the social ferment of Europe, Ibsen drew 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 79 
 
 trenchant and immediate lessons from public con- » 
 duct as well as from personal morals. The Plim- 1 
 soil agitation in England for proper laws regulating \\ 
 the insurance of unseaworthy vessels, reflected in the \ 
 press of Norway, was at the back of The Pillars 0/ * 
 Society; and Thaulow's public propaganda against 
 a local society which he deemed fraudulent eventu- 
 ated in the fight of Dr. Stockmann for the purifica- 
 tion of the baths of his native town. John Gabriel 
 Borkman is rooted in the reality of the daily life 
 of Norway; and The League of Youth fell afoul 
 of Bjomson and his coterie. It may be thought that 
 Ibsen as cha mpion of individnaLem ancipation came 
 too late for a country whose greatest boasts are its 
 freedom and its scope for the free play of indi- 
 viduality. And yet, there are people so critically 
 censorious as to maintain that there is no real free- 
 dom in America; and that we are bound hard and 
 fast by the puritanical formulas of a provincial 
 civilization. Freedom of thought in America hasj 
 in no sense kept pace with license of conduct; and al 
 country which cannot suppress night-riding, lynching 
 and mob-violence should not throw stones at Gorki, 
 Zola or Mrs, Warren* s Profession, America, with 
 its Morses and its Walshes, need seek no further for 
 wounded titans of finance like Borkman; and the 
 Slocum disaster dwarfs the Indian Girl of The Pil- 
 lars of Society into trivial insignificance. In Dr. 
 Charles W. Stiles America can point to a Dr. Stock- 
 
8o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 mann with a nation, rather than a minor watering- 
 place, for the field of his inquiry. The most sig- 
 nificant lesson of modern democracy In America, 
 learned not from Ibsen but from the dire example 
 of the American Sugar Company, and a thousand 
 other scandals, is that, In its fullest significance, eter- 
 nal vigilance Is the price of liberty. The literature 
 of exposure Is never mal a propos In a civilization 
 whose protection rests upon perpetual publicity. 
 
 The buoyant youth of America, impressing alike 
 a Van Eeden and a Ferrero, Is both Its strength 
 and its weakness. It bespeaks at once America's 
 Inexperience In self-control and her optimism of 
 outlook. America can furnish towns as provincial 
 In tone as ever won the amused contempt of Euro- 
 pean audiences at the performance of Ibsen's plays 
 of Norwegian life; and her political life furnishes 
 types of half-baked political leaders no less con- 
 temptible and inexperienced than Stensgaard and his 
 young men's league. But America is young and 
 hopeful, at least; it is not peopled, we are confi- 
 dently assured, with soul-sick tragedies mouthing 
 their futile protests against the Iron vice of environ- 
 ment, the Ineradicable scar of heredity, the fell 
 clutch of circumstance. Ibsen's pathological preoc- 
 cupations should have no meaning for America — 
 his dalliance with sick consciences, obsessed person- 
 alities, wounded souls, disillusioned fatalists. But 
 America should take to heart Ibsen's bold challenge 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 8i. 
 
 for Individual freedom, his insistence upon moral ^ 
 duties, his concern for marriage founded upon equita- ''' 
 ble relations between husband and wife,/ his claim 
 of the IndivIduaFs right to develop fully and without 
 trammel, and lastly, his faith that human love and 
 the happiness that it secures for the Individual 
 transcend all the glories of the palace of art, — all 
 the victories that vaulting ambition can achieve. 
 All that Is needed for a real appreciation of Ibsen 
 in America is a re-application of these inspiring 
 lessons to our youthful, buoyant, optimistic yet in- 
 choate society. 
 
 As man, as social thinker, Ibsen has for America 
 these distinct and salutary lessons. As artist and 
 craftsman, his message is no less signal and impera- 
 tive. Ibsen's technique is one of the supreme glories 
 of his art; and there can be little doubt that, in 
 certain plays, the technique displayed is inextricably, 
 bound up with the dramatic genius which devised it.! 
 But no would-be dramatist of modern life to-day, in 
 its limited environment and in its circumscribed 
 sphere, can afford to neglect the study of the tech- 
 nique of Henrik Ibsen. In order to mirror the real i 
 life of to-day In perfect naturalness, the dramatist 
 must realize the evolutional trend of the drama and 
 study carefully the models set by Ibsen for our day 
 and generation. Thus will he be the better enabled 
 to realize Ibsen's Ideal: '' to produce the impression 
 on the reader that what he was reading was some- 
 
-^ 
 
 82 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 thing that had really happened/' The great secret 
 to be learned from a study of Ibsen's craftsmanship 
 is the way he bridges over the gap between art and 
 life by identifying the action and the exposition. As 
 ernard Shaw admirably expressed it: "What we 
 might have learned from Ibsen was that our fash- 
 ionable dramatic material was worn out as far as 
 cultivated modern people are concerned; that what 
 really interests such people on the stage is not what 
 we call action — meaning two well-known and rather 
 short-sighted actors pretending to fight a duel with- 
 V out their glasses, or a handsome leading man chas- 
 ing a beauteous leading lady round the stage with 
 threats, obviously not feasible, of immediate rapine 
 — but stories of lives, discussion of conduct, unveil- 
 ing of motives, conflict of characters in talk, laying 
 bare of souls, discovery of pitfalls — in short, illu- 
 mination of life. . . ." 
 
 Ill 
 
 It has often been said that the drama can never be 
 the same again, now that Ibsen has lived and writ- 
 ten. It may be said with even greater truth that 
 the world can never be the same again, since Ibsen 
 has lived and written. The spirit of modern times, 
 the form and pressure of the age, the most fruitful 
 germs of modern culture are embodied in the dramas 
 of Ibsen. It should be the purpose of the drama to 
 crystallize and body forth ideals for the human 
 
 I 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 83 
 
 race, and thus to inform reality with the ideal. For 
 the age of Shakspere, the ideal of art was " to hold, 
 as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue ; 
 her own feature, scorn her own image, and the 
 very age and body of the time his form and pres-i 
 sure.'* The nineteenth century brought forth a man 
 who boldly declared that we are no longer living in 
 the time of Shakspere. He clearly realized that the 
 artist's attitude toward life must be redemptive as , 
 well as revelative. Every man shares the reponsi-l 
 bility and the guilt of the society to which he be- 
 longs. The function of contemporary art, of dra-j' 
 matic art par excellence, is something higher thanJ 
 mere reflection. It is not enough merely to catch 
 the surface sheen of life. Modern art concerns it- 
 self, must concern itself, with penetrative inter preta- 
 tion. The drama is not only a mirror to reflect the 
 surface of things, but also a Rontgen ray to pene- 
 trate the surface and reveal, beneath the outer in- 
 tegument, the fundamental frame-work and struc- 
 ture of modern life. The great dramatists are the 
 brief and abstract chronometers of the time. " It is; 
 surely the great use of modern drama," says Pinero, 
 " that while in its day it provides a rational entertain- 
 ment, in the future it may serve as a history of the 
 hour which gives it birth.*' This is perhaps the 
 least service rendered by the drama : to serve as an 
 historical record of the age. Many realistic critics 
 maintain that the only works of art worth consider- 
 
84 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Ing as historical are not those written in one epoch 
 to give a view of the life or the events of some 
 earlier epoch, but those which deal with the life of 
 the time at which they are written, and have grown 
 truly historical through the lapse of years. Ibsen's 
 supremacy springs, not from his so-called historical 
 dramas, of the type which Maeterlinck defines as 
 ** artificial poems that arise from the impossible mar-v 
 riage of past and present," but from his real histor- 
 ical dramas — his personal and social dramas of con- 
 temporary life. 
 
 All great minds, in contemplating the riddle of 
 the human chimera and the disquieting mystery of 
 life, must have realized, with Leibniz, that " every 
 present is laden with the past and big with the 
 future." A world-dramatist like Ibsen is the child 
 of the past, the cornpanion of the present, the pro- 
 genitor of the future — trinitvj pdlssnlnhlp. That 
 he is the heir of the ages but increases his obligation 
 to body forth with convincing truth the age in which 
 he lives. Goethe maintained that, in order to know 
 the man, it is necessary to know the age in which he 
 lived. To no time in the world's history is this 
 truth so apposite as to the present. The feeling of 
 cosmic unity and the sentiment of social solidarity 
 have so penetrated and informed the thought of 
 to-day that no one questions the statement, as ap- 
 plied to the dominant personality, that the age helps 
 to create the man and the man helps to create the 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 85 
 
 age. Every epoch-making mind, it has been said, is \ i 
 at the same time child and father, disciple and mas- ^ 
 ter, of his age. The more fully he surrenders him- j 
 self to it, the more fully will he control it. " Our I 
 pride and sense of human independence rebel against 
 the belief that men of genius obey a movement quite 
 as much as they control it, and even more than they 
 create it," says John Addington Symonds. " We 
 gain a new sense of the vitality and spiritual soli- 
 darity of human thought. At first sight the individ- 
 ual lessens; but the race, the mass from which the 
 individual emerges and of which he becomes the 
 spokesman and interpreter, gains In dignity and 
 greatness. Shakspere is not less than he Is, be- 
 cause we know him as necessary to a series. His 
 eminence remains his own." 
 
 In this light, the masterpieces of modern drama, 
 appear, not as detached monuments of literary art, 
 butjis symbols of a growing world-spirit. We seel c.or^i:>/ 
 In the evolution of the individual the evolution ofli'^^^ ^ 
 the race, In the regeneration of the individual the ■ ^^^^ 
 regeneration of society. The study of the Interfji^ccAr 
 preter of life to-day resolves itself Into a study oe ^'^^< 
 the vital phases of the struggle that is going on in' 
 humanity to-day. 
 
 IV 
 
 We are living to-day in an age of transition — the 
 transition between criticism and faith. The nine- 
 
 % 
 
S6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tcenth century was called the age of perhaps the 
 greatest doubt and the greatest faith the world has 
 ever known. Science, with its transforming theories, 
 its destructive and far-reaching criticism, swept the 
 world with the force of an avalanche. The world 
 has had to be reconstituted. The new world is just 
 now beginning to emerge, like the phoenix, from the 
 ashes of the old. The laboratory method, the dis- \ 
 secting fever, the analytic spirit have permeated and 
 given new form to every department of human life. 
 Nothing was accepted as fact until placed under the 
 microscope, or perhaps subjected to the bombard- 
 ment of X-rays, or analyzed in a retort. So, to-day, 
 we have a new psychology, a new art, a new medi- 
 cine, a new sociology, a new religion. Everywhere 
 modification and alteration, redistribution and re 
 adjustment. 
 
 The world demands the Truth to-day, for it has 
 scientifically demonstrated the Biblical theorem that 
 the truth shall make you free. 
 
 Under the influence of the conception of cosmic 
 unity, tracing its origin to Auguste Comte and per- 
 meating all modern thought, society has grown to 
 symbolize a vast wave which carries along the in- 
 dividual with it. The laws of its motion are fixed: 
 if the individual resists, he is submerged. The In- 
 dividual is but a tiny atom tossed upon the surface 
 of this turbulent wave. Government In many cases 
 appears to mean the stifling of the wise and enllght- 
 
 4 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 87 
 
 ened few by the will of the ignorant and thoughtless 
 many. 
 
 The social compact often robs the individual of 
 freedom. 
 
 From the standpoint of evolution, the individual 
 is at war with his fellows. The long line of sci- 
 entists, from Lamarck to Spencer, from Huxley to 
 Haeckel, from Darwin to De Vries have held their 
 solemn clinics and registered their stern verdict. 
 The theories of unlimited competition, of the in- 
 variability of species, of the mutability of organic 
 forms, of the survival of the fittest (or is it, perhaps, 
 the survival of the most unscrupulous?) are pro- 
 nounced by the vast majority to be laws as sure, in- 
 evitable and relentless as the facts of life and death. 
 The struggle for existence is the stern reality the 
 individual cannot shirk. This struggle is sharpened 
 in direct proportion to the increase in the cost of the 
 staple commodities of life. Competition becomes so 
 fierce as to amount, in many cases, to oppression, 
 elimination, destruction. 
 
 In certain lights, life takes on the guise of a brutal 
 fight. 
 
 From the side of modern medicine and modern 
 biology, a more sinister spectre robs the world of 
 peaceful sleep. The scientist, the surgeon, the phy- 
 sician play the leading roles in the drama of our life. 
 Nerve strain, neurasthenia, mental collapse, physical 
 ills of every sort beset and menace on all sides a 
 
88 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 world which has already passed the first flush of 
 youth. The ghost of Hamlet's father Is a less terri- 
 fying apparition than the spectres of our own brain. 
 All men are not born free and equal — not even 
 those born in the same rank of society. Do what we 
 will, we cannot escape the influence of the past. 
 Heredity lays its skeleton hand upon us and we enter 
 the struggle for existence with the ineradicable taint 
 of hereditary weakness or degeneracy gnawing like 
 a vulture at our very vitals. 
 *<r^/*l«D ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ fathers are visited upon the 
 v^raTH£;ft: children even unto the third and fourth genera- 
 "~' o tlon. 
 
 The modern theories of spiritualism, thought- 
 transference and hypnotic suggestion fill our souls 
 with awe and disquiet, and tend to depress our 
 sense of human vitality. Such scientists as Myers, 
 Hyslop, Lombroso, Lodge and a score of others, 
 working both independently and through reputable 
 societies for psychical research, are making slow, but 
 persistent efforts to fret away the thin veil — if such 
 there be ! — between matter and spirit. In the 
 minds of many, there remains little room for doubt, 
 not simply of the control of mind over matter, but of 
 the control of mind over mind, of spirit over spirit. 
 The dominant will comes into the sphere of our 
 life, exerts upon us its occult influence, and our 
 weaker will succumbs. 
 
 Humanity is the dynamo of potential forces which 
 
 I 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 89 
 
 we cannot fathom. Hypnotism is the thief of in- 
 dividuality. 
 
 Ever since the beginning of the world until the 
 last century, two different standards of conduct pre- 
 vailed for men and women. For the two sexes there 
 obtained two different sets of laws, two different 
 codes of ethics, two different philosophies of life. 
 Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft awoke the world 
 with her Vindication of the Rights of Woman; 
 ever since John Stuart Mill animadverted against 
 the subjection of woman; ever since Henrik Ibsen 
 declared in burning words that in the Workers and 
 the Women he placed all his hopes for the future, 
 and that for them he would work with all his 
 strength — this age has won the right to the title : 
 the age of Woman's Emancipation. Through the 
 slow but titanic pressure of the feminist movement, 
 woman is at last beginning to gain the freedom — 
 economic, intellectual, moral, and even political ! — 
 which has so long been denied her. The true rela- 
 tion between man and woman as co-ordinate factors 
 in human progress is at last coming to light. 
 
 The emancipation of woman, in the completest 
 sense, is on the way. 
 
 This is an age marked by unsettled and conflicting 
 views in regard to standards of morality. ** Social 
 progress," it has been said, ** takes effect through the 
 replacement of old institutions by new ones; and 
 since every institution involves the recognition of the 
 
ft»Tl 
 
 90 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the 
 repudiation of an established duty at every turn." 
 The world has had its eyes opened to the flaws in 
 our rough-and-ready morality by the rhapsodic in- 
 vective of Nietzsche, the mordant irony of Ibsen, p,,,m 
 the impassioned zeal of Tolstoi, the enlightening sat- 
 ire of Bernard Shaw, the lightning humor of Mark 
 Twain. Inequality of divorce laws in the different 
 States of America, for example, makes a man who is 
 a scoundrel in one State a respectable gentleman in 
 another. Murders under the specious excuse of the 
 " unwritten law " are only too tragically frequent. 
 In some States, children, even before birth, may be 
 willed or deeded away like chattels. The funda- 
 mental principles of right and wrong — whatever 
 they are, no one seems to know them ! — are, of 
 course, eternal; but the conventional code of conduct, 
 the " morality of custom," as Nietzsche termed it, 
 cannot with justice be applied invariably and unex- 
 ceptionally. 
 
 Conventional morality is a very untrustworthy 
 standard for distinguishing between right and wrong. 
 
 The great discovery of modern life is that society, 
 not the individual, is at fault. Democratic govern- 
 ment is on trial. We no longer boast, with Shak- 
 spere, of Man: noble in reason, infinite in faculty, 
 In form and moving express and admirable, In action 
 like an angel, in apprehension like a god, for we 
 realize the sad botch he has made of the actual af- 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 91 
 
 fairs of life. The humanizing influences of fraternal \ 
 sympathy, of social pity and social justice must re- f 
 place the more personal and selfish interests of the [ 
 individual. Social criticism is the sign-manual of ! v 
 the age. Redemption for the individual is to be at- / 
 tained through a recognition of the intolerable in- 
 justices of modern society, and through consistent . 
 efforts at remedial and constructive measures for its 
 reorganization. " There still remains in the depths 
 of every heart of loyal intention," says Maeterlinck, 
 ** a great duty of charity and justice that eclipses all 
 others. And it is perhaps from the struggle of this 
 duty against our egoism and ignorance that the veri- 
 table drama of our century shall spring." 
 "^The sociologist, the social reformer, is destined 
 to be the hero of the future. 
 
 With science as the active and dominant spirit of 
 the age, to whose tests all questions are now-a-days 
 subjected, we begin to gain some sort of perspective 
 of the complex character of contemporary existence 
 with which the Interpreter of life has to deal. The 
 Insistent problems of the social complex, the evolu- 
 tion of the individual under the operation of the 
 law of the survival of the fittest, the sociological doc- 
 trine of environment, the biological theories of 
 heredity and temperament, the psychic phenomena 
 of hypnotism and spiritualism, the great gulf fixed 
 between social influence and social Impotence, the 
 hideous corruption of politics, business and finance, 
 
92 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the increasing unrest and discontent of the laboring 
 classes, the growing artificiality of metropolitan life, 
 distrust In conventional standards of morality, par- 
 tial and imperfect justice meted out to woman, wide- 
 spread dissatisfaction with the grosser Injustices and 
 Inequalities of society and its organization, and, per- 
 meating all, the relentless criticism of science and so- 
 ciology — these are, in sum, the momentous prob- 
 lems of chiefest significance In contemporary life 
 which demand adequate treatment, with the prospect 
 of eventual solution, at the hands of the conscien- 
 tious student of present-day conditions. 
 
 It Is through his masterful exposition and treat- 
 ment of many of these deep and ever-widening prob- 
 lems that Henrik Ibsen has attained to supreme emi- 
 nence and authority in the drama of our time. 
 
 No extravagance lurks In the statement that 
 Henrik Ibsen is the greatest Teutonic dramatist 
 since Shakspere, and the greatest dramatist of any 
 race or clime, of our modern era. Not until he 
 served an apprenticeship of decades did he earn the 
 right to that comprehensive characterization. It be- 
 came his due only after years of preparatory pre- 
 occupation with the legendary, the poetic, the his- 
 torical, and the romantic. Henrik Johan Ibsen was 
 born on March 28, 1828, at Sklen, Norway. Ibsen 
 and Bjornson are customarily classed together as 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 93 
 
 the great Norwegian geniuses; and Ibsen has long 
 borne the title of the Norwegian Seer. A Scoto- 
 Dano-Teuton seems a more fitting, if more cum- 
 brous, characterization for this so-called Norwe- 
 gian. Genealogical researches, extending as far 
 back as Ibsen's great-great-grandparents, indicate | 
 that Ibsen had not a drop of Norwegian blood in his i 
 veins. The three strains in his ancestry are Scotch, I 
 Danish and German. It is perhaps attaching no f 
 undue importance to hereditary influence to attribute 
 the lyric delicacy and sensitiveness of his poetry to 
 the Danish element in his blood, his uncompromising 
 morality and high ethical standards to Scotch influ- 
 ence, and his passion for abstract logic to the three- 
 fold German strain. 
 
 The Stockmann house in which Ibsen was born 
 faced an open square, on one side of which stood the 
 town-pillory, on the other the mad-house and the 
 lock-up ; while the Latin school, the grammar schools 
 and the church looked on as if in protest. It was 
 under the shadow of such surroundings, with their 
 oppressive atmosphere of solemnity and gloom, that 
 the first years of Ibsen's youth- were spent. The , 
 Ibsen family was prosperous, moved in the " best , 
 circles,*' and were inclined to the lavish in their hos- 
 pitality. When Henrik was eight years old, financial 
 disaster overtook the family, and they were forced 
 to withdraw to a small farm house on the outskirts 
 of the little town, where they lived in poverty and 
 
94 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 retirement. This sudden transition from affluence ; 
 to poverty made a profound Impression upon the/ 
 eight-year-old child. Ibsen afterwards remarked 
 that those who had taken most advantage of his 
 parents' hospitality in their prosperous days were 
 precisely those who now most markedly turned to 
 them the cold shoulder. Ibsen never quite forgot 
 the lesson thus early learned of the shallowness and 
 insincerity of society. This was doubtless the initial 
 influence in bringing to pass that crushing indict- 
 ;, ment of modern society which runs through all his 
 l! middle and later dramas. 
 
 There was nothing full-blooded or athletic about 
 the youthful Ibsen; he seems to have cared nothing 
 for outdoor sports. His chief distraction came from 
 shutting himself away in a private little room of his 
 own, and poring for hours over musty tomes, rare 
 prints, old engravings, and the like. According to 
 his sister's account, the only outdoor amusement in 
 which he Indulged was the building of houses — of 
 what material she does not say. As a boy, he loved 
 to play the part of magician, to mystify his elders, 
 _.^ and to perform, with his brother's aid, tricks of 
 i>jo legerdemain. It Is noteworthy that he had a pas- 
 sion for cutting out fantastically dressed little figures 
 in pasteboard, attaching them to wooden blocks, and 
 
 < arranging them in groups or tableaux. It requires 
 little imagination to see the dramatist In embryo here 
 — the play of the constructive faculty, the passion for 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 9j 
 
 technical sleight-of-hand, the fundamental interest in 
 the manipulation of fictitious characters. There is 
 strong reason to believe that Ibsen kept up this early- 
 child's play — identifying imaginary characters with 
 little material models — throughout his entire life. 
 
 Considerable talent for painting showed itself in 
 the youthful Ibsen; and like Bernard Shaw after 
 him, he had an ambition to be a great painter. But 
 financial exigency forbade; and at the age of six- 
 teen, Ibsen was apprenticed, not to a Norwegian 
 Raphael or Danish Titian, but — to an apothecary. 
 The anarchist in Ibsen, so often displayed in later 
 years, was first aroused to literary expression by 
 the Revolution of 1848. The ferment in Europe, 
 Ibsen himself confessed, *' had a strong and ripening 
 effect on my development, immature though it re- 
 mained both then and long afterwards. I wrote 
 clangorous poems of encouragement to the Magyars, 
 adjuring them, for the sake of freedom and hu- 
 manity, not to falter in their righteous war against 
 * the tyrant ' ; and I composed a long series of son- 
 nets to King Oscar — urging him to set aside all 
 petty considerations, and march without delay, at 
 the head of his army, to the assistance of our Danish 
 brothers on the Slesvig frontier." 
 
 In the meantime, he devoted his time to preparing 
 for his matriculation examination at Christiania Uni- 
 versity, where he purposed studying medicine. By a 
 remarkable chance, the subject ji,ssigned him by the 
 
96 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 University for examination was the Consplraq^ 
 Catiline, to be studied in the history of Sallust and 
 the oration of Caesar. Ibsen relates that he " de- 
 voured these documents greedily ** ; and a few months 
 later his first drama, Catiline, was finished. Thg 
 opening lines of this play might serve as the 
 prophecy of Ibsen's whole life work:' 
 
 /' 
 
 I must, I must; a voice is crying to me 
 From my Soul's depths, and I will follow it.' 
 
 This youth, so '* spectral " as his companions called 
 him, going about like an enigma sealed with seven 
 seals, found a most congenial subject in the story of 
 Catiline. For Ibsen felt himself at odds with, the 
 community in which he lived, and was fired to do 
 something bold and daring. This play contained in 
 vague outlines many of the features Identified with 
 his later work: " the opposition between power and 
 enterprise, between will and potentiality, glike the 
 tragedy and the comedy of humanity." His future 
 methods are prevlsaged here in his employment of 
 his own Individual technique — a dark and ancient 
 secret inaugurates the action and causes the catastro- 
 phe ; while two women, the one all passion, the other 
 all gentleness, struggle for the love of the hero. 
 Sallust may have influenced Ibsen far more than did 
 Caesar, as Mr. Gosse suggests; but behind all, lurk 
 the Influences of the most Important prose-writer of 
 Norwegian romanticism, Mauritz Hansen, and of 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 97 
 
 the distinguished poet and dramatist, Henrik Wer- 
 geland. The edition of Catiline with the exception 
 of thirty copies which, strangely enough, found pur- 
 chasers, was disposed of as waste paper to a huck- 
 ster. " For the next few days," Ibsen laconically re- 
 marks, " we (his room-mate Schulrud, who pub- 
 lished Catiline at his own expense, and himself) 
 lacked none of the first necessities of life ! " 
 
 The little one-act drama, The Warrior*s Tomb, 
 which Ibsen brought with him in an unfinished state 
 from Bergen, was finally completed and accepted by 
 the Chrlstiania Theatre. Though little financial aid 
 came from the three productions given at Chrls- 
 tiania, Ibsen was greatly encouraged by the accept- 
 ance of the play. This trivial play, with Its exterior 
 comparisons between the South and the North, is 
 noteworthy solely for Its traces of Oehlenschlager's 
 influence; If It were the sole extant fragment of 
 Ibsen's work, he would never have been heard of. 
 Its closing lines: 
 
 " Dem Grab ensteigt dann Nordland hell und hehr : 
 Zur Geistesthat auf des Gedankens Meer ! " 
 
 foreshadow his youthful confidence In his own fu- 
 ture. His poverty was extreme ; had It not been for 
 his exceptionally strong constitution, his health must 
 inevitably have suffered. One of his acquaintances 
 at this time recently wrote that " when Ibsen's finan- 
 cial condition compelled him to practice the most 
 
98 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 stringent economy, he tried to do without under- 
 clothing, and finally even without stockings. In 
 these experiments he succeeded; and in winter he 
 went without an overcoat ; yet without being troubled 
 by colds or other bodily ills." 
 
 In preparing for the University, Ibsen met Bjorn- 
 son, who described him at this time in the words (no 
 wonder I) : 
 
 " languid and lean, with a complexion like gypsum, 
 Behind an immense coal-black beard — Henrik Ibsen." 
 
 This was the beginning of that long acquaintance 
 between the two great geniuses, blighted for a time 
 rather by the misunderstandings of partisans than of 
 the principals, but afterwards renewed with larger 
 appreciation and deeper comprehension — a relation 
 cemented by the marriage of Ibsen's son to Bjorn- 
 son's daughter. It is worth mentioning that Ibsen 
 warmly espoused the labor movement at this early 
 period, at one time narrowly escaping arrest and im- 
 prisonment. From this time until his death, though 
 not active in its display, he felt a deep and abiding 
 Jjnterest in the labor movement. 
 
 The financial siege was temporarily raised when 
 Ole Bull, the great violinist, offered Ibsen the post 
 of " theatre-poet " at the newly constituted National 
 Theatre in Bergen. Though Ibsen's salary was less 
 than $350 a year, it was eked out by travelling 
 grants, and gave him his first real start in the world 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 99 
 
 as a dramatist. In Grlmstad,. Ibsen had written Cat- 
 f//w^j perhaps partly, under the influence of Schiller; 
 The Warrior's Mound, originally entitled The Nor- 
 mans, after the manner of Oehlenschlager, though 
 with ruder touch; and In 1849, he had actually begun 
 his work on Olaf Trygveson, In 1850, probably In 
 Chrlstlania, Ibsen chose a motive from Faye's book 
 of Norwegian folk-lore as the theme for The Ptar- 
 migan of Justedal; but on the appearance of Land- 
 stad's book of Norwegian folk-songs, and after 
 Ibsen had completed one act and part of another, he 
 re-worked his material Into the final form of Olaf 
 Liljekrans. He later made a brief attempt at an 
 opera, under the title of The Ptarmigan; but 
 only one act and a tiny fragment of another was ever 
 completed. The fragments of The Ptarmigan of 
 Justedal, and of the opera-text The Ptarmigan, now 
 for the first time published In Ibsen's Posthumous 
 Works, are Interesting solely from the biographical 
 side. 
 
 It was one of Ibsen's duties as " theatre-poet '' to 
 have a new play ready for each recurrence of Jan- 
 uary 2, the " Foundation Day " of the theatre. On 
 that day, In 1853, Ibsen produced his own romantic 
 comedy of St, John's Night. Under the spell of the 
 punch seasoned by a nixle with malicious Intent, 
 the two young people who are engaged find that. 
 In reality, they love someone else — quite after 
 the manner of -^ Midsummer Night's Dream, As in 
 
loo EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 many future dramas of Ibsen, for Instance, in The 
 League of Youth, and The Wild Duck, an ancient 
 wrong plays a decisive role In the play — In this 
 case, cutting the Gordlan knot, dissolving the be- 
 trothal, and sending all away happy, each Jack with 
 his Jill. It betrays Ibsen's first attempt at an artful 
 intrigue, so admirably achieved later m Lady Inger 
 of Oestraat, the best of Ibsen's dramas written under 
 French Influence. Julius Poulsen, the mildly ludi- 
 crous poet and nationalist, in his own person reduces 
 to absurdity the aesthetics of Helberg; in him we 
 recognize the prototype of both Peer Gynt and 
 Hjalmar Ekdal. The whole drama may be con- 
 strued as an effort to distinguish between tru« 
 romance and false romanticism. Juliane's words: 
 
 " I must suffer and be silent — ah ! that is woman's lot in 
 this world." 
 
 foreshadow Ingeborg's memorable words in The 
 Pretenders : 
 
 " To love, to sacrifice all, and be forgotten, that is 
 woman's saga." 
 
 And clear prevision of A Comedy of Love lurks in 
 Poulsen's words: 
 
 " In the state of amorousness, one treats love theoretically. 
 Betrothal and marriage on the other hand — you see — 
 those are practical affairs — and in practice, as we know, 
 theories do not always hold good." 
 
HENRIK IBSEN' loi 
 
 Though not produced until 1857, Olaf Liljekrans 
 had Its first conception seven years earlier. It is 
 woven from the ballad of Sir Olaf, lured away by 
 a fairy just as he is on the way to bring home his 
 bride, and the folk-tale of the wild, graceful young 
 maiden of Justedal valley, roaming the woods like 
 the shy ptarmigan. The story is trivial; and the 
 characters are Insipid. There is only one incident 
 which points forward to the Ibsen of a maturer 
 phase of art, the scene In which Hemming and Inge- 
 borg, the Impractical lovers, discover after their 
 flight together that they are incapable of the sort 
 of love which will sustain them through all priva- 
 tions. This motive was, in a later year, to furnish 
 the Impulse for the like predicament of Falk and 
 Svanhild in /^ Comedy of Love. 
 
 The publication of Ibsen's Posthumous Works 
 brings to light Ibsen's hitherto unpublished skit on 
 current political affairs in Norway — much the sort 
 of thing one frequently reads in New York Life; it 
 is deserving of a word before entering into the 
 deeper current of Ibsen's development as a dramatist 
 In Lady Inger of Oestraat. When Ibsen came to 
 Christlania In March, 1850, he was full of revolu- 
 tionary ideas ; and a year later he observed with sa- 
 tirical contempt the new Storthing abandoning the 
 advanced position they had taken in 1848. One 
 morning he visited the Tribune of the Storthing, and 
 the same evening, while attending a performance of 
 
102 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Belllnrs opera Norma, the idea of the political sat- 
 ire came Into his head. In the little satire, Severus 
 — otherwise Herr Stabell — flirts now with Norma 
 (the Opposition), now with Adalglsa (the party 
 in power) ; various other members of the Storthing 
 are openly satirized. All the vaunted pretensions of 
 adherence that Severus first makes to Norma are 
 proven insincere in the end when Adalglsa throws 
 around him her protection and transforms him Into 
 a demigod — or in other words, a Minister ! The 
 effect is magical : all, even Norma, bow down rever- 
 entially before him, acknowledging in the position 
 of Minister, gained at whatever sacrifice of party 
 fealty, the true goal of the legislator. Slight as It is, 
 the little skit shows Ibsen in a lightly satirical mood ; 
 and points forward to the time when he will pour 
 out the vials of his wrath and contempt upon com- 
 promise and half-heartedness in his own nation. It 
 stands as a signpost to the Ibsen of The League of 
 Youth and An Enemy of the People. 
 
 In 1854 Ibsen revived The Warrior* s Mound at 
 the National Theatre, without popular success; and 
 In 1855, he presented at the same theatre La^y i^g^IL 
 of Oestraat, his first drama which possesses signifi- 
 cance, not only as a link In his artistic development, 
 but for its own striking and signal merits. 
 
 Lady Inger of Oestraat, a long, five-act play, is 
 really a remarkable imaginative re-vltallzatlon of the 
 spirit of an epoch centuries past. Comparison of 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 103 
 
 the drama with the facts of history reveals Ibsen's 
 faculty for discovering a splendid dramatic situation 
 in an unpromising historical episode. There is 
 something mystic and crepuscular in the atmosphere 
 of this dark tragedy; and yet its mystery is less the 
 spell of mood, than the confusion that results from 
 imperfect and mystifying technique. " Go back to 
 Lady Inger/' says Bernard Shaw, " and you will be 
 tempted to believe that Ibsen was deliberately bur- 
 lesquing the absurdities of Richardson's booth; for 
 the action is carried on mostly in impossible asides." 
 For the first time in his career, Ibsen reveals the 
 influence of his studies, both of classic and contem- 
 porary drama. The Greek element imbues the story 
 itsel£^ — the retributive justice of secret sin com- 
 mitted long anterior to the opening of the play — 
 that retrospective method which Ibsen afterwards 
 made so peculiarly his own. The complications and 
 intrigues show the diligence with which Ibsen has 
 studied the artificial methods of that dexterous con- 
 triver, Scribe. For the first time also in his career 
 Ibsen displays real genius for deep characterization 
 — alike in the queenly woman, apparently destined 
 to free her people from the tyrant, yet harassed by 
 the thought of her past transgressions; in Nils 
 Lykke, the fascinating libertine, purified through his 
 love for a high-souled, gentle woman; and Elina, 
 Ibsen's first genuinely appealing female character. 
 Lady Inger of Oestraat was not a success — failing 
 
I04 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 to please the playgoers of Bergen and not wholly 
 satisfying Ibsen himself. Nor is this to be wondered 
 at; for Ibsen was fumbling with technical methods, 
 obsolescent and derivative, not yet having discovered 
 his own original fingering for the dramatic key- 
 board. This dark drama, reminiscent now of Mac- 
 beth, now of Websterian violence and blood, now 
 of German romanticism, now of Scribe, is striking, 
 but imperfectly conceived. Genuinely interesting as 
 a strong link in the evolution of Ibsen's art, as a 
 step in the historical development of contemporary 
 drama it is virtually negligible. 
 
 In The Feast at Solhaug, produced at the Bergen 
 Theatre on January 2, 1856, Ibsen achieved his first 
 genuine local success. He was recalled again and 
 again to the footlights, was serenaded, made a 
 speech, and afterwards confessed that he was quite 
 happy over it all. The play spread abroad his fame 
 throughout the Scandinavian countries and Den- 
 mark. Its popularity is scarcely explainable to-day, 
 except from the fact that the play is in the line of 
 classic Norwegian development. The extravagant 
 and melodramatic plot possesses no permanent hu- 
 man interest; and the only noteworthy feature it 
 possesses, in its relation to the development of 
 Ibsen's art, is the situation which Ibsen employs 
 again and again in later plays; the placing of a man 
 between two women who struggle for his love, the 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 105 
 
 one fiery and passionate, the other gentle and tender. 
 It lends confirmation to the belief that, instead of 
 enlarging his horizon, Ibsen tends rather to intensi- 
 fication of method — digging deeper and ever deeper 
 into the sub-stratum of human feeling and human 
 consciousness. 
 
 We come now to a turning-point in Ibsen's career 
 as a dramatic artist. He has abandoned forever the 
 romantic ballad — it has given him all it had to give. 
 His career as director of the theatre at Bergen is at 
 an end, and he has only one notable play to his 
 credit — Lady Inger of Oestraat, And yet this five- 
 years' apprenticeship at Bergen may be said to mark 
 the turning-point In Ibsen's life. This blind step 
 in the dark, taken in the magnificent rashness of 
 youth, was the definitive step in his career as a 
 dramatist. The Bergen apprenticeship enabled him, 
 through experimenting with and discarding the 
 technical methods of others, to discover his own in- 
 dividual and unique methods of dramatic procedure. 
 Like Antoine, Claretie or Granville Barker, Ibsen J 
 has learned, through precept, practice and example,/ 
 the arts of theatre management, of stage technique,!- 
 of dramaturgy. From this time forward we dis-! 
 cover in Ibsen, not a Norwegian bungler in drama, 
 but a great world-dramatist. Ibsen's drama now 
 belongs to the future. 
 
io6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 VI 
 
 In 1857, Ibsen was appointed director of the 
 Norwegian Theatre at Chrlstlania. Now began an- 
 other six-year period, the most painful In Ibsen^s life. 
 He had to fight not only for the existence of himself 
 and his family — for he was married In 1856 — but 
 actually for the very existence of Norwegian poetry 
 and the Norwegian stage. While looking for a sub- 
 ject that would display, In broad and primitive 
 forms, the clash of characters In an ancient Norwe- 
 gian family, he fell upon the Volsung Saga, By 
 dramatizing a particular episode, he hoped to raise 
 the national epic material to a higher degree of 
 artistic valuation. It Is a mark of the struggle be- 
 tween Ibsen's realistic mind and his romantic tem- 
 perament that the aim evolved was to present, not 
 the mythic world, but the life of Norway In primitive 
 times. Ibsen accomplished his purpose by employ- 
 ing prose as a medium Instead of poetry, discovering 
 In the event that the play was more poetical In prose 
 than In verse. The result was an authentically dra- 
 matic, finely executed achievement. 
 
 The Vikings at Helgeland Is the tragedy of the 
 man who has taken the credit of another man's 
 deed — a theme of vicarious sacrifice exploited by 
 Rostand with notable success In Cyrano de Bergerac. 
 In Ibsen's play, the strong, passionate heroic woman, 
 Hjordls, whose father was killed In a viking raid, 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 107 
 
 has lived from girlhood in the conqueror's home. 
 Sigurd and his friend Gunnar come, see and are 
 conquered by her; she, secretly loving the fearless 
 Sigurd, promises herself to him who kills the bear. 
 Disguised in Gunnar's armor, Sigurd wins the maid 
 for his friend. 
 
 The tragedy begins when Gunnar, committed to 
 the secret, has to suffer the torment of listening to 
 the praises of his deed — a deed which he has not 
 only not performed, but which he was incapable of 
 performing. His secret becomes a ghastly burden. 
 The tragedy sharpens In intensity when, as Gunnar's 
 wife, Hjordls discovers that the man she loves was 
 he who really won her. There is a limit to self- 
 sacrifice, she proudly tells him — and no man may 
 with impunity give to his friend the woman he loves. 
 Hjordls is most cruel to him she most loves, slay- 
 ing him that they may go out together upon the 
 winds. 
 
 There Is something of the sublime horror of 
 ancient days — as well as of Its primitive strength 
 and unsullied emotions — in this play. And doubt- 
 less Ibsen meant it as a tonic, an invlgorant for a gen- 
 eration sated with cheap emotionalism, rank insin- 
 cerity and forgotten loyalty. The play aroused 
 violent opposition, was decried on all sides, and left 
 Ibsen more depressed than ever. Next he turns to 
 The Comedy of Love — only to rouse a tempest 
 about his ears. Once more he returns to the sagas, 
 
io8 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 in the hope of bettering his former effort and win- 
 ning real renown. The new play Is known as The_ 
 PreJenderSj though a more correct translation would 
 be The Stuff from which Kings are Made, Here 
 we have the tragedy of the man who steals the^ 
 tEought of another — just as, in The Vikings at HeU 
 geland, we have the tragedy of the man who steals 
 the deed of another. Georg Brandes says in a 
 classic passage: 
 
 " In The Pretenders two figures again stand opposed to 
 one another as the superior and the inferior beings . . . 
 It is towards this contrast that Ibsen has hitherto uncon- 
 sciously directed his endeavors, just as Nature feels her 
 way in her blind preliminary attempts to form new types. 
 Hakon and Skule are pretenders to the same throne, scions 
 of royalty out of which a king may be made. But the first 
 is the incarnation of fortune, victory, right and confidence; 
 the second — the principal figure in the play, masterly in 
 its truth and originality — is the brooder, a prey to Inward 
 struggles and endless distrust, brave and ambitious, with 
 perhaps every qualification and claim to be king, but lack- 
 ing the inexpressible somewhat that would give a value to all 
 the rest. ... * I am a king's arm,' he says, * mayhap a 
 king's brain as well ; but Hakon is the whole king.' * You 
 have wisdom and courage, and all noble gifts of the mind,* 
 says Hakon to him ; * you are born to stand nearest a king, 
 but not to be a king yourself.' " 
 
 There Is one signally momentous passage in the 
 
 # 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 109 
 
 play deserving of quotation. Skule eagerly asks 
 the old Skald: 
 
 "What gift do I need to become a King?" 
 
 " My lord," replied the Skald, "you are a King! " 
 
 Then Skule utters the thought that is eating its 
 cankerous way into his soul: 
 
 " Have you, at all times, full faith that you are a 
 Skald?" 
 
 Here is a strange mingling of that truth and 
 poetry, that Wahrheit and Dichtung of which Goethe 
 wrote so eloquently. As Gosse says : " It Is by no 
 means extravagant to see in the noble emulation of 
 the dukes in The Pretenders some reflection of 
 Ibsen's attitude toward the youthful and brilliant 
 Bjornson. The luminous self-reliance, the ardor 
 and confidence and good fortune of Bjornson-Hakon 
 could not but offer a violent contrast with the gloom 
 and hesitation, the sick revulsions of hope and final 
 lack of conviction of Ibsen-Skule. ... * The luck 
 lest man Is the greatest man,' says Bishop Nicholas 
 In the play, and Bjornson seemed in those melancholy 
 years as lucky as Ibsen was unlucky." Bjornson was 
 upborne by the favor of the populace; Ibsen worked 
 without favor and without support. And yet, as 
 Rudyard Kipling says, " He rides fastest who rides 
 alone." This was Ibsen's darkest hour. The end 
 Is not yet 
 
no EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 VII 
 
 Henrik Ibsen began his trilogy of satires with a 
 play as provocative, as piquant as it is satirical. It 
 is the work of a prisoner of hope, a baffled idealist: 
 Ibsen is seeking to chastise his own Norwegian peo- 
 ple by painting them just as he saw them, without 
 fear or favor. A daring novel, The Sheriffs 
 Daughters, by Camilla Collett, was creating a pro- 
 found sensation in Norway. This novel, a harbin- 
 ger of the new thought movement in Norway, was 
 a vigorous attack upon the marriage of convenience. 
 That no marriage not based on love can be happy, 
 was the book's thesis. Depressed by meagre suc- 
 cess, harassed by financial embarrassment, Ibsen was 
 in no mood to accept so roseate a view belled so 
 utterly by the conditions he saw around him. No 
 play of Ibsen's has been handled so crudely by the 
 critics as The Comedy of Love, this most diaphanous 
 structure of light satire. Svanhild, now for the first 
 time spread before us In the Nachgelassene Schrif' 
 ten, was begun as early as 1856; the play was finally 
 completed in 1862. It was begun In prose, and com» 
 pleted In rhymed Iambics; and the original draft 
 contains nothing critically noteworthy. But it is of 
 the highest Importance to note that In a letter to 
 Clemens Petersen (Aug. 10, 1863), lately published, 
 Ibsen frankly confesses : " As to The Comedy of 
 Love, I can assure you that if ever it was necessary 
 
HENRIK IBSEN iii 
 
 for an author to rid himself of a sentiment and a 
 subject it was so with me when I began that work.'* 
 The Comedy of Love is the image of an evanescent 
 mood: it was Ibsen's way of getting rid of it. 
 
 Perhaps the most noteworthy passage in the play, 
 is a scene which may have furnished the model for 
 the " auction-scene " in Bernard Shaw's Candida. 
 Guldstad, the wealthy, shrewd old merchant, gives 
 the counsel of golden common sense, which induces 
 the lovers — the poet Falk and the idealistic Svan- 
 hild — to part. 
 
 Hear a golden counsel, then. 
 Use your experience; watch your fellow-men, 
 How every loving couple struts and swaggers 
 Like millionaires among a world of beggars. 
 They scamper to the altar, lad and lass, 
 They make a home, and drunk with exultation, 
 Dwell for awhile within its walls of glass. 
 Then comes the day of reckoning — but, alas, 
 They're bankrupt, and their house in liquidation! 
 Bankrupt the bloom of youth on vi^oman's brow; 
 Bankrupt the flower of passion in her breast, 
 Bankrupt the husband's battle-ardor now, 
 Bankrupt each spark of passion he possessed. 
 Bankrupt the whole estate, below, above — 
 And yet this broken pair were once confessed 
 A first-class house in all the wares of love. 
 
 Tennyson says that it is better to have loved and 
 lost than never to have loved at all. Ibsen main- 
 
112 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tained — not in a general philosophical way, but 
 with respect to the conditions he saw immediately 
 around him — that it is better, if youthfully, ro- 
 mantically in love, to separate, rather than to marry. 
 Ibsen is in agreement with the brilliant Frenchman 
 who asserted that all comedies end with a wedding, 
 because it is then that the tragedy begins! Ibsen 
 was so much the observer, with the added divination 
 of the poet, that in this play he almost achieved the 
 distinction of a philosophical distillation of the real 
 essence of love. Mirrored in his mood at the mo- 
 ment, love appeared to Ibsen as one of two things: 
 either a dead, dull thing, a mere surfeit; or else the 
 evanescent flame of the moment, or, to change the 
 figure, a glass of champagne upon the board of life. 
 There was. In Ibsen's vision, another deeper love, 
 which he found not until When We Dead Awaken 
 — If Falk and Svanhild had only possessed the true 
 faith In the self-sustaining power of love, Ibsen 
 means, they would never have parted. This Is the 
 materialistic flaw In the structure of modern life. 
 For the Inevitable erotic Illusion, Ibsen betrays no 
 scorn; he reserves his contempt for the decay of 
 character consequent to the acceptance of the vulgar 
 convention of the legal union, by this frail and 
 weak-hearted generation. The play Is a comedy, 
 not a philosophy; Ibsen sought only, to use his own 
 accurate words, to represent " the contrast In our 
 present state of society between the actual and the 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 1131 
 
 ideal in all that relates to love and marriage." It 
 is futile and beside the mark to point out Ibsen's 
 one-sldedness In making no allowance for the vast 
 number of happy marriages based upon love, and in 
 valuing the memory of a beautiful love above the 
 humanizing responsibilities of consecrated marriage, 
 the enfranchising bonds of partnership and parent- 
 hood. How stupid — in face of the parting be- 
 tween Falk and Svanhild: 
 
 Folk (softly to Svanhild) — 
 
 God bless thee, bride of my life's dawn ; 
 
 Where'er I be, to nobler deed thou'lt wake me. 
 
 Svanhild (looks after him a moment, then says softly, 
 
 firmly:) 
 
 Now over is my life, by lea and lawn. 
 
 The leaves are falling — now the world may take me. 
 
 Ibsen clearly points out that, in the life around 
 him, creature comforts are valued far above the 
 sustaining power of love — and when Georg Bran- 
 des, urging the claim of ideal engagements eventu- 
 ating in ideal marriages, remarked: "You know 
 there are sound potatoes and rotten potatoes in the 
 world,'* Ibsen replied with a cynicism, as light as it 
 Is sharp : " I am afraid none of the sound potatoes 
 have come under my observation." The tone of 
 The Comedy of Love as an attack on love and mar- 
 riage branded Ibsen as an " immoral " ( !) writer — 
 a charge which a lifetime of blameless conduct alone 
 could dissipate. 
 
y 
 
 \ 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 From Rome, after a space, came a momentous 
 message. The frustration of an idealistic human 
 spirit by the savage Irony of reality Is the theme of. 
 Brand; and Its artistic temper at once ranges it in 
 the category of Hamlet, Manfred and Faust. The 
 epic-fragment discovered by Pontoppldan and re- 
 cently published, with its souvenirs of Heiberg and 
 Welhaven, prompts the wish that Ibsen had adhered 
 to his original intention. For whatever the me- 
 dium. Brand is essentially an epic. Brand himself 
 is a figure of heroic, even Titanic mold, arraigning 
 all compromise with his ideals of Christianity be- 
 fore the bar of Heaven. The God of his worship 
 is the God of the Old Testament, animated with 
 wrath and Indignation against a faltering genera- 
 tion. What Brand (like Ibsen himself — who con- 
 fessed that he was Brand, In his best moments) de- 
 sires Is so radical a revolution of the spirit of man 
 that the spirit of compromise In man will be chained 
 and buried forever from sight. As priest and man, 
 he is determined to champion at any and all costs 
 the cause of things, not as they seem, not even as 
 they are, but as he Is convinced they should be. 
 Man's self-development Is his highest duty; conces- 
 sions to the world take the form of evil and tempta- 
 tion. The only way to develop one's self is to stand 
 free and to stand alone. Brand's motto, " All or 
 Nothing," is the logical epitome of his point of 
 view. 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 115 
 
 ^Brand is a terrible arraignment of the half-hearted 
 pietism of the Norwegian people. And yet Brand's 
 ideal of pietism is an ideal unattainable: it cannot 
 survive the shock of reality. Brand Is the pictorial 
 projection of a splendidly hopeless, idealistic dream. 
 Cervantes in Don Quixote portrayed the bank- 
 ruptcy of chivalry in collision with the brutal facts 
 of life; so Ibsen In Brand portrays the bankruptcy 
 of the pletlstic Ideal as soon as it Is brought Into 
 collision with sordid reality. As soon as he put his 
 faith to the test of acts, Brand brought nothing but 
 suffering upon all whom he loved; he had reared a 
 castle in the clouds which none — not even himself 
 — might Inhabit. 
 
 In Peer Gynt, the brilliant, formless, parti-col- 
 ored pendant to Brand, Ibsen shows to the world the 
 other side of the Norwegian people. Peer Gynt 
 has for Ideal the utterly selfish gratification of his 
 own Individuality — regardless of all the rest of the 
 world. He glows with the desire to be romantic, 
 but he has not the will or the courage to do the 
 romantic thing; so he takes It all out In romancing. 
 His Ideal of man Is a sort of deml-god and super- 
 braggart combined, of all-conquering will — a mas- 
 terful fellow, a '* magerful man," a fascinating dog 
 whom no woman can refuse, a born fighter, a gal- 
 lant knight. But Peer soon discovers that no such 
 bird of paradise has ever sung in the world-concert. 
 The only thing left for him, in his disillusion, Is to 
 
ii6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 weave illusions about himself, and even to imagine 
 that he is the hero of his own romantic lies. Peer 
 Gynt is the tremendous prototype of Sentimental 
 Tommy. After many adventures, by sea and by 
 land, Peer returns home in the end, a pitiful and 
 hopeless failure in all save worldly goods. He can- 
 not gain admittance even to hell; for even as a sin- 
 ner, he Is only second-rate. He has. lacked the great- 
 ness to sin greatly. He must go at once into the 
 crucible of the great Button-Molder, be melted 
 down and cast again. For, after all, he is only base 
 metal. 
 
 Ibsen's effort is to arouse the world, to open Its 
 eyes to a freer, richer future, to point out the need 
 for ridding itself of false ideals — ideals which can- 
 not be realized in acts. Not the least strange fea- 
 ture of Ibsen's career Is the fact that he started 
 from the innermost depths of romanticism. Only 
 gradually and painfully did he work himself up and 
 out of the slough of romanticism on to the firm 
 ground of realism, and Into the pure air of freedom 
 and truth. Ibsen has come now to the end of 
 romanticism. All his discouragements and disap- 
 pointments, the apathy, indifference and hostility he 
 experienced, bred in him a spirit of discontent and 
 revolt. This revolt Is gqing to find expression In a 
 long and detailed exposure of modern civilization, 
 Its venerable and antiquated institutions, its shal- 
 low and outworn ideals, its feebly conventional mor- 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 117 
 
 als, Its pettiness, weakness and hypocrisy. Here- 
 after we see Ibsen probing the secrets of the age. 
 " My vocation Is to question, not to answer; " so he 
 expresses the world-thoughts that are in the air, 
 voices the spirit of the age, taps the moral coin of the 
 era only to find It debased or counterfeit. Ibsen 
 now begins a new career : the breach with his country 
 sounds In his sardonic lines, written In July, 1872: 
 
 My countrymen, who filled for me deep bowls 
 
 Of wholesome bitter medicine, such as gave 
 
 The poet, on the margin of his grave, 
 
 Fresh force to fight where broken twilight rolls, — 
 
 My countrymen, who sped me o'er the wave, 
 
 An exile, with my griefs for pilgrim-robes, 
 
 My fears for burdens, doubts for stafE, to roam, — 
 
 From the wide world I send you greeting home. 
 
 I send you thanks for gifts that help and harden, 
 Thanks for each hour of purifying pain; 
 
 Each plant that springs in my poetic garden 
 Is rooted where your harshness poured its rain; 
 
 Each shoot in which it blooms and burgeons forth 
 
 It owes to that gray weather from the North; 
 
 The sun relaxes, but the fog secures! 
 
 My country, thanks ! My life's best gifts were yours. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Artificial as it is under any exalted standard of 
 dramatic art. The League of Youth marks a point 
 
118 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of departure of incalculable importance in Ibsen's 
 career. At last he has discovered the true mcdiujrn 
 for the society comedy — the terse, pliant prose of^ 
 dally speech. While this play exhibits all the ear- 
 marks of Ibsen's apprenticeship in the school of 
 Scribe, it betrays marked independence and origi- 
 nality — in the realistic coloring of the dialogue, the 
 prosaic naturalness of the conversations, and the 
 omission of all monologues and asides. It is what 
 Ibsen calls a " peaceful work " — the product, not 
 of wine and walnuts, so to speak, but of Budweiser 
 and Bologna. This satire upon the prevailing po- 
 litical conditions in Norway is provincial, indeed 
 suburban, in tone; and gives an excellent handle to 
 Ibsen's detractors. No wonder it caused an uproar 
 — being a blow at Bjornson, or at least, as Ibsen 
 claimed, at his lie-steeped clique I One cannot blame 
 Bjornson for royal indignation over what he termed 
 Ibsen's " attempted assassination." The play is 
 a complex of intrigues; and misunderstandings and 
 mishaps play a large part in the action. The 
 greatest merit of the play is its foreshadowing 
 of the modern woman. At one point, little Selma 
 Bratsberg vehemently exclaims : " Oh, how you 
 have maltreated me — shamefully maltreated me, 
 all of you together! You have always compelled 
 me to receive, and never permitted me to give. 
 You have never required the least sacrifice of me, 
 nor laid upon me the slightest weight of care. 
 
 r 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 119 
 
 When I asked to share your burdens, you put me 
 off with a flattering jest. How I hate and detest 
 you ! You have brought me up to be dandled like 
 a doll, and to be played with, as one plays with a 
 child.'* In this speech Is found the seed of that 
 revolt against the false standard for women then in 
 vogue. Brandes told Ibsen that the character of 
 Selma did not have sufficient scope, and urged Ibsen 
 to write another play to that end. Ibsen brooded 
 over that suggestion, and m Nora, of A DolVs 
 House, he created a Selma with the wide world for 
 scope. 
 
 Professor Lorenz DIetrlchson, Ibsen's life- 
 long friend, once told me, when I visited him in 
 Rome, that It was he who first directed Ibsen's at- 
 tention to the career of the Emperor Julian. In 
 this monumental work of Imagination and philoso- 
 phic conflict, the labor of years, Ibsen achieved 
 neither a great drama for the stage, in which the 
 characters " stand solidly In the light of their time," 
 nor a fundamentally coherent philosophical synthesis. 
 This " world-historic " drama. In two parts of five 
 acts each, Casar^s Apostasy and The Emperor 
 Julian, purports to portray Ibsen's deepest spiritual 
 experiences through the medium of the soul of 
 Julian, the theatre for the warring religious tenets of 
 the ancient and modern worlds. Instead of showing 
 us a supreme world-figure, consistently evolving un- 
 der the pressure of profound conviction, Ibsen 
 
I20 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 projects a colossal egomaniac, victim of philosophic 
 dilettantism. As Brand stood for rigorous fidelity 
 
 to an idea, and Peer Gynt for the disciplinary bamc-^ 
 ruptcy of laxity, Emperor and Galilean stands for 
 the struggle towards the golden mean, the higher 
 synthesis of truth. In his effort at the reconciliation 
 of pagarirBeauty ^d Christian Truth, Julian Is a 
 tragic failure — for, having repudiated his mission, 
 he cannot achieve the " vision splendid " of the 
 ** Third Empire, In which the twin-natured shall 
 reign." 
 
 One prose play intervenes between The League of 
 Youth and // Doll's House — the play with which 
 Ibsen conquered Germany. German critics extrava- 
 gantly confessed : " We found our aesthetic creed — 
 our young eyes were opened by it to all the theatric 
 artificiality of the day. We trembled with joy." 
 How strangely these words sound — In view of the 
 theatric artificiality so patent to-day In The Pillars 
 of Society, Ibsen's first attempt at the " photography 
 by comedy " which Bjornson had urged on Ibsen 
 eight years before. 
 
 Consul Bernick, the protagonist of the play, Is a 
 pillar of society In his native town — Its leading 
 citizen and financier. His Is a model home ; his firm 
 enjoys an established reputation; he himself Is 
 looked up to as a man of high honor and business 
 Integrity. But this pillar of society has for foun- 
 dation the treacherous sands of sham, hypocrisy 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 121 
 
 and lies. In his youth, Bernick had been guilty 
 of grave Indiscretions, financial and sexual, the 
 blame for which he succeeded In foisting upon his 
 brother-in-law. In his youth, BernIck betrayed the 
 woman he loved In order to marry an heiress. He 
 builds his house and reputation upon this insecure 
 foundation. He lives a triple lie — to his wife, to 
 his brother-in-law, to the sweetheart of his youth. 
 In the end, his early sweetheart, aided by circum- 
 stances, brings him to a realization of the hypocrisy 
 of his position; and he is brought sharply face to 
 face with the alternative of silence and success, or 
 revelation and ruin. Fortified by the noble counsel 
 of his former sweetheart he confesses all — to his 
 wife, and to his fellow-townsmen assembled en masse 
 to do him honor. In the end, he declares that the 
 true and faithful women are the pillars of society; 
 but his former sweetheart replies: "No, no; the 
 spirits of Truth and Freedom — these are the Pil- 
 lars of Society." These spirits Ibsen Invokes again 
 and again in his later plays — that truth which 
 means unfaltering recognition of fact and unflinching 
 facing of reality, that freedom which connotes en- 
 franchisement from the false ideals of a false society. 
 As a realistic picture of modern life, The Pillar:^ 
 of Society is noteworthy; and it Is deserving of rec- 
 ord that the crucial Incident of The Indian Girl 
 found Its origin In Samuel Plimsoll's agitation in 
 England, fully reflected in the press of Norway, for 
 
/^ tfie 
 
 122 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 proper legal regulations concerning insurance upon 
 unseaworthy crafts. As a drama, its technique is 
 very vulnerable : Ibsen has not yet written his com- 
 plete declaration of independence from the school of 
 Scribe. Moreover, it is conventional, both In treat- 
 ment and solution. Misrepresentation, evil and In- 
 trigue prevail for a time ; wrong rules while waiting 
 justice sleeps. In the end comes retribution — right 
 prevails and truth Is triumphant. But in reality 
 Bernick is reformed, not by conflict with fate, but 
 by providential Intervention with a sort of death- 
 bed-repentance effect at the end. Not otherwise are 
 reformed the fascinating villains of the Adelphl. 
 The Pillars of Society is a melodrama of the 
 morals. 
 
 In^ Doll's House, Ibsen first definitively sounded 
 trumpet-call of woman's freedom. This Is his 
 first drama wholly modern In tendency. The de- 
 nouement Is so startling, so tremendous, so anti- 
 social that when Francisque Sarcey first saw It In 
 Paris, he threw up his hands In horror, declaring 
 that he didn't understand a word of It. Here, in 
 advanced maturity of technique, we behold the 
 struggle of the modern woman against the vitiating 
 influence of her environment, her heredity, and the 
 social conventions which retard her development as 
 an individual and as a human being. 
 
 The story Is so familiar that It needs no recital 
 here. The real significance of the play consists as 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 123 
 
 much In Ibsen's attitude towards the " Woman 
 Question " as in Nora's method of solution. Ibsen 
 entered the lists as woman's champion, not in a 
 partisan spirit, but because he realized that the cause 
 of woman was the caus e of humanit y. It was an 
 evolutionary growth of his spirit from the days 
 when he tragically pictured woman as under the 
 necessity of self-sacrifice and service for others. 
 The ** Woman Question," with Ibsen, was not a 
 mere question of the vote — he wished women to 
 secure such representation whenever her talents and 
 sense of responsibility entitled her thereto. But to 
 Ibsen, the " Woman Question " meant primarily the 
 question as to the po sition of woman In marriag e — 
 as exemplified in A DolVs House, Ghosts and The 
 Wild Duck, Even in the preliminary draft for A 
 DolVs House, Nora observes that the laws are made 
 by man, and that contemporary society means a so- 
 ciety for men, not a society for human beings. It 
 is a mark of Ibsen's human insight, as well as of his 
 artistic detachment, that, in Nora, he reveals the 
 New Woman still deeply rooted in the old Eve. 
 She still employs all the arts of ca jolery, o_L jEa£- 
 wardness, of j)ersonal^fascinatIon for s eniiu ng her 
 owtLxmk- And yet, even in the midst of that mad, 
 despairing tarantella, we know that the old Eve is 
 about to tear away the mask which conceals the mod- 
 ern woman. From Schopenhauer, Ibsen passed un- 
 der the influence of the evolutionary theories of 
 
 \ 
 
124 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Darwin and Spencer. In A Doll's House, Nora 
 furnishes a striking Illustration of the Inheritance 
 of characteristics; and we feel very strongly" 
 that, in another environment, Krogstad might have 
 been an honorable citizen of society. From the 
 tragic spectacle of Dr. Rank, Nora first grasps the 
 principle of hereditary responsibility; and her spir- 
 itual development springs from the fixed conviction 
 that she can become responsible for the welfare 
 of her children only by gaining responsibility for 
 herself and acquiring knowledge of society through 
 contact with the great world. Environment, the 
 treatment she has received from her father and her 
 husband, has cultivated In her all the weaker and 
 none of the stronger elements of her nature. She 
 realizes, in Ibsen's own words, that everyone " shares 
 the responsibility and guilt of the society to which 
 he (or she!) belongs." 
 
 The continuity of Ibsen's development Is strik- 
 ingly revealed In one artistic quality. Later 
 entire dramas are foreshadowed in single charac- 
 ters and episodes of some preceding play. JohH^ 
 Gabriel Borkman is prefigured in Consul Bernickj^ 
 the auxiliary figure of Elllda Wangel in The Lady 
 From the Sea becomes the heroine of The Master-^ 
 Builder; the tragic figure of Dr. Rank as the victim 
 of parental incontinence becomes the more poignaritI)r 
 tragic figure of Oswald Alving in Ghosts. Society 
 held up its hands in holy horror because Nora 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 125 
 
 abandoned her children rather than surrender her 
 individualit}^ ; but Instead of shaking, this only con- 
 firmed^bsen in his conviction that " the time had 
 come for some boundary posts to be removed." In 
 Ghosts, Ibsen gives his terrible answer to the ques- 
 tion: "Do the children really benefit by the 
 mother's surrender in living a lie in marriage?" 
 The conditions of Nora Helmer and Helen Alving 
 are by no means identical; nor were any such disas- 
 trous consequences prophesied for the children of 
 the morally upright Helmer as fell to the lot of the 
 son of the dissolute Chamberlain Alving. Nor is 
 it at all clear that Helen Alving was acting with 
 poise and entire sanity in throwing herself at the 
 head of Pastor Manders. But it is perfectly clear 
 that Helen Alving, by remaining in the hideous 
 bonds of a bargain-and-sale marriage forced upon 
 her by the pressure of her mother, her two aunts 
 and her minister, committed a great wrong. And 
 her final revolt was so subversive, so wide a swing 
 of the pendulum from the mark of sanity, as to 
 accentuate her feminine extravagance to the detri- 
 ment of the purposed import of the play. 
 
 Ghosts aroused a tornado of abuse unequalled, 
 it may be, in the history of the drama. Even to- 
 day this play is forbidden production in Great 
 Britain; and the King's Reader of Plays, before a 
 Parliamentary Commission, recently expressed the 
 conviction that it would never be allowed produc- 
 
126 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tion in Great Britain. It is generally conceded to 
 be the strongest, most terrible play of the nineteenth 
 century. In 1898, Otto Brahm, the distinguished 
 German critic, wrote : " The gates to the most mod- 
 ern German drama were opened when Ghosts first 
 appeared on a German stage." William Archer 
 termed Ghosts the harbinger of the whole dramatic 
 movement in Europe, and Georg Brandes said that 
 it was, if not the greatest achievement, at any rate 
 the noblest action of the poet's career. In it, Ibsen 
 finally concretizes his faith In the human being's 
 right to happiness. Its basis Is found, not in Kirke- 
 gaard, Schopenhauer or any European thinker, but 
 in John Stuart Mill who. In his Utilitarianism 
 (translated into Danish by Georg Brandes In 1872), 
 posits " an existence, possibly free from sorrow and 
 possibly rich in joy, in quality as well as In quantity." 
 To Mill Is doubtless attributable Ibsen's dramatic 
 formulation of man's right to happiness. In dra- 
 matic technique. Ghosts is superb — the retrospec- 
 tive method of Greek tragedy brought to perfection. 
 A performance I once witnessed In Chrlstiania, by 
 a notable cast, left a most profound impression upon 
 me; and yet the most significant features of the play 
 as then presented were its marked provincialism 
 in that peculiarly local setting, and the interpreta- 
 tion. In Manders, of the normal Norwegian parson 
 of half a century or more ago as an incredibly snivel- 
 ling and contemptible hypocrite. One of the most 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 127 
 
 profoundly moving exhibitions of human emotion I 
 can conceive of was given in the Interpretation of 
 Helen Alving, not by Ola Hansson, but by Miss 
 Mary Shaw. In Ghosts^ Ibsen gives enduring 
 dramatic exemplification to the memorable words of 
 Maurice Maeterlinck: *' We know that the dead 
 do not die. We know that It Is not in our churches 
 they are to be found, but In the houses, the habits of 
 us all." 
 
 When Ghosts awoke In Norway a positive howl 
 of execration that resounded throughout Europe, 
 Ibsen could restrain himself no longer. He had 
 come to the limit of his endurance of the obloquy 
 that had been heaped upon him ever since the days 
 of The Comedy of Love. His conception of the 
 function of the dramatist had gradually enlarged; 
 he now unfalteringly assumed responsibility for the 
 morals of others. Hitherto, with solemn periodic- 
 ity, Ibsen's plays had followed each other at Inter- 
 vals of two years. An Enemy of the People was — '^>^ 
 conceived and executed with passionate haste in the 
 spring and summer months of 1882. This gay, yet 
 intense play, so humorous and yet so trenchant. Is 
 devoid of all genuine " love-interest "; it Is Ibsen's 
 most polemic play. 
 
 The impulsive, choleric Dr. Stockmann discovers 
 that the baths of his native town, a celebrated health 
 resort, are contaminated. Instead of possessing 
 healing and life-giving properties, In reality the min- 
 
H>" 
 
 128 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 cral water spreads contagion and disease. Scorn- 
 fully disregarding the fact that the baths are the 
 greatest source of revenue for the town, Stockmann 
 exposes to the leaders of the community his discov- 
 ery of the crime they are committing against so- 
 ciety. But the most valued possession of the pillars 
 of society hangs In the balance : their " graft " will 
 dwindle to nothing, If they are forced to vast ex- 
 penditure for the purpose of ascertaining and oblit- 
 erating the source of contamination. With sublime 
 effrontery, characteristic of a Tweed or a Ruef, the 
 owners of the baths disregard Stockmann's revela- 
 tions; and through clever but specious arguments, 
 they secure the support of the majority of the com- 
 munity. " It will disturb business '* and " threaten 
 prosperity " — ah, what familiar words here In 
 America ! Then only does Stockmann awake to a 
 realization that, not merely are the baths con- 
 taminated, but the very well-springs of the society In 
 which he lives are poisoned at their sources. This 
 e bravely and defiantly proclaims with all the force 
 of a scientific muck-raker at a tremendous mass- 
 meeting. He Is declared an enemy of the people, 
 ostracized, stoned. 
 
 An Enemy of the People is Ibsen's dramatic incar- 
 nation of his gradually matured theory that the mi- 
 nority Is always right. He had a firm faith" TnTtTiaT 
 " saving remnant," the minority; he rested his hope, 
 as he said, upon the " minority which leads the van 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 129 
 
 and pushes on to points which the majority has not 
 yet reached." It Is not Public Opinion, the Ma- 
 jority, which improves the prevailing order of the 
 world, but 
 
 " Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog, 
 In public duty and in private thinking." 
 
 Ibsen regarded himself as a " solitary franc-tireur 
 at the outposts"; and he wrote to Brandes from 
 Rome on January 3, 1882: "I receive more and 
 more corroboration of my conviction that there is 
 something demoralizing in engaging in politics and 
 in joining parties. It will never, In my case, be pos- 
 sible for me to join a party that has the majority on 
 its side. Bjornson says: * The majority is always 
 right.' And as a practical politician he is bound, I 
 suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must of ne- 
 cessity say: * The minority Is always right' " 
 
 Strangely enough, Ibsen has confessed that Bjorn- 
 son, as well as Jonas Lie, was In his mind when he 
 drew the picture of the bluff, spontaneous, genial 
 Stockmann. Ibsen confessed to Hegel that he got 
 along famously with Stockmann : " We agree on so 
 many subjects. But the doctor is a more muddle- 
 headed person that I am." He may even have had 
 Brandes in mind, at times. But It has recently come 
 to light that the most obvious model for Stockmann 
 was Harold Thaulow, the father of the painter and 
 the cousin of Henrik Wergeland. He was by na- 
 
I30 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ture an agitator, a reformer, who deeply loved his 
 people and yet was continually in hot water through 
 his effort to reform them. Only two weeks before 
 his death, at the General Assembly of February 23, 
 188 1, he made a violent attack upon the society 
 known as " Dampf-Kiiche." He declared that there 
 was no greater humbug in Christiania than this so- 
 ciety, and continued for three-quarters of an hour 
 in this strain. The colloquy which ensued, repro- 
 duced in the Aftenpost, leaves no doubt as to Ibsen's 
 source for the leading feature of An Enemy of the 
 People. 
 
 Thaulow: I won't permit my mouth to be shut (con- 
 tinues his address). 
 
 Consul Heftye: Herr Thaulow must stop! 
 
 Thaulow (reads on). Some express their disapproval 
 by ostentatiously walking around the hall. 
 
 The president asks the assembly whether it recognizes his 
 right to refuse Herr Thaulow the floor. Unanimous as- 
 sent. 
 
 The president again requests Herr Thaulow to desist. 
 
 Thaulow: I won't permit my mouth to be shut. 
 
 President: Then we will proceed with the order of the 
 day — 
 
 Thaulow: I will cut It very short (reads on). 
 
 Heftye: May he read on? 
 
 Thaulow (continues) : " The splendid result of the 
 Christiania * Dampf-Kiiche ' . . ." I'm almost through — 
 
 Heftye: At this rate the General Assembly will go to 
 pieces. 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 131 
 
 President: I am sorry I have to Interrupt Herr Thau- 
 low. You mustn't speak — 
 
 Thaulow reads on. 
 
 Heftye : Stop — or you must leave the hall. 
 
 Thaulow: Just one word more (sinks exhausted into a 
 chair). 
 
 The president now proceeds with the reading of the 
 official report. 
 
 Thaulow listens grumblingly to the report, and several 
 times makes an effort to gain a hearing. 
 
 When the opposition became too strong, he finally 
 gave up the struggle and went away with the words: 
 " I will have nothing more to do with you. I am 
 tired of casting pearls before swine. This Is in- 
 fernal misuse among a free people In a free society. 
 Well — my respects to you — go on, then, to your 
 family meal ! " 
 
 The Wild Duck Is Ibsen's first step along a new ^ 
 path. This Is true In a double sense. Heretofore, 
 Ibsen has been giving very positive, very defiant n< 
 solutions to the questions he himself has posed. In 
 many cases, he even goes so far as to formulate his 
 solution of the dramatic complex In a single mo- 
 mentous action or even In a memorable, solitary 
 phrase. The Wild Duck first fully justifies Ibsen's, 
 statement that his vocation was to question rather, 
 than to answer. No one was so sure of this as 
 
^^2 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Ibsen himself; he said that, to all, this play offerei 
 " problems worth the solving." Moreover, Its point 
 of departure, In another striking phase, Is pro- 
 claimed by Ibsen In the words : " This new play 
 In some ways occupies a place apart among my pro- 
 ductions; Its method of development Is In many re- 
 spects divergent from that of Its predecessors." To 
 Mr. Archer, The Wild Duck Is a consummation 
 rather than a new departure. A strange judgment, 
 In view not only of Ibsen's own words, but also In 
 view of the patent fact that here, for the first time, 
 Ibsen sets his foot In the alien path of symbolism, — 
 that symbolism so strangely Interwoven In Rosmers- 
 holm, so mystic In Little Eyolf, so magically potent 
 in The Lady From the Sea! The disquieting figure 
 of the wounded wild duck, suggested to Ibsen as a 
 dramatic symbol by Welhaven's beautiful poem The 
 Sea Bird, flutters mysteriously through this disturb- 
 ing play — symbolizing now the wounded soul of 
 Werle, now the " evil genius of the house " (baldly 
 stated In the " forework "), now the symbolic adum- 
 bration of the fateful secret of Hedwig's parentage 
 bequeathed by the old Werle to the Ekdal family. 
 
 It Is usual for critics to find In The Wild Duck 
 an expression of Ibsen's dark pessimism, distrust 
 in his mission. Incipient disbelief In " the claim of 
 the Ideal." It Is Interpreted as a reaction against 
 the dogmatic " All or Nothing ^* of Brand, against 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 133 
 
 Stodanann^s_cocksurcness In the virtue of his mis- 
 sion in An Enemy of the People, In The Wild 
 Duck, does Ibsen merely question whether " the 
 bitter tonic-draught of truth '' is the fundamental 
 pre-requisite for the happiness and well-being of hu- 
 manity, as it now is, or even as it may be for 
 Heaven knows how long yet to come ? This seems 
 to me to be a superficial judgment. The real prob- 
 lem around which Ibsen's mind continually hovered 
 was the problem, for the individual, of discovering 
 himself in life. In the very year In which he wrote 
 The Wild Duck, Ibsen spoke, not once, but twice, in 
 letters, of " the duty and the right, of realizing one's 
 self." Self-realization, In Its amplest sense, for Ib- 
 sen, means not only the discovery of one's mission, 
 but also the discovery of the great meaning, the 
 great happiness even, that life holds for the individ- 
 ual soul. The Wild Duck Is a dark and Ironic com- 
 mentary upon the wrong-headed reformer, who 
 would turn the world upside down in a mad and 
 meddlesome effort to realize his own extravagant 
 Ideals. This play Is as little a reduction ad ahsur- 
 dum of Ibsen's own doctrine and Ideal of the ef- 
 ficacy of truth as How He Lied to Her Husband 
 is a caricature of Candida. In Hjalmar Ekdal's 
 attitude towards Gina is satirized the absolute moral 
 demand of Svava Riis in Bjornson's A Glove (Sep- 
 tember, 1883), as Ellas and Koht have pointed out. 
 
134 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 And In Gregers Werle is mordantly satirized that 
 *' untutored Idealism " — of which we have recently 
 heard so much In America. 
 
 Gregers Werle Is In pursuit of Illusions. He is 
 that '* sick conscience '* which subsequently found 
 such memorable Incarnation In Halvard Solness. 
 He Is the Inevitable product of his own environment 
 and his own heredity. In his reaction against the 
 Life Lie of his own father, he absorbs the idee fixe 
 of a mother rendered morbid and hysterical by her i 
 own domestic tragedy. With a grotesque mania for I 
 hero-worship and a ludicrous misapprehension of the 
 moral bankruptcy of Hjalmar Ekdal, Gregers Werle 
 flourishes aloft the banner of the Ideal and revels in 
 bearing heedless witness to the truth. In his mis- 
 guided efforts to force upon weaker vessels, made of 
 common clay, that which they are unable to hold, he 
 succeeds only in shattering them Into fragments. 
 His passion for communicating to others his ** fever 
 for doing right " leaves disaster and death In his 
 wake. " Oh, life would be quite tolerable, after 
 all," says Relling — the real Ibsen speaking, un- 
 doubtedly in propria persona — " If only we could 
 be rid of the confounded duns that keep on pestering 
 us, In our poverty, with the claim of the Ideal." 
 
 Nowhere has Ibsen's power of minute and vera- 
 cious characterization showed itself so supreme. 
 Gregers Werle Is the classic embodiment of the mis- 
 guided reformer. Hjalmar Ekdal Is Ibsen's most 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 135 
 
 striking embodiment of the pitiable moral bankrupt, 
 self-deceiving^ self-deceived — grotesquely failing to 
 live up to standards inconsiderately applied from 
 without. He is the tragic figure of the average 
 sensual man, betrayed by ideals he has not really 
 made his own — feeding upon his illusions, those 
 illusions by which his very peace of mind, his happi- 
 ness, are conditioned. Gina Ekdal, without any 
 ideals save the eminently materialistic, eminently 
 prosaic desire to preserve the comfortable status 
 quo, is irresistibly natural and likable — perhaps be- 
 cause she Is so utterly of the earth earthy. The 
 gentle Hedwig, tender, appealing, young enough to 
 make a hero of her selfish father, too young to detect 
 his glaring faults, Is Ibsen's most poetic feminine 
 figure. Bjornson acknowledged, after learning to 
 know Ibsen's sister Hedwig, who served as the model 
 for the Hedwig of the play, that he at last under- 
 stood what a debt Ibsen's bent towards mysticism 
 owed to heredity. The Wild Duck has been re-, 
 garded as a perfect example of Ibsen's individual 
 technique. But Its most lamentable technical fault 
 has been succinctly pointed out by Bernard Shaw: 
 " The logic by which Gregers Werle persuades 
 Hedwig to kill the wild duck In order that she may 
 be provided with a pistol to kill herself, strains my 
 credulity." 
 
 From this time forward, Ibsen's plays concern 
 themselves less and less with society, more and more i 
 
136 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 with Individual problems of character and con- » 
 science. Just as The Wild Duck marks the transi- ' 
 tion from realism to symbolism, so Rosmersholm 
 marks the transition from society to the Individual. I 
 After this point, Ibsen's dramas are no longer socio- 
 logical. They are psychological, and at times psy- 
 ehicy:: -concern themselves with the Inner life of 
 thought and conscience, and verge ever towards sym- 
 bollclsm, mysticism and poetry. It Is mediately true 
 that we find the sociological Ibsen in Bernard Shaw, 
 the symbolical Ibsen In Maurice Maeterlinck, the 
 psychological Ibsen In Gerhart Hauptmann. Many 
 years ago, Georg Brandes declared that at one 
 period of his career, Ibsen had had a lyric Pegasus 
 killed under him. After reading The Lady From 
 the Sea, The Master-Builder and JVhen We Dead 
 Amaken, we realize that Brandes saw no further 
 than the present. Wounded and dormant lay the 
 winged steed through the middle years; but In time 
 Its strength returned, Its pinions were once more 
 unfurled, and It bore its rider over the lower slopes 
 of later life. 
 
 'i'ln The Wild Duck Ibsen reaches the _extre me^ 
 p^nt of his realism. . Here he brings us face to face 
 with '^ cheap, earthenware souls"; here he paints, 
 In gaflsh colors, the unromantic hero — that ludi- 
 crous contradiction in terms. At last we have the 
 true bourgeois drama, dealing with the thoughts and 
 passions, the loves and hates, the comedies and 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 137 
 
 tragedies, of people such as we brush against every- 
 day In the street. The protagonist of to-day has 
 " lost the last gleam from the sunset of the heroes." 
 Here is the hero manque, struggling In vain against 
 the overwhelming pressure of environment, the 
 brand of heredity, the coll of circumstance, the 
 chains of character, the damning verdict of self- 
 mockery, self-distrust, and self-contempt. In Ros^ 
 mersholm, the leading characters lose none of their 
 absorbing Interest because one Is a pseudo-reformer, 
 weak-kneed If high-minded, and the other a crim- 
 inal adventuress. This play brings Ibsen Into juxta- 
 position with Nietzsche; for the real drama takes 
 place in a spiritual region of quasi-ethical conscious- 
 ness beyond good and evil. 
 
 " The call to work," wrote Ibsen on February 13, 
 1887, "Is certainly distinguishable throughout Ros- 
 mersholm. But the play also deals with the strug- 
 gle with himself which every serious-minded man 
 must face in order to bring his life into harmony 
 with his convictions. For the different spiritual 
 functions do not develop evenly and side by side in 
 any human being. The acquisitive Instinct hastens 
 on from conquest to conquest. The moral con- 
 sciousness, the conscience, on the other hand, Is very 
 conservative. It has deep roots and traditions in 
 the past generally. Hence arises the conflict in the 
 individual. But first and foremost, of course, the 
 play is a creative work, dealing with human beings 
 
138 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 and human destinies." In this succinct exposition, 
 Ibsen, as it were, disengages the various leading mo- 
 tives; from it, we may learn the motive forces of the 
 action of the play. The call to work is less generally 
 human than specially local: it refers more distinctly 
 to the situation in Norway. The secondary motive 
 constitutes the play's inner meaning: the struggle to 
 bring one's life into conformity with one's ideals — 
 the old Ibsen strugle for self-realization. And 
 fundamentally, the play does not so much point a 
 conclusive moral, as exhibit a drama of the struggle 
 of human souls, a picture of fainting and aspiring 
 humanity. 
 
 Johannes Rosmer is a far more impressive victim 
 of heredity, in his " tender-minded " conscience 
 which, even in an atmosphere of pure scepticism, 
 looks back to the revengeful standards of an Old 
 Testament God, than ever was Oswald Alving with 
 his tainted body. He has read John Stuart Mill; 
 and, like Mill, has written (see the " forework ") a 
 book in which he proclaims happiness as the goal of 
 existence. And yet he has not made the thoughts 
 and ideas of the new time his own; they have laid 
 their hold on him, less by virtue of their own inher- 
 ent logic and efficacy, than by reason of the influ- 
 ence of Rebekka West's artful insinuations. What 
 these thoughts and ideas are, other than those of 
 Mill, it is difficult to say; but certain it is, from the 
 evidence of the preliminary draft, that Rosmer 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 139 
 
 and Rebekka had been reading together Henry 
 George's Progress and Poverty (1880) which ap- 
 peared in a Norwegian translation in 1 885-1 886 
 under the title Fremskridt og fattigdom, Paul Ree's 
 book on the genesis of conscience (1885) must have 
 been read by Ibsen during the progress of Rosmers- 
 holm; Rosmer carries too many traits accentuated 
 by Ree. The tender-minded Rosmer must have 
 been drawn In the light of Ree's theorem: *' Anyone 
 who, from his youth up, has been thoroughly ac- 
 customed to the thought that there Is a God and 
 that It Is sinful to say: 'The conception of God 
 Is absurd,' will In later life, even after his belief has 
 turned to unbelief, seldom mention the fact and then 
 only with reluctance and distaste." 
 
 In Rosmers holm, Ibsen has penetrated more 
 deeply In to the soil of human conscience t han in any 
 other of his works. He knows each one of his 
 characters down to the last convolution of the brain, 
 down to the ultimate fold of the soul. Rebekka 
 West Is Ibsen's most Intense female figure — alike In 
 the clarity of her vision, the scope of her purpose, 
 and the development of her character. She stands 
 under the curse of the past — the past which the 
 *' white horse " of Rosmersholm mysteriously sym- 
 bolizes. She scornfully holds herself superior to the 
 obligations of conscience; and even in the end, we 
 feel that her spirit, not her conviction. Is broken. 
 She wields every weapon of Intrigue, artifice and 
 
140 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 cunning to accomplish her purpose, all under the 
 specious guise of a champion of freedom — the free- 
 dom of truth; and yet, at last, she goes to her doom 
 because she feels that such freedom can only be 
 attained by one whose soul is pure. She is a radical 
 broken upon the wheel of Rosmer's conservatism. 
 
 ^Fantasy plays Its part in this drama of the in- 
 terior life ; and Ulrlk Brendel belongs in the category 
 of the " Rat Wife '' in Little Eyolf and '' the Stran- ' 
 ger " in The Lady From the Sea. He speaks with 
 veiled wisdom in the language of a visitant from a 
 fantastic, supersensible world — the Ibsen chorus in 
 full swing. To those living in a country where 
 wealth accumulates and men decay, where fortune 
 and fame seem in themselves to be the sole aim of 
 existence, the words of Brendel come with poignant 
 significance: "Peter Mortensgaard has the secret 
 of omnipotence. He can do whatever he will. FofM 
 Peter Mortensgaard never wills more than he can 
 do. Peter Mortensgaard is capable of living his 
 life without ideals. And that, do you see — .that is 
 just the mighty secret of action and of victory. It 
 is the sum of the whole world's wisdom." 
 / If Mr. Courtney is correct in positing the failure 
 \ to achieve one's mission on earth as the quintessence 
 \of contemporary tragedy, then Rosmersholm is 
 j Ibsen's most tragic drama. It prefigures an ideal; 
 /and conditions its attainment upon the destruction 
 \of the only possible means thereto. Nothing short 
 
HENRIK IBSEN imi 
 
 of Rebekka's sacrificial death can revive in Rosmer 
 his lost faith in the possibility of ennobling human- 
 ity ; and this sacrifice destroys, for him, the possi- 
 bility of remaining In life and accomplishing the 
 work, which he might now be capable oEiKiiPerplex- 
 ing, tragic antinomy! : ' -^ 
 
 The Lady From the Sea, Ibsen's most genial and 
 charming play, embodies the spiritual realization of 
 the longings and ideals for which Ibsen's heroes con- 
 tinually struggle — that '* something other and 
 greater than life " which Is at stake. It Is a poem In 
 psychotherapeutics, veiled In the garb of mysticism. 
 In Haeckel's Natiirltcher Schopfiinggeschichte, or 
 perhaps In Darwin's Descent of Man, Ibsen must 
 have read of that fish-species, the A mphioxusLance^ 
 olatus, which in his own words (In the ** forework") 
 " forms the primordial link In the evolutionary 
 chain." The Lady From the Sea finds Its origin in 
 Ibsen's perhaps not wholly fantastic supposition that 
 -rudiments of it survive In human beings, or at least 
 in the nature of some of us. The Importance of 
 this origin is memorable. The Lady From the Sea 
 stems from Darwin and Haeckel. And this fact 
 lends additional weight to the Ingenious theory of 
 Jules de Gaultier to the effect that Ibsen's effort Is 
 to reconcile and conciliate the two biologlcai hy- 
 potheses: the Invariability of species and the muta- 
 bility of organic forms. Perhaps the reason why 
 Ibsen Is less successful in bridging the chasm be- 
 
142 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 twcen the outer and the Inner life Is because his 
 fundamental standpoint here is not mystical, but bio- 
 logical. Heretofore Ibsen has shown the Individual 
 chiefly struggling with social forces and moral stand- 
 ards which prevail in the world. In The Lady 
 From the Sea, Elllda Wangel struggles against a 
 force of Nature which has its rudiments deep-seated 
 in her own nature. " The sea exercises over people 
 the power of a mood, which works like a will," says 
 Ibsen In his memoranda for this play. " The sea 
 can hypnotize. Above all. Nature can. The great 
 mystery is man's dependence upon the * will-less.* " 
 Herein lies the explanation of Ellida's strange and 
 dramatic struggle. 
 
 In Rosmersholm, Johannes and Rebekka go down 
 together in death because they have been unable to 
 reconcile themselves with their environment. The 
 Lady From the Sea has an enfranchising, sublimat- 
 ing quality — showing the other side, the happy side, 
 of the recurring problem of self-realization — Elli- 
 da's ultimate reconcilement with her environment. 
 In the preliminary draft, Wangel is an attorn ey-at- 
 law; what a wonderfully dramatic heightening of 
 the effect Ibsen achieves by making him a physician 
 in the final form of the play! Wangel may be a 
 comparatively unskilled physician of the body; 
 but he is an incomparable physician of the soul. 
 Through his selfless adoration for his wife, he 
 achieves that " miracle of manly love " for which 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 143 
 
 Nora Helmer longed In vain. His love for EUIda 
 teaches him the secret of alienism : that yielding alone 
 can help the sick soul. He employs the familiar 
 experiment: humoring the patient's fancies, and 
 thereby lightening the forces of the past and of na- 
 ture which become a positive obsession of the un- 
 known. 
 
 The problem lies deeper than this. Nature has 
 its roots deeper than this: morality has behind it 
 natural claims which transcend it. In a curious note 
 Ibsen once made on a loose sheet of paper, he pre- 
 figures the real solution for Elllda's psychiatric ob- 
 session : " Freedom consists in securing to the indi- 
 vidual the right to free himself — each according to 
 his own particular need.*' The dramatic climax of 
 the third act is complete and convincing, when Ellida 
 says to Wangel, softly — and trembling: "Oh I 
 Wangel — save me from myself.'' Wangel opens 
 the way for Elllda's salvation from herself by can- 
 celling the law's bargain. He secures to her the 
 inner, spiritual right to freedom — freedom to act 
 upon her own responsibility. The real dramatic 
 conflict of the play takes on a schematic cast; and 
 perhaps it Is the absence of any resort to physical 
 action, In order to accentuate Ellida's crucial de- 
 cision, which weakens, dramatically, the ultimate 
 climax. Even Ibsen found it difficult to vitalize the 
 victory of psychology over hypnosis I 
 
 The Lady From the Sea is Ibsen's most romantic, 
 
144 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 most poetic prose drama. Ellida Is a mermaid who 
 defies domestication, symbolizing and catching up 
 within herself all the sheen, vacillation and mys- 
 tery of the wild, restless sea. Ibsen's symbolism is 
 essentially romantic; and he harks back to the mys- 
 terious, nameless lover, beloved of romance through- 
 out the history of art. " Nobody should know what 
 he is," Ibsen said to Hoffory in a letter recently pub- 
 lished ; " just as little should anybody know who he 
 is or what he is really called. This uncertainty is 
 just the chief point in the method chosen by me 
 for the occasion." This stranger, about whom so 
 much romantic uncertainty hovers, seems to be the 
 symbolic object of woman's longing for freedom, 
 woman's tremulous and fearful passion for the un- 
 known. 
 
 What a contrast we find in Hedda Gahler! Ib- 
 sen turns from imaginative poetry to irreducible 
 fact, from mysticism to the hard coldness of elec- 
 trically brilliant realism. In The Lady From the 
 Sea, Ibsen's hand falters — the pronounced subplots 
 are extraneous and subsidiary, unmotived by vital 
 relation to the forward movement of the central 
 action. In Hedda Gahler, Ibsen's technical virtu- 
 osity once more shines out undimmed. ** The title 
 of the play is Hedda Gahler (not Testnan)^^^ Ibsen 
 wrote on December 4, 1890. "My intention in giv- 
 ing it this name was to indicate that Hedda, as a 
 personality. Is to be regarded rather as her father's 
 
 I 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 145 
 
 daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not my 
 desire to deal in this play with so-called problems. 
 What I principally wanted to do was to depict hu- 
 man beings, human emotions, and human destinies, 
 upon a groundwork of certain of the social condi- 
 tions and principles of the present day." Hedda 
 Gabler is not a problem play: it is a portrait play; 
 the full-length portrait, in all its cold fascination, of 
 the most repellently attractive woman in the modem 
 drama. Bernard Shaw once blithely said that if 
 people knew all that a dramatist thought, they would 
 kill him; and Ibsen, like Sargent, always means in- 
 finitely more than he says. " These are no mere 
 portrait busts . . ." says Rubek of his sculptures. 
 *' There is something equivocal, cryptic, lurking in 
 and behind these busts — a secret something that the 
 people themselves cannot see." In the full-length 
 statue of Hedda, we detect that " something equivo- 
 cal, cryptic " lurking behind the dimly realized like- 
 ness to a vampire. Hedda is the horrifying image 
 of, not the Ewig Weibliche, but the temporal 
 womanly — which drives men backward and down- 
 ward. In her are the traits of the treacherous 
 Lorelei painted by Heine — faithless, inhuman, 
 reptilian — luring man to destruction in the sea of 
 sensuality. She reminds us of Philip Burne-Jones*s 
 picture — with a dash of Wedekind's Erdgeist, 
 And yet she excites our mournful pity, if only we 
 are sufficiently detached to reflect that Hedda, like 
 
145 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Rank, Oswald, Hedwig and the rest, Is a victim 
 of heredity. This woman who stems from a worn- 
 out race Is vastly Interesting as a problem In eugenics ; 
 when her father married, he was already a man old 
 In years who had drained to the dregs the cup of 
 sensual pleasure. " Perhaps that has left Its mark 
 upon me," says Hedda significantly, — In the fore- 
 work; but so direct an allusion Is omitted by Ibsen 
 in the final draft. She gives pointed significance to 
 the Biblical aphorism : " The fathers have eaten 
 sour grapes; and the children's teeth are set on 
 edge." The apposlteness of the phrase Is Immense: 
 Hedda's tastes are all set on edge. With all the 
 gifts that life can give, Hedda is the Incarnation of 
 ennui. Her tragedy Is not that she falls to achieve 
 her mission, but that she has no mission to achieve. 
 From the little model of Gossensass, Emille Bar- 
 dach, Ibsen perhaps learned one trait for Hedda: 
 that her desire to win the adoration of others Is not 
 for the sake of adoration, but for the thrill which the 
 sense of possession and domination over others awak- 
 ens in her. The other characters — the daemonic 
 Lovborg, self-pltying, self-destroyed; Tesman, the 
 quintessence of the methodical second-hand; Thea, 
 this second childish Nora whose experiment so plte- 
 ously fails — all dwindle Into insignificance In the 
 face of the characterless personality of Hedda. 
 With intricately lascivious Instincts, the sensual stig- 
 mata of a degenerate father, Hedda *' hath already 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 147 
 
 committed adultery in her heart." But the fear of 
 the world's judgment mocks and terrifies her; she 
 lacks the courage even of her own instincts. The 
 play has been aptly termed the picture of a condition, 
 not an action; and Ibsen has shown the utter deprav- 
 ity of Hedda by laying bare her distorted soul at the 
 very moment when woman's instincts are most sa- 
 cred — in the face of coming motherhood. Flau- 
 bert's words, of an earlier day, give a final judg- 
 ment of the marvellous art of Ibsen as displayed in 
 this terrible play : " The author in his work must be 
 like God in the universe, present everywhere, and 
 visible nowhere; art being a second nature, the 
 creator of this nature must act by an analogous pro- 
 cedure ; must make us feel in all the atoms, under all 
 aspects, an impassibility secret, infinite; the effect 
 for the spectator must be a species of amazement. 
 How is it all done? one must ask, and one feels 
 shattered without knowing why. . . ." 
 
 X 
 
 " You are essentially right," wrote Ibsen to Count 
 Prozor in March, 1900, "when you say that the 
 series which closes with the Epilogue {When We 
 Dead Awaken) began with The M aster-Builder ^ 
 And yet it must be realized that the " new method," 
 upon which Ibsen relied in his later years, really 
 began with The Lady From the Sea; and it is in 
 this very play that Ibsen's master hand first wavers. 
 
^ 
 
 148 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Ibsen seems slowly to lose his powers when he leaves 
 the domain of social relationship, and enters the 
 untried fields of hypnotism and supernatural phe- 
 nomena. And yet it cannot be denied that The M as- 
 ter-Builder is, of all Ibsen's plays, the densest in 
 content, the one most provocative to a rich and ever 
 richer measure of interpretation. Goethe once said 
 he was inclined to believe that the more " incommen- 
 surable " a work of art, the greater it is likely to 
 prove. Incommensurable is the magic word for 
 The M aster-Builder. If the meaning of Hamlet, 
 Macbeth or Kin^ Lear could be explained in a few 
 words, it is reasonable to conclude that they would 
 not rank as three of the greatest dramas ever writ- 
 ten. In them are magic " over-tones,'* muted har- 
 monics, which can be heard only by ears delicately 
 attuned to their music. It is this profound and elu- 
 sive quality, this power of stimulating the far reaches 
 of mentality and imagination, which informs and ir- 
 radiates The M aster-Builder. No one will ever see 
 down all the dim vistas of the imagination opened 
 up by the speculative and brooding Hamlet, the 
 crime-obsessed Macbeth, the palsied prophet of a 
 cosmic ruin. King Lear, and the tottering idealist 
 Solness, sent climbing to his fall. 
 
 The M aster-Builder reveals Ibsen hovering fasci- 
 nated around the problem to which Nietzsche de- 
 voted his life — a problem with which Ibsen had 
 occupied himself before, and independently of 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 149 
 
 Nietzsche. The motto of The M aster-Builder 
 might well be the words of Browning: 
 
 " Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what's a heaven for? " 
 
 And yet It Is no heaven for which Solness longs, 
 but that savage mundane time, that era of the 
 " roaming blond beast," when man's Instincts shall 
 be given feral freedom. He aspires to live in the 
 fierce light of the high noon of egoism — the day of 
 Zarathustra, unbeclouded by the restraints of con- 
 science. JIlte_AIasjer'Builder is Ibsen's true tragedy ^ 
 of^dig^^Hty .conscien^^^^^^^^ Hilda, naive, fresh, im- 
 perious, is Ibsen's fascinating projection of the Super- 
 woman In spirit: a keen-eyed bird of prey, like a 
 young falcon pouncing upon Its marked-down vic- 
 tim. And yet in the end, like Rebekka, her preda- 
 tory instinct wavers before the Imminent sense of 
 moral responsibility. Solness, like Rosmer, sets too 
 great store by that " glad guiltlessness " of the moral 
 conservative, ever to do more than fail nobly. He 
 believes, this mystic epileptic, that some people are 
 "elect"; that a certain "grace" is vouchsafed to 
 them, whereby they may, by concentrating all the 
 forces of their being upon the desired end, succeed 
 in achieving it. Yet one cannot accomplish great 
 things alone: one must call to his aid mysterious 
 powers, " helpers and servers," from the very depths X 
 of his being. These come forth and subject them- 
 
150 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 selves to the master will. This is what people mean 
 / by having Luck. And yet, this master over the des- 
 tinies of others, finally, tragically fails; for he is 
 neither master of himself nor free from the dis- 
 quieting pangs of a sick conscience. " Let us not 
 invoke the illimitable law of the universe, the in- 
 tentions of history, the will of the worlds, the justice 
 of the stars," says Maeterlinck in his essay on Luck. 
 " These powers exist : we submit to them, as we 
 submit to the might of the sun. But they act with- 
 out knowing us; and within the wide circle of their 
 influence there remains to us still a liberty that is 
 probably immense. They have better work on hand 
 than to be forever bending over us to lift a blade 
 of grass or drop a leaf in the little paths of our 
 ant-hill. Since we ourselves are here the persons 
 concerned, it is, I imagine, within ourselves that the 
 key of the mystery shall be found; for it is probable 
 that every creature carries within him the best so- 
 lution of the problem that he presents." 
 
 Ibsen's last three dramas exhibit a gradual loosen- 
 ing of the dramatist's hold upon vitally dramatic 
 phases of human existence. Ibsen recedes farther 
 and farther from the stage, and penetrates ever 
 deeper into spheres of moral contemplation, self- 
 examination, and introspection — " wild with all re- 
 gret." Little Eyolf is a poignant study of the men- 
 tal reactions from the problem of moral responsi- 
 bility set up In the souls of a husband and wife 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 151 
 
 through the neglect and loss of their little son, and 
 the consequent struggles of conscience. With a cer- 
 tain large-minded tolerance, Ibsen does not shrink 
 from exhibiting, in a spirit of calm justice, the distor- 
 tions imparted to sane existence by the single-idea-d 
 passion to " live one's own life '* — superficially 
 classed as Ibsen's pet theory — irrespective of the 
 larger social reactions. I felt that Nazimova, forti- 
 fied by a consistent conception, endowed the character 
 of Rita with a sort of alluring naturalism, and this in 
 face of the fact that Ibsen's Rita is the repellent type 
 of the exclusively carnal instinct. Because of just 
 such patchwork characters as Allmers, with his fine- 
 spun theories, mouth-filling phrases, and petty con- 
 duct, Ibsen's repute as a dramatist suffers most. In 
 this play are scenes most poignantly moving in tragic 
 revelation, dark soul interiors suddenly illumined 
 with lightning flashes of intuition. Yet we cannot 
 share the sad optimism of Rita and Allmers in the 
 sincerity of their altruistic purpose — the craving of 
 the animal only slumbers, amateur idealism shall 
 suffer attenuation through the sophistry of the 
 theorist. 
 
 JoJmJ^akrkL Morkman is Ibsen 's most quiescent, 
 most perfectly static drama. One may best describe 
 it as an evocation of a state of mind. Ibsen here 
 paints the peculiarly modern type of the megalo- 
 maniac, the logical product of the industrial brig- 
 andage of the late nineteenth century. Bork- 
 
152 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 1 
 
 man is a wounded Napoleon of finance shown In the' 
 last phase, fretting out his great mad soul in the 
 St. Helena of his little room. He is the tragic vic- 
 tim of colossal egotism; the Nietzschean exemplar of 
 the " higher morality " shattered upon the rock of 
 inexorable legal justice. When We Dead Awaken^ 
 Ibsen's sad epilogue, Is at once a Calvary and a 
 Resurrection. Like Nietzsche, Ibsen burned for 
 great exhibitions of full-blooded egoism, aspired to 
 tremendous struggles for that moral freedom which 
 IS beyond good and evil. And yet, like Solness, 
 neither could climb as high as he built. In the life 
 of daily actuality both were incapable of standing 
 " high and free.'' Nietzsche's life and letters show 
 it only too clearly; Ibsen's life, his experience with 
 the little falcon of Gossensass, his moral reflections 
 poured out in his latest plays, are all too circum- 
 stantial. In Rebekka West, in Hedda Gabler, in 
 Halvard Solness, in Elllda Wangel, we see the nas- 
 cent and maturing impulses of the " Will to 
 Power " ; but Ibsen breaks down upon the frontiers 
 of the kingdom; he can never escape the eternal 
 :. question: Has one the moral right? When We 
 Dead Awaken is the tragedy of life's disillusion : the 
 discovery when it is too late that life's best gifts 
 ' have been wasted in pursuit of the Illusory, rather 
 , than of the enduring real. Great is Eros ; and Ibsen, 
 even Ibsen, is his prophet. The lesson of When We 
 Dead Awaken^ perhaps the meaning of Ibsen's 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 153 
 
 " high, painful happiness " in old age, the hopeless 
 longing for the Irrevocably unattainable, is caught 
 up In Robert Browning's memorable words from 
 Youth and Art: 
 
 " Each life's unfulfilled, yo.u see, 
 
 It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: 
 We have not sighed deep, laughed free. 
 
 Starved, feasted, despaired, been happy, 
 And nobody calls you a dunce, 
 
 And people suppose me clever: 
 This could not have happened once, 
 
 And we missed it, lost it forever," 
 
 XI 
 
 Exaggeration lurks In the statement that Henrik 
 Ibsen laid the foundations of a new school of 
 art by enlisting naturalism in the service of social 
 reforms. Rather is it true that, by veracious por- 
 traiture of contemporary life, Ibsen sought the 
 moral regeneration of the Individual, and, Indirectly, 
 of society. The ideal Is the eternal sovereign of the 
 palace of life. Man perishes, but the Ideal endures. 
 " The Ideal is dead, long live the ideal I " is the epi- 
 tome of all human progress. In the evolutionary 
 trend of human progress Ibsen rested his profound- 
 est hope. The charge of nihilism he resented with 
 the utmost bitterness. His heresy consisted in re- 
 garding morality as fluid, evolutional; he Insisted 
 
154 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 that Ideals were functions of civilization. ** It has 
 been asserted on various occasions that I am a pessi- 
 mist," Ibsen once remarked. " So I am to this ex- 
 tent — that I do not believe human ideals to be eter- 
 nal. But I am also an optimist, for I believe firmly 
 in the power of those ideals to propagate and de- 
 velop." The cry of progress, in all ages, is the 
 disillusioned cry of one of Ibsen's own characters: 
 " The old beauty is no longer beautiful, the new 
 truth no longer true." Ibsen preferred to dedicate 
 himself to the future; he sacrificed friends because 
 he regarded them as an expensive luxury, and once 
 was heard to quote approvingly Arthur Symons* 
 line : ** The long, Intolerable monotony of friends." 
 It is always the future in which Ibsen puts his trust; 
 and historical optimism describes his personal angle 
 of vision. Like Nietzsche's fierce prophet Zara- 
 thustra, Ibsen might well say of himself: " I am of 
 to-day and of the past; but something is within me 
 that is of to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, 
 and the far future." 
 
 In matters of conduct, Ibsen has no golden rule 
 for the governance of society. Bernard Shaw says 
 of Ibsen's philosophy : " The golden rule is that 
 there Is no golden rule." Individual responsibility 
 is the sole and ultimate test of conduct. Ibsen's 
 whole ideal of life may be expressed in the words 
 of Polonlus in Hamlet: 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 155 
 
 ** To thine own self be true 
 
 And It doth follow, as the night the day, 
 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 
 
 Ibsen advocates the naked assertion of the human 
 will; but he never escapes the unsolved problem of 
 moral right. 
 
 His own Brand implacably declares: 
 
 " Beggar or rich, — with all my soul 
 I will; and that one thing's the whole." 
 
 And yet Brand Is Ibsen's most colossal, most 
 tragic failure. Self-realization through conscious 
 self-examination and active assertion of the human 
 will — this Is the lesson of the Ibsenic dramas. Ib- 
 sen is an evolutionist; and evolution teaches, if indi- 
 rectly, that self-development, self-realization, if you 
 will, should be the aim, both of the individual and 
 of the race. " The expression of our own Individ- 
 uality Is our first duty,'* Ibsen once said; and this 
 doctrine he has exemplified In all his social dramas. 
 If only every man be true to himself. If only every 
 individual will seek his own highest development, 
 there need be no fear for the future. It is in that 
 future that the " third kingdom " shall come. Ibsen 
 once rose at a banquet and, in a toast as holy as a 
 benediction, as solemn as a sacrifice, drank deep to 
 das Werdende, das Kommende, When someone 
 
156 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 once remarked to Ibsen, In his latter years, that he 
 would be fully understood In the distant future, Ib- 
 sen eagerly replied : '' J a, wenn wir das nur glau- 
 ben konntenf — Yes, if we only could believe 
 that/ 
 
 I What Ibsen desired was a revolution of the spirit 
 f man. He fully recognized the moral quality of 
 all human experience. And morality, as Nordau 
 shrewdly puts it, Is essentially optimistic, presup- 
 posing conscious and rational efforts towards the 
 realization of the maximum of human happiness. 
 With the force of the moral ever at work within 
 him, Ibsen has taught us in the school of our own 
 lives. Before us he has held the mirror of his art- 
 works; and therein we have recognized, sometimes 
 with amazement, sometimes with horrified fascina- 
 tion, sometimes with cursings and revillngs, our own 
 moral features, our own spiritual lineaments. None 
 but ourselves have we met on the highway of fate. 
 As Goethe said of Mollere, so say we of Ibsen : he 
 has chastized us by painting us just as we are. His 
 h appeal is to the restless, disturbing life of our own 
 A day. And his dramas are his tentatlves at the ques- 
 tion which Tolstoi claims Shakspere never con- 
 sciously proposed to himself: " What are we-alive 
 for?" 
 
 Ibsen*s plays, his greatest plays, are universal 
 * I because they are laid In the Inner life, the region of 
 \ moral consciousness. His whole drama, from one 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 157 
 
 aspect, may be regarded as a microscopic analysis 
 of the morbid self-consciousness of modern life. 
 The Immediate effect of Ibsen's plays is to awaken 
 thought, to induce reflection, to compel people to 
 analyze and ponder grave questions of individual 
 and social morality. Here we have a striking ex- 
 ample of that desiderated publicity so widely her- 
 alded to-day as the salvation of the business and com- 
 mercial honor of democratic government. Ibsen 
 does not summon to Immediate action : his appeal to 
 what we are accustomed to call ** the passions " is 
 practically nil. His appeal Is to that great and 
 growing moral passion for social enlightenment 
 which is permeating the entire civilized world. Ib- 
 sen starts within the individual a train of meditation 
 and reflection which may alter a life, which may 
 even Influence the whole world. Emerson says: 
 To think is to act. 
 
 Ibsen once said : " It should be the endeavor of 
 every dramatist to Improve the prevailing order of 
 the world." Ibsen's aim Is to aid in the perfecting 
 of Individual and civil life. It seems, indeed, as 
 Brunetiere says, that we of to-day are marching to- 
 wards the socialization, the moralizatlon of litera- 
 ture. Since Ibsen has lived and written, literature 
 has thrilled with a new joy — the passion for indi- 
 vidual self-realization, the passion for a more just 
 and perfect social order. 
 
The Genesis of His Dramas 
 
 '' To dramatize is to see J' 
 
 Henrik Ibsen to Johann Paulsen. 
 
 Like Goethe, like George Eliot, Henrik Ibsen 
 was that rarest of products, an artistic temperament 
 endowed with a scientific brain. Along with Ed- 
 gar Allan Poe, Ibsen must be ranked as a strange 
 composite of scientific worker and artistic thirikelF^ " 
 With unexampled frankness, he once likened himself 
 to a surgeon holding the feverish pulse of society 
 in the interests of universal sanity. And yet his 
 art seems like the work of a magician; and about 
 the composition of his well-nigh flawless plays there 
 IS something of the air of prestidigitation. The 
 cloak of mystery In which he veiled himself from 
 all the world, even from his wife and son, well 
 served Ibsen's purpose of exciting endless specula- 
 tions as to the manner of creation of those marvel- 
 lous dramas which give positive character and qual- 
 ity to the age In which we live. 
 
 When Ibsen was Incubating the Ideas for a new 
 play, he displayed the most delicate art of finesse 
 
 158 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 159 
 
 in directing the conversation of everyone to the 
 theme over which he was brooding, without leading 
 the speakers to suspect his own vital interest therein. 
 From his wife, Ibsen jealously concealed every faint- 
 est indication of his dramatic " whimsies " as he was 
 fond of calling them ; but once the play was entirely 
 finished, she it was who read it first. On one occa- 
 sion, his wife and son were very curious about the 
 new play, concerning which Ibsen had let fall not 
 the slightest hint. One day, on leaving the coupe 
 at the station, Ibsen dropped a tiny piece of paper, 
 which his wife surreptitiously picked up. Upon it 
 was written: "The doctor says — '* that was all. 
 Having confided to Sigurd, in advance, her playful 
 intention of teasing Ibsen, she knowingly remarked 
 to him: "What sort of doctor Is that who takes 
 part In your new play? He certainly has many in- 
 teresting things to say ! " For a moment, Ibsen was 
 speechless with amazement and rage. Then the 
 deluge: What was the meaning of this? Was he 
 no longer secure In his own home? Surrounded by 
 spies? His desk rifled, his sanctuary defiled? Im- 
 agine the silent humiliation with which he heard the 
 true explanation ! 
 
 At last, the secrets of this abnormally secretive 
 genius have been disclosed. And perhaps no more 
 interesting, no more unique, no more novel docu- 
 ments in the field of literary evolution have ever 
 been given to the world. "The doctor says — ** 
 
i6o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 read that enigmatic slip which so piqued Fru Ibsen's 
 curiosity. It is an enigma no longer, for in the vol- 
 umes of his Nachgelassene Schriften the Doctor has 
 indeed spoken. 
 
 At several periods In his career, Ibsen contem- 
 plated writing an autobiographical account of the 
 outward and inward conditions under which each 
 one of his works came into being. Discreet and 
 taciturn as he was by nature and by cultivation, Ib- 
 sen yet realized the advisability of some form of 
 concession to the vastly greedy public who resented 
 his extreme reserve and were genuinely Interested 
 in learning the history of the psychological evolution 
 of the great dramatist. Delighting In a sphinx-like 
 attitude and deliberately fostering the accumulating 
 legends of his mysterious wizardry, Ibsen wished to 
 tell only of the circumstances and conditions under 
 which he wrote, " observing the utmost discretion, 
 and leaving a wide field for all kinds of surmises.'* 
 Unfortunately for the world, Frederik Hegel, Ib- 
 sen's publisher, dissuaded him from his unusually 
 suggestive project. The experiment with Catiline 
 had aroused the public Interest; to do the same for 
 all his plays seemed to Ibsen eminently worth while. 
 This Idea of writing some form of autobiography 
 seems for many years to have lurked just below the 
 surface of Ibsen's mind. The divergence of opinion 
 in regard to certain of his works, the repeated as- 
 sertions by the critics of the contradictorlness of his 
 
HENRIK IBSEN i6i 
 
 philosophy and its lack of any sort of logical con- 
 tinuity, impressed Ibsen with the necessity of writing 
 a book dealing with the gradual development of his 
 mind and exhibiting the intimate connection between 
 the philosophical and psychological motives of his 
 successive plays. " In reality," he once confessed to 
 Lorentz Dietrichson, " my development is thor- 
 oughly consecutive. I myself can Indicate the vari- 
 ous threads in the whole course of my development, 
 the unity of my ideas, and their gradual evolution, 
 and I am on the point of writing down some notes, 
 which shall prove to the world that I am the same 
 person to-day that I was on the day I first found my- 
 self." His little book, of from i6o to 200 pages, 
 and to be entitled From Skien to Norway, has never 
 come to light. Certain it is that for some time prior 
 to November, 1881, he had been working upon this 
 book, portions of which he actually offered to Olaf 
 Skavlan for his magazine Nyt Tidsskrift. A frag- 
 ment alone survives. In lieu of that work, of which 
 a merest beginning was made, now appear the pre- 
 cious volumes (three in the Scandinavian, four In the 
 German edition) of his Nachgelassene Schriften, 
 There can be little question that these volumes, ex- 
 hibiting as they do the Intricate workings of Ibsen's 
 mind In the actual process of the composition of his 
 plays, are of far more universal and permanent Inter- 
 est than any form of autobiography or self-analysis 
 he may have contemplated or even, in part, commit- 
 
1 62 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ted to writing. It cannot be said that the few 
 examples we have of Ibsen^s attempts at critical self- 
 analysis are particularly successful, or, indeed — to 
 the critical student — wholly convincing. There 
 lurks behind them something of the equivocal and 
 the disingenuous — for Ibsen had a way of denying, 
 when charged with it by the critics, the most patent 
 indebtedness to others. 
 
 II 
 
 To the human mind there is an indescribable fas- 
 cination in searching out the secrets of the great 
 masters of literature in the composition of their 
 masterpieces. Perhaps the poet, as Poe suggests, 
 voluntarily encourages the popular opinion that he 
 composes in a series of lightning-flashes of ecstatic 
 intuition : 
 
 " His eye In a fine frenzy rolling." 
 
 Incidents in support of this fantastic and senti- 
 mental conception frequently run the gamut of pub- 
 licity; and strange stories of magic feats of compo- 
 sition impress alike the sceptical and the credulous. 
 Long and elaborate works of art require profound 
 reflection, minute analysis and prolonged study. To 
 peep into the workshop of the great master's brain 
 and assist at the precise balancing of the arguments 
 pro and con, to observe how an idea first finds lodg- 
 ment in the brain, and to note the gradual symmet- 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 163 
 
 rical accretion of the fundamental nuclei for the 
 final creation — this is a privilege that has perhaps 
 never fully been realized by any observer. Poe, for 
 the first time In the world's history, elaborates the 
 various mental processes, the successive reflections, 
 by which a poet — himself — arrives at the philo- 
 sophical and structural bases of a poetic masterpiece 
 
 — The Raven, He draws the curtain and lets the 
 people take a peep behind the scenes 
 
 at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at 
 the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the 
 innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the ma- 
 turity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded 
 In despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and 
 rejections — at the painful erasures and Interpolations — 
 in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene- 
 shifting — the step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock's 
 feathers, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, con- 
 stitute the properties of the literary histrio. 
 
 So lucid, so logical Is Poe's analysis of the con- 
 siderations which gave him the fundamental mo- 
 tives for The Raven, that it has been customary for 
 the critics to point out the discrepancy between Poe's 
 cold-bloodedly scientific explanation and the roman- 
 tic glamour of his magic poetry. The world has 
 been Inclined to judge Poe's exposition as a brilliant 
 scientific analysis of poetic intuition and inspiration 
 
 — after the fact — a mathematical recreation In the 
 
^" WT EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS H 
 
 category of cipher-solving. And yet, there is gooT 
 reason for believing that Poe, with his marvellous 
 faculty of analysis, must have experienced some such 
 succession of mental states as those he so succinctly 
 describes, though doubtless not in the elaborately 
 articulated and logical sequence upon which he lays 
 so much stress. Even granting the validity of all 
 that he says, he still holds something back. Wc 
 have not yet plucked the heart out of his mystery; 
 the last veil is yet unpierced, the veil which conceals 
 the inner shrine of his poetic genius — the secrets of 
 his haunting music, his daemonic magic, his creative 
 imagination. 
 
 Nothing so piques the fancy as the image of the 
 great master-craftsman spinning out the threads of 
 \/ his creative imagination and weaving the magic pat- 
 terns of human life which shall enrapture thousands 
 in that palace of light and sound, the theatre. The 
 curiosity of the inquisitive has recently been given 
 official sanction by a great educational institution 
 — in the case of the investigations, by Hodell, of 
 that " Yellow Book " which first awoke in Robert 
 Browning the idea of the many-sided complex of 
 confession, recrimination and exculpation embodied 
 in The Ring and the Book. The documents which 
 Henrik Ibsen, the greatest dramatic craftsman since 
 Moliere, religiously preserved and which are now 
 brought to light, at last furnish to the world the 
 most elaborate, most veraciously authentic record of 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 165 
 
 the evolutionary genesis of the masterpieces of a 
 great genius, that the world has ever known. 
 These literary remains, be It noted, consist not of Ib- 
 sen's possibly supposititious accounts of the brain 
 processes which gave rise to his dramaturgic master- 
 pieces, but of the actual documental memoranda of 
 the successive states of Ibsen's mind In the creation 
 and development of his plays. Here we find the 
 first original jottings of the thoughts which clustered 
 together around some burning point in modern social 
 philosophy; the original scenarios which project a 
 vivid picture In little of the dramatic conjuncture; 
 the genetic states of mind through which Ibsen 
 passed in creating and re-creating human ex- 
 perience; and finally the penultimate drafts of his 
 plays, just prior to that last marvellous polishing, 
 filing and chiselling upon the dexterously fashioned 
 material of his own creation. These documents, 
 which Ibsen called " foreworks," are given to the 
 world with his authorization; he looked upon them 
 much as a great painter regards the original sketches 
 and preparatory designs for his completed pictures. 
 And It Is noteworthy that, more than once during the 
 latter years of his life, Ibsen, pointing to this packet 
 of manuscripts, remarked to his wife and son: 
 " These are very Important things — perhaps the 
 most important of all.'* Ferdinand Brunetlere has 
 applied the complex machinery of Darwinian evolu- 
 tion to literary forms, and shown the successive 
 
1 66 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 stages by which a Hterary type reached its presen 
 state of development. In his " foreworks," Ibsen 
 exhibits the successive stages in the evolution of a 
 particular specimen of art-form, the modern drama, 
 the most difficult, most recalcitrant of the forms of 
 creative composition. Here we may observe, as it 
 were, the Darwinian process modified by the muta- 
 tion theory of De Vries — the gradual evolutionary 
 process of infinitely small changes modified by the 
 " evolution by explosion " of the human, expe- 
 riential factor. A marvellous composite of the dual, 
 mutually interacting operations of the analytic 
 faculty with the synthetic genius, of the scientific ^ 
 method with the poetic vision. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Upon Ibsen's table, it has been related, there 
 stood beside his inkstand a small tray, containing a 
 lot of extraordinary toys — some little carved 
 wooden Swiss bears, a diminutive black devil, small 
 cats, dogs and rabbits made of copper, one of 
 which was playing the violin. '* I never write a 
 single line of any of my dramas unless that tray and 
 its occupants are before me on the table,'* Ibsen is 
 said to have remarked. " I could not write with- 
 out them. It may seem strange — perhaps it is — 
 but I cannot write without them." And with a 
 quiet laugh, he mysteriously added, " Why I use 
 them is my own secret." There is one other re- 
 
 I 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 167 
 
 mark of Ibsen's which, taken in connection with 
 this perhaps fanciful story, serves to give the clue 
 to Ibsen's real attitude towards his work and the 
 methods he employed. " Everything that I have 
 written," he said in a letter to Ludwig Passarge in 
 1880, *' has the closest possible connection with what 
 I have lived through, even if it has not been my own 
 personal experience; in every new poem or play I 
 have aimed at my own spiritual emancipation and 
 purification — for a man shares the responsibility 
 and the guilt of the society to which he belongs. 
 Hence I wrote the following dedicatory lines in a 
 copy of one of my books : 
 
 " To live — is to war with fiends 
 That infest the brain and the heart; 
 To write — is to summon one's self, 
 And play the judge's part." 
 
 Ibsen succeeded in packing his plays with the ut- 
 most of thought content, in that he deliberately made 
 it a rule never to speak polemically save through the 
 medium of his dramatic characters. Contrary to 
 the popular impression that the successful dramatist 
 must write always with " his eye on the stage," Ibsen 
 seldom visited the stage save when his presence was 
 imperatively required at the rehearsals of one of 
 his own plays. And yet he was peculiarly sensitive 
 to scenic effects, such as the color of carpet and 
 wall-paper, to proper intonation, and even to such 
 
1 68 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 an apparently insignificant detail as the size of an^ 
 actress's hands. Brandes relates a significant inci- 
 dent which took place at a dinner given to Ibsen. 
 One of the banqueters, who had escorted the beauti- 
 ful actress, Fraulein Constance Brunn, arose at the 
 banquet and said, " My partner requests me to pre- 
 sent to you. Dr. Ibsen, the thanks of the actresses 
 of the Christiania Theatre and to tell you that there 
 are no roles which she would rather play, or from 
 which she can learn more, than yours." To which 
 Ibsen immediately replied, " I must state at the out- 
 set that I do not write roles, but represent human 
 beings; and that never in my life during the creation 
 of a play have I had before my eyes an actor or 
 actress." It was Ibsen's remarkable power of vis- 
 ualizing the stage sets which enabled him to dis- 
 pense with the actual theatre and the actual player. 
 " Since I have a strong Imaginative feeling for the 
 dramatic," he once wrote, '* I can see before me 
 most vividly everything that Is really credible, trust- 
 worthy, true." Like the great French magician, 
 Houdin, Ibsen possessed a faculty for minute ob- 
 servation trained to a supreme degree. His genius 
 for detail confirms his significant statement to Paul- 
 sen : " To dramatize is to see.** 
 
 IV 
 
 Before Ibsen wrote a single line bearing upon a 
 play, he gave himself over to isolated contemplation 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 169 
 
 and reflection. In long solitary walks, in the sanc- 
 tuary of his study, in hours-long motionless con- 
 templation of the sea or of the landscape, in minute 
 reading of the newspapers down to the smallest ad- 
 vertisement, in dumb contemplation of the human 
 pageant in the mirror before him as he sat at meals 
 in his restaurant — Ibsen slowly and patiently al- 
 lowed the ferment of ideas to go on in his brain 
 until, as by a chemical reaction, there occurred the 
 intellectual precipitation of some generality of moral 
 import and sociologic bearing. He never put pen 
 to paper, as he once confessed to Alfred Sinding- 
 Larsen, until he had a clear picture of everything In 
 his head — even down to the versification and rough 
 details of the dialogue. When he actually began to 
 write, he exhibited the marvellous spectacle of pro- 
 ceeding as uninterruptedly as if he were writing to 
 dictation. The act of dressing was a long and 
 laborious process with Ibsen; according to his own 
 confessions, he was revolving in his mind, while 
 dressing himself, the incidents and scenes of the 
 play then in progress. It piques the fancy to won- 
 der If the " auction " of The Lady From the Sea, 
 Solness' ascent to the tower, or Nora's argument 
 with Helmer, occurred to Ibsen while he was pulling 
 on his trousers ! When he left off work for the day, 
 he took pains to keep in mind some fragment of 
 dialogue for a starting point on the morrow. If, 
 however, this bit of dialogue did not set his thoughts 
 
170 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 I 
 
 flowing readily through his pen, he abandoned writ- 
 ing for the time being, and quietly brooded over the 
 problem, the characters, or the situation. ■ 
 
 First of all, Ibsen jotted down memoranda (Aus- 
 zeichnungen), by which he clarified the intellectual 
 problem and set the drama in embryo, as under a 
 microscope, before his eyes. These memoranda are 
 usually of a philosophical, psychological or sociologi- 
 cal nature: pungent observations upon life, criticisms 
 of contemporary society, epigrams, thumb-nail 
 sketches of character, je ne sais quoi du tout. They 
 were written upon the most haphazard material — ■ 
 odd slips of paper, the backs of envelopes, news- 
 paper wrappers, any loose sheets of paper. These 
 noted ideas gradually seemed to group themselves, 
 as if with subconscious design, around some gen- 
 erality of thought — a nuclear accretion around 
 some central point. 
 
 After a time, the principal characters of his pro- 
 jected play, minutely observed from life but always 
 transmuted in his poetic consciousness, began to as- 
 sume definite psychological character and highly in- 
 dividual attributes. Then Ibsen seems to have 
 brought this experiential conception to bear upon the 
 epigrammatic Idea-forms preserved in haphazard 
 memoranda. This intrusion of his dramatic concep- 
 tion Into the field of his general ideas produced a 
 remarkable effect — much like that caused by a mag- 
 net brought to bear upon metal filings scattered upon 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 171 
 
 a glass plate. At once the general Ideas began to 
 group themselves into symmetrical designs of defin- 
 ite contour. 
 
 These notes are preserved to us In various states 
 of nuclear accretion; and examples may best exhibit 
 the types of these various states. The following epi- 
 grams point directly to the plays bracketed after 
 them. 
 
 Modern society is no human society; it is solely a society 
 for males. — (A DolVs House.) 
 
 " Free-born men " is a mere flowery phrase. There aren't 
 any. Marriage, the relation between man and woman, has 
 destroyed the race, has fixed upon every one the marks of 
 slavery. — (Ghosts) 
 
 This tomfoolery! We acknowledge the right of the ma- 
 jority; and yet those who exercise the ballot constitute a 
 small, arbitrarily limited minority. — {An Enemy of the 
 People.) 
 
 Freedom consists in securing for the individual the right 
 to free himself — every one according to his needs. — (The 
 Lady From the Sea.) 
 
 People say that suicide is immoral. But what about living 
 a life of prolonged suicide — out of regard for one's en- 
 vironment ? — ( Hedda Gabler. ) 
 
 A new nobility will come into being. It will not be the 
 nobility of birth or of wealth, nor yet the nobility of endow- 
 ment or of knowledge. The nobility of the future will be 
 the nobility of soul and of will. — {Rosmersholm.)^ 
 
 1 Ibsen used almost these identical words in a speech to the 
 workingmen of Trondhjem, June 14, 1885. 
 
172 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Those among us who have the vote are in the minority. 
 
 Is the minority right? — (An Enemy of the People.) 
 
 I 
 At a slightly later stage in the evolution of his 
 dramatic conception, Ibsen's ideas, as caught in con- 
 secutive memoranda, began to converge tov^ards 
 some general fable of human experience. The best 
 example of this stage is the collection of the first 
 memoranda for Ghosts; and to show the unsys- 
 tematic way in which these ideas first found expres- 
 sion, it may be pointed out that some are found 
 upon the back of an envelope addressed to " Ma- 
 dame Ibsen, 75 via Capo la Case, Citta (Rome)'\ 
 others upon the back of a newspaper addressed to 
 " Herr Dr. Ibsen, Swedish Consulate at Rome," 
 date 1881. ^, 
 
 i 
 
 The piece will be like an image of life. Faith under-^' 
 
 mined. But it does not do to say so. " The Asylum " — 
 for the sake of others. They shall be happy — but this also 
 is only an appearance — it is all ghosts — 
 
 One main point. She has been believing and romantic — 
 this is not wholly obliterated by the standpoint afterward 
 attained — "It is all ghosts." 
 
 It brings a Nemesis on the offspring to marry for external 
 reasons, even if they be religious or moral. 
 
 She, the illegitimate child, may be saved by being married 
 to — the son — but then — ? 
 
 He was in his youth dissipated and worn out; then she, 
 the religiously awakened, appeared ; she saved him ; she was 
 rich. He had wanted to marry a girl who was thought 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 173 
 
 unworthy. He had a son in his marriage; then he returned 
 to the girl: a daughter — 
 
 These women of to-day, ill-treated as daughters, as sisters, 
 as wives, not educated according to their gifts, withheld 
 from their vocation, deprived of their heritage, embittered 
 in mind — these it is who furnish the mothers of the new 
 generation. What will be the consequence? 
 
 The fundamental note shall be: the richly flourishing 
 spiritual life among us in literature, art, etc. — and then as a 
 contrast: all humanity astray on wrong paths. 
 
 The complete human being is no longer a natural pro- 
 duct, but a product of art, as corn is, and fruit trees, and 
 the Creole race, and the higher breeds of horses and dogs, 
 the vine, etc. 
 
 The fault lies in the fact that all humanity has miscarried. 
 When man demands to live and develop humanly, it is 
 megalomania. All humanity, and most of all the Chris- 
 tians, suffer from megalomania. 
 
 Among us we place monuments over the dead, for we 
 recognize duties toward them; we allow people only fit for 
 the hospital (literally lepers) to marry; but their offspring 
 — ? the unborn — ? 
 
 A more finished state of memorandum, Imme- 
 diately precedent to the actual elaboration of the 
 definite scenario, Is preserved In reference to the 
 play of A Doll's House, It Is Important to ob- 
 serve — • and this with absolute certainty — , that un- 
 doubtedly at one stage In the development of the 
 material, the drama developed from quite general 
 Ideas. Ibsen himself confessed to M. G. Conrad 
 
TTT^EtjROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 that he always used the individual as his starting 
 point; and he probably never worked his general 
 ideas into a play solely for their own sake. Ibsen 
 always insisted that he was much more the creative 
 artist than the philosopher the public seemed 
 bent upon finding in him. And his plays must be 
 thought of, not as thesis-plays merely embodying one 
 germ-idea, but as artistic re-creations of human ex-i|| 
 perience. With these reflections in mind may now 
 be cited Ibsen's " Notes for the Tragedy of To- 
 day," the preliminary memorandum for A DolVs 
 House y bearing the inscription '* Rome, io-i9-'78." 
 
 There are two kinds of spiritual laws, two kinds of con- 
 science, one in men and a quite different one In women. 
 They do not understand each other; but the woman is 
 judged in practical life according to the man's law, as If she 
 were not a woman, but a man. 
 
 The wife In the play finds herself at last entirely at sea 
 as to what Is right and what wrong; natural feeling on one 
 side and belief In authority on the other leave her In utter 
 bewilderment. 
 
 A woman cannot be herself In the society of to-day, which 
 IS exclusively a masculine society, with laws written by men, 
 and with accusers and judges who judge feminine conduct 
 from the masculine standpoint. 
 
 She has committed forgery, and It Is her pride; for she 
 did It for love of her husband, and to save his life. But 
 this husband, full of everyday rectitude, stands on the basis 
 of the law, and regards the matter with a masculine eye. 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 175 
 
 Soul-struggles. Oppressed and bewildered by the belief 
 in authority, she loses her faith In her own moral right and 
 ability to bring up her children. Bitterness. A mother in 
 the society of to-day, like certain Insects (ought to) go away 
 and die when she has done her duty toward the continuance 
 of the species. Love of life, of home, of husband and chil- 
 dren and kin. Now and then a woman-like shaking-oi¥ of 
 cares. Then a sudden return of apprehension and dread. 
 She must bear It all alone. The catastrophe approaches, in- 
 exorably, inevitably. Despair, struggle and disaster. 
 
 After the general outlines of the play had taken 
 on finished shape, as revealed in the above memo- 
 randum for A Doll's House, for example, Ibsen next 
 proceeded to the elaboration of the scenario. Ibsen 
 worked from the scenario forward, In a manner 
 highly scientific; this was always his practice, even 
 the manuscript of the original version of Ibsen's first 
 play, Catiline, of date " 25-2-'49," exhibiting an 
 elaborate scenario. Indeed, Ibsen had no re- 
 spect for any dramatist who proceeded otherwise. 
 Once besought by a young dramatist to read the 
 manuscript of his new play, Ibsen curtly asked for 
 the scenario. When the young man proudly replied 
 that he needed no scenario, having followed his In- 
 spiration whithersoever It led him from scene to 
 scene, Ibsen grew furious and showed the pseudo- 
 dramatist the door, declaring that anyone who dis- 
 pensed with a scenario didn't know what a drama 
 
176 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 was and couldn't possibly write one. And yet, after 
 all, the scenario as first outlined by Ibsen may best 
 be regarded as an experimental foreshadowing, sub- 
 ject to radical modification as the writing of the 
 play Itself proceeds. It serves as the skeleton frame- 
 work for Ibsen's subsequent Ideation. Not Infre- 
 quently a whole act — as In the case of Peer Gynt — 
 is written before Ibsen has definitely decided just 
 what role some leading character Is destined to 
 play. The fragments of A DolVs House indicate 
 clearly that Ibsen discarded the original plan for 
 each act, when he came to the actual writing of it. 
 While It Is true, then, that the material took shape 
 In his mind long before he wrote a word of actual 
 ciialogue, yet Ibsen expressly acknowledged that it 
 never took such unalterable shape in his mind as to 
 permit him to write the last act first and the first 
 act last. During the course of the work, the details 
 emerged by degrees. !||| 
 
 In this respect, the creation of the drama, as ex- 
 emplified by Ibsen, exhibits an excellent contrast to 
 the creation of the Short-story, as exemplified by 
 Maupassant or Poe. In the Short-story, the lines of 
 action initially converge to the final goal. As Steven- 
 son put It, the end Is bone of the bone and flesh of 
 the flesh of the beginning. The conception must be 
 retained throughout. In the drama, the lines of 
 interest are continually set anew to converge, now 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 177 
 
 here, now there. The totality of effect, the Stini' 
 mung, with Ibsen is created after the " story " Is 
 mapped out In skeleton dialogue. Ibsen at will 
 broke through his original plan In the gradual de- 
 velopment of a play. The Lady From the Sea in 
 its original outline, with Its wealth of characters, its 
 unique role for Arnholm and the " Strange Pas- 
 senger,'' and its situation in a much smaller place 
 than In the completed play, exhibits the digressions 
 from his original scenario which Ibsen at times 
 made in the final form. In many instances there 
 is less a digression than an actual fusion or re-casting 
 of adjacent parts under the fire of his creative im- 
 agination. Both The Pillars of Society and Ros- 
 mersholm, for example, are four-act plays, though 
 originally planned, and in part written, to have five 
 acts.^ Ibsen possessed a remarkable faculty for re- 
 jecting the superfluous; he welds together allied yet 
 technically dissociate elements, and by the forma- 
 tion of a concrete whole, projects us into the midst 
 of the catastrophe itself.^ 
 
 Parts of the scenario of The Lady From the Sea 
 in a most striking way exhibit at once the riotous 
 play of Ibsen's fancies, and the initial fantastic form 
 of his conception. Originally the scene of the play 
 Is a small watering place, shut In by steep, high, 
 overshadowing cliffs, and the play begins at the 
 
 1 In Rosmersholm, the first two acts are fused into one. 
 
178 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 time of the last voyage of the year. Slowly, the 
 ships pass at midnight, noiselessly slipping into the 
 bay and then out again. 
 
 The life is clearly gay, buoyant and fine up there in the 
 shadow of the mountains and in the monotony of seclusion. 
 There thoughts are thrown away: this sort of life is aj 
 shadow-life. No active power; no struggle for freedom. 
 Only longing and wishes. Thus passes away the brief, 
 bright summer. And after — into the gloom. Then 
 awakes the longing for the great world without. But what 
 is to be gained by it? With the situation, with the spiritual 
 development arise claims and longings and wishes. He or 
 she, who stands upon the heights, desires the secrets of the 
 future and share in the life of the future and association 
 with the distant world. Limitation everywhere. Hence 
 dejection like a mute song over the whole of human existence 
 and human action. A bright summer day, with the great ^J 
 darkness behind — that is the sum total. ^H 
 
 Is there some gap in man's evolution: Why must we 
 belong to the dry land: Why not to the air? Why not 
 to the sea? The longing to have wings. The strange 
 dreams that one can fly without wondering over it, — what 
 is the meaning of all this? 
 
 We shall gain control over the sea. Launch floating 
 cities. Tow them northwards or southwards according to 
 the season. Learn to control storms and weather. Some- 
 thing happy will come of it. And we — we shall not be 
 there to see it! 
 
 The seductive power of the sea. The longing for the 
 sea. People who are akin to the sea. Bound to the sea. 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 179 
 
 Dependent on the sea. Must get back to the sea. One 
 species of fish forms the primordial link in the evolutionary 
 chain.-^ Do rudiments of it still lurk in man's nature? In 
 the nature of particular individuals? 
 
 The fantasies of the unresting, churning life of the sea, 
 and of that w^hich " is lost forever." The sea exercises upon 
 you the power of a mood, which works like a will. The 
 sea can hypnotize. Above all, Nature can. The great 
 mystery is man's dependence upon the " will-less." 
 
 With Indefatigable industry, coral-like building 
 row upon row, Ibsen slowly worked out the psycho- 
 logical features of his dramatic characters, first 
 broadly sketched in the scenario. His power 
 of imaginative Incarnation was that of a magi- 
 cian Indeed; and he never wrote about his char- 
 acters until, as he himself phrased It, he had them 
 wholly In his power and knew them down to 
 the " last folds of their souls." The preliminary 
 drafts, as a rule, lack dramatic emphasis or finality; 
 and there Is a certain stage In the Incubation of 
 a play, as Ibsen confessed to Mr. William Archer, 
 when It might as easily turn Into an essay as Into 
 a drama. Ibsen declared that the ability to project 
 experience mentally lived through was the secret 
 
 ^ The species of fish, Amphtoxus lanceolatus, is here doubtless 
 referred to, indicating that Ibsen had given some study to the 
 scientific treatment of the subject, probably in Darwin's Descent 
 of Man. 
 
i8o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of the literature of modern times. He looked 
 around him and found models in abundance in actual 
 life. He searched out the depths of his own soul 
 and found there the confirmation of his hopes and 
 dreams of future society. Starting from some cru- 
 cial instance of contemporary human experience, 
 Ibsen envisages for his creative fancy certain clearly 
 marked, highly individual natures. Not the thesis, 
 but the Individual soul, is the prime subject of his 
 ceaseless preoccupation. It was a source of genuine 
 pride to him that he possessed a genius for utilizing 
 his acquaintances as models for his dramatic figures, 
 — a way of " getting hold of people," as he ex- 
 pressed It, for his plays. It Is by no means Im- 
 probable that Ibsen personified the little toys which 
 stood upon his table. These were, perhaps, the 
 dramatis persona; he perhaps endowed each one of 
 them with a name, conversed with them in the soli- 
 tude of his study, and gave them their positions, 
 their entrances and exits, In the play then preparing. 
 The people of his fancy with whom he sometimes 
 lived in solitude for decades before their final In- 
 carnation and Inclusion In a play, were often more 
 real to him than actual human beings; and he knew 
 the characters almost from birth, In ancestral here- 
 ditament. In the features of their environment, In 
 nascent qualities of soul. When someone remarked 
 to Ibsen that Nora, In A DolFs House, had an odd 
 name, Ibsen Immediately replied: "Oh! her full 
 
HENRIK IBSEN i8i 
 
 name was Leonora ; but that was shortened to Nora 
 when she was quite a little girl. Of course, you 
 know she was terribly spoiled by her parents." 
 Sometimes he fumbles here and there with his 
 figures, developing some trait, heightening some 
 characteristic. Again, he broods over a figure for 
 years before finally incorporating it in a play. Yet 
 again, he finds the secret at once and knows his 
 characters from the very beginning. Perhaps there 
 is no better illustration than the description of the 
 two leading figures in the first form of Rosmersholm. 
 
 She is an intrigante and she loves him. She wishes to be 
 his wife and tenaciously pursues this aim. He suspects it, 
 and she freely acknowledges it. Now for him there is no 
 longer any happiness in life. Sorrow and bitterness awake 
 the daemonic in him. He wishes to die, and she shall die 
 with him. She does. 
 
 Here we have the situation outlined in the most 
 laconic form. The genius of the ultimate creation 
 is displayed in the utilization of the immitigable in- 
 fluence of ancestral traits; the invention of the 
 means — the driving to death of Mrs. Rosmer by 
 Rebekka — through which Rosmer's self-confidence 
 is shattered and his happiness destroyed; individ- 
 ualistic youth, tainted with blood-guiltiness finally 
 broken down under the pressure of ideals of 
 life which lose themselves in the mists of ancient 
 heredity. In the case of virtually all his prose 
 
1 82 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 plays, Ibsen was in the habit of tabulating a 
 complete cast of characters before proceeding to any- 
 noteworthy development of the theme. And in 
 some striking cases — notably in Rosmersholm^ The 
 Lady From the Sea, and When We Dead Awaken 
 — he has noted the most important spiritual traits 
 of the characters, and outlined in marvellous brevity 
 of compression the inner meaning of their tragedy. 
 This is well illustrated in Rosmersholm, as we have 
 observed; but perhaps most strikingly in the pre- 
 paratory notes for When We Dead Awaken, 
 
 First renowned through Irene. Then he wishes to live 
 and enjoy a second youth with another. Then he changes 
 the statue into a group. Irene becomes an auxiliary figure 
 in the work, which has made him world-renowned — 
 
 First a single statue, then a group. Thereupon she left 
 him. 
 
 Our life was not the life of two human beings. 
 
 What, then, was it? 
 
 Only the life of the artist and his model. 
 ******* 
 
 When we dead awaken. 
 
 Yes, what see you there? 
 
 We see, that we have never lived. 
 
 We observe, again and again, Ibsen's stereoscopic 
 imagination functioning brilliantly in the shaping and 
 evolutional formation of character. With all the 
 art of a finished worker in mosaic, Ibsen bit by bit 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 183 
 
 discovers hidden traits and qualities, gives form and 
 motive to his dramatic figures. The first drafts 
 show the characters moving about with less volitional 
 activity than they display in the completed play, 
 much as a person acting under mesmeric control 
 differs from the normally active individual. 
 
 Once Ibsen had grasped the individual in full 
 significance, knew her or him as he might know his 
 own flesh and blood, the rest came easily, almost 
 mechanically. The inscenation, the dramatic en- 
 semble, gradually took shape — " composed," to use 
 the artist's term — as if of its own volition. It is 
 this which makes the dramas of Ibsen so supremely 
 great: the characters are not the creatures of the 
 situation, as in Scribe and Sardou, but the situation 
 — the plot — is the inevitable consequence of the 
 characters. This it is, which gives to the plays of 
 Ibsen, as Bernard Shaw has acutely put it, the qual- 
 ity of " illumination of life " — Imparting final veri- 
 similitude to the discussions of conduct, unveiling of 
 motives, conflicts of characters, laying bare of souls. 
 Here comes Into full play what Rossetti termed 
 " fundamental brain-work '* : the working up of ma- 
 terial in situation, In characterization and psychol- 
 ogy. In the final forms, Ibsen eliminates the su- 
 perfluous accessory figures, lops away auxiliary 
 motives, heightens the dramatic effect of the situa- 
 tions, and rejects all that Is coincidental and ad- 
 v^titlous in the mechanism. 
 
1 84 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 VI 
 
 A study of the prose plays brings to light 
 interesting fact that, in general, the complete mean- 
 ing of a play was never definitely fixed in Ibsen's 
 mind until the ultimate draft, in spotless purity and 
 perfection of chirography was finished. In certain 
 cases the original title which Ibsen employed was 
 not the title he finally adopted: Svanhild for The 
 Comedy of Love, White Horses for Rosmersholm, 
 and Resurrection Day for When We Dead 
 Awaken,^ Ibsen once remarked to M. V. Conrad 
 in connection with The Lady From the Sea — and It 
 seems to have been true in general — that he did 
 not know what the title was going to be, as he had 
 one more act still to write. " I find my title at the 
 end," he said. It Is much the same with the names 
 of his characters, which change with such rapidity In 
 the rough drafts or fragments that one is continually 
 brought up wondering at some new character, who 
 yet seems so familiar. To cite a random Illustration 
 in. Rosmersholm, Kroll first appears as Hekman, 
 then as Gylling; Ulrik Brendel next takes the name 
 of Hekman, borrows from Rosmer the name of 
 Rosenhjelm, appears next as Sejerhjelm, and again 
 as Hetman; Rosmer assumes In succession the names 
 
 1 Ibsen abandoned the title of White Horses in favor of Ros- 
 mersholm, probably because, a short time before, he had era- 
 ployed a symbolic titl? for The Wild Duck, 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 185 
 
 of Boldt-Romer — a union of two old Norwegian 
 noble names; Rosenhjelm; from Romer and Rosen- 
 hjelm In conjunction comes Rosmer — first with the 
 surname Ellert Alfred (reminiscent of Hedda 
 Gabler and Little Eyolf, forework) , then with that 
 of Johannes. In the first act the adventuress ap- 
 pears as Frau Rosmer, next changes to Fraulein 
 Radeck, then Badeck; again appears as Frau Agatha 
 Rosmer, next as Frau Rebekka, then as Fraulein 
 Dankert, and In the third act finally as Fraulein 
 Rebekka West. This matter of names may seem 
 trivial; but It should be recalled that Ibsen ex- 
 pressed the conviction that there was a sort of hid- 
 den relation between name and character. And 
 who has not remarked the appropriateness of 
 Stockmann for the obstinate, stiff-necked doctor In 
 An Enemy of the People, of Rummel for the noisy 
 boaster In The League of Youth, of Maja for the 
 blithe Impersonation of the spring month In When 
 We Dead Awaken? Ibsen left unstudied no detail 
 which might contribute to the mood, the form, or 
 the carrying power of his plays. 
 
 VII 
 
 The original fragments of dialogue, as they first 
 occurred to Ibsen, seem not to have been preserved. 
 But the fragments that are preserved show these 
 bits of dialogue thrown together In the form of acts, 
 scenes, or even portions of scenes. The fused por- 
 
YS6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tions of The League of Youth, A DoWs House, 
 The Lady From the Sea, Little Eyolf and When 
 We Dead Awaken are, almost certainly, first forms 
 of this nature; probably this Is also true of RosmerS' 
 holm. The Master-Builder and John Gabriel Bork' 
 man. After he had begun the development of a 
 drama, Ibsen usually employed one or the other of 
 two methods. One method was to take up each 
 act singly, as soon as It was ready, work It over and 
 write it out In final form before proceeding to the 
 next act. The other method was to go straight 
 through with his composition, and then go back and 
 revise It. The mornings he was In the habit of de- 
 voting to the worklng-up of his dramatic material, 
 the afternoons to the making of a " fair copy " of 
 the completed portions. Ibsen certainly employed 
 the first method In The League of Youth — the 
 traces of which may readily be discerned In the un- 
 evenness of the dialogue of the finished play. He 
 actually made a fair copy of the first act of The 
 Pillars of Society after the original working up of 
 the whole play — with the disappointing result that 
 he had to discard all his already worked-up material. 
 In consequence of this disastrous experience, he ever 
 afterwards seems to have employed the plan of com- 
 pletely finishing a play before proceeding to the 
 final drafting. 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 187 
 
 VIII 
 The transcendent genius of Ibsen is revealed, not 
 primarily in the sureness of Instinct with which he 
 rejected the superfluous, the marvellous taste re- 
 vealed In the deletion of the obvious or the ques- 
 tionable, the lopping off of the auxiliary characters 
 which diffuse rather than concentrate the action. 
 Nor can it be said that Ibsen's technique, with all 
 its finish and classic restraint, is his most remarkable 
 quality as a dramatist. His plays, as Henry James 
 phrased It, are "infinitely noted,** revealing the ulti- 
 mate refinement of the critical and creative tempera- 
 ments In fortunate conjunction. His observation 
 was unerring; and his power of visualizing the scene 
 was so perfected that he never felt the necessity to 
 enter the theatre or to study the drama In Its nat- 
 ural environment. These qualities, alone and in 
 themselves, were sufficient to make of Ibsen perhaps 
 the most deft technician, all things considered, that 
 any age has known. Ibsen knew quite enough sci- 
 ence for his purpose; and his grasp of the funda- 
 mental weakness of modern life gives to his plays 
 the character of sociological documents. But the 
 quality which gives permanence and enduring va- 
 lidity to Ibsen as a dramatist is the quality of psy- 
 chological intuition. His power of penetrating into 
 the brains and hearts of men, searching out their 
 secrets, and projecting authentically veracious and 
 
1 88 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 fa^^ 
 
 human representations of human character 
 transcends all his other powers. 
 
 Nowhere does Ibsen's art as a dramatist more 
 signally reveal itself than in the comparison of the 
 preliminary studies for his modern social dramas 
 with the completed plays themselves. Here we are 
 enabled to espy the great dramatist like a spider in 
 his den, spinning out the line-drawn threads of the 
 complicated web of dramatic conjuncture and spir- 
 itual crisis. The final forms, as compared with the 
 " foreworks," display immense economy of material,^ 
 compression of thought, and complication of motive. 
 A situation which, in some rought draft, appears 
 somewhat commonplace, begins gradually to take on 
 lively significance. The atmosphere becomes sur- 
 charged with suppressed emotion; the characters 
 thrill with tense excitement; and there are lapses 
 and pauses full of implication to replace the diffuse 
 explication of the original dialogue. The rough 
 draft lacks color and atmosphere; the final form is 
 a dramatized mood to which the human symphonic 
 orchestra is delicately attuned. 
 
 An admirable example is furnished in the case of 
 A DolVs House, It is noteworthy that Ibsen is here 
 primarily concerned with the woman question; and 
 his first inclination was to exhibit this clearly, at 
 the same time showing Nora's ignorance of and 
 indifference to this question as a burning social prob- 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 189 
 
 lem. In the final version, the following Interesting 
 bit of dialogue In the preliminary draft has been 
 deleted — doubtless because It called attention too 
 obviously, too extraneously, shall we say, to the 
 play's thesis. 
 
 Nora: When an unhappy wife is separated from her 
 husband she is not allowed to keep her children? Is that 
 really so? 
 
 Mrs. Linden: Yes, I think so. That's to say, if she's 
 guilty. 
 
 Nora: Oh, guilty, guilty; what does it mean to be 
 guilty? Has a wife no right to love her husband? 
 
 Mrs. Linden: Yes, precisely, her husband — and him 
 only. 
 
 Nora: Why, of course; who was thinking of anything 
 else? But that law is unjust, Kristina. You can see 
 clearly that it is the men that have made it. 
 
 Mrs. Linden: Aha! — so you have begun to take up 
 the woman question? 
 
 Nora: No, I don't care a bit about it. 
 
 In The League of Youth, and even in The Pil- 
 lars of Society, with their omnipresent Intrigue, their 
 occasional Intervention of the long arm of coinci- 
 dence, their elaborate auxiliary plots, Ibsen has not 
 yet succeeded In freeing himself from the Influence 
 of the artificial methods of Scribe and the French 
 school of drama. So, In the preliminary draft for 
 A Doirs House, Dr, Rank, under the name of 
 
I90 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS H 
 
 Hank, appears as a perfectly needless character, 
 mechanically filling In the gaps and having no or- 
 ganic relation to the plot. He Is a weak survival 
 of the classical confidant, a futile raisonneiir on| 
 the most artificial kind. At the time he was writ- ' 
 ing A DolVs House, it seems that Ibsen was full of 
 the Ideas of Darwin, whose works he probably had 
 recently read — the Origin of Species (1872) and 
 the Descent of Man (1875) having both been trans- 
 lated by the Danish author, Jens Peter Jacobsen. 
 So Ibsen employs Dr. Hank solely as the mouth- 
 piece for the Darwinian ideas of evolution — as ex- 
 hibited in the following two passages, both of which 
 arc deleted In the final version. 
 
 Hank: Hallo! what's this? A new carpet? I con- 
 gratulate you! Now take, for example, a handsome carpet 
 like this — is it a luxury? I say It isn't. Such a carpet 
 is a paying investment; with it under foot, one has 
 higher, subtler thoughts, and finer feelings, than when one 
 moves over cold, creaking planks in a comfortless room. 
 Especially where there are children in the house. The race 
 ennobles itself in a beautiful environment. 
 
 Nora: Oh, how often I have felt the same, but could 
 never express it! 
 
 Hank: No, I daresay not. It is an observation in spiri- 
 tual statistics — a science as yet very little cultivated. 
 *♦**#*** 
 
 If Krogstad's home had been, so to speak, on the sunny 
 side of life, with all the spiritual windows opening toward 
 
 d 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 191 
 
 the light — I daresay he might have been a decent enough 
 fellow, like the rest of us. 
 
 Mrs. Linden: You mean that he is not — ? 
 
 Hank: He cannot be. His marriage was not of the 
 kind to make it possible. An unhappy marriage, Mrs. 
 Linden, is like smallpox: It scars the soul. 
 
 Nora: And what does a happy marriage do? 
 
 Hank: It is like a "cure" at the baths; it expels all 
 peccant humors, and makes all that is good and fine in a 
 man grow and flourish. 
 
 It IS a mark of Ibsen's skill that he invents Dr. 
 Rank's malady — like Krogstad's moral downfall — 
 as an illustration of his favorite theme in future 
 drama, Responsibility. Thereby Nora's eyes are 
 gradually opened to the significance of her responsi- 
 bility to her children, and so, through this trans- 
 formation Dr. Rank, as family physician and per- 
 sonal friend, takes on a unique relation to the de- 
 velopment of Nora's conscience. 
 
 Many empty sayings, many superfluous motives in 
 the earlier draft are transposed In the final form 
 into terms of spiritual development and character 
 exposure. In the first draft, after Helmer has read 
 Krogstad's letter returning the forged note, he cries, 
 " You are saved, Nora, you are saved " ; In the final 
 form, with what singular clarity is Helmer's irre- 
 deemable selfishness caught in the changed phrase, 
 " / am saved, Nora, / am saved I " In the prelim- 
 inary draft, there is no trace of the oft-quoted ques- 
 
192 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tion and answer with which, as by a lightning flash, 
 Ibsen reveals the abyss which has suddenly yawned 
 between Nora and Helmer: 
 
 Helmer: I would gladly work for you night and day, 
 Nora — bear sorrow and want for your sake. No man 
 sacrifices his honor, even for one he loves. 
 
 Nora: Millions of women have done so. 
 
 Nora's inordinate fondness for macaroons, so in- 
 dicative of her childish nature, is an afterthought; 
 and there is but the barest indication of her tend- 
 ency to fibbing, so admirably accentuated in the 
 final form as an instance of the transmission of 
 hereditary characteristics. In the final form, the 
 incident of the tarantella is naturally introduced — 
 whereas, in the preliminary draft, it appears to be 
 lugged in as a mere concession to the popular taste 
 for theatricality; and natural causes are finally as- 
 signed for Nora's success in deceiving Helmer about 
 her furtive copying. Further instances are unneces- 
 sary for demonstrating Ibsen's perfection of crafts- 
 manship in his transmutation and re-adaptation of 
 the apparently trivial, yet character-revealing inci- 
 dents in the play. 
 
 IX 
 
 A DoWs House f in the course of its development, 
 exhibits admirably the various mental stages through 
 which Ibsen passed in the creation of a drama. 
 
 i 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 193 
 
 We note how Ibsen makes experiments and ac- 
 knowledges failure; goes Into blind alleys and Is 
 forced to retrace his steps; gradually develops and 
 complicates the motives of his characters; and ulti- 
 mately exhibits the situation as the Inevitable out- 
 come of the psychology. A study of the foreworks 
 reveals salient examples on every hand. In The 
 Pillars of Society Ibsen exhibits his power of con- 
 densation, In dropping the figures of Mads Tonne- 
 sen, Johan's father, Consul Bernlck's blind mother, 
 and DIna Dorfs mother; and his economy of tech- 
 nique Is portrayed In having Johan Tonnesen and 
 Lona Hessel go to America together and return, to- 
 gether, rather than act In the haphazard ways of 
 the first draft. From a dull, simple child in the 
 forework, Hedwig In The Wild Duck is trans- 
 formed, as If by a magician's wand. Into a sweet, 
 loving. Infinitely tender daughter ; and the real poig- 
 nancy of her tragedy Is unforgettably fixed in the 
 Imagination by the introduction of the presaged 
 darkness of her coming blindness. By this simple 
 expedient, Ibsen vastly deepens the tragedy; and the 
 suspicious connection of Hedwig's threatened blind- 
 ness with the falling eyesight of the old Werle 
 tightens the cords of suspicion already tense to burst- 
 ing in Hjalmar's breast. In the cast of characters, 
 in the foreworks to Rosmersholm, Rebekka is de- 
 picted merely as " somewhat unscrupulous, but in a 
 refined way " ; and in the preliminary memorandum, 
 
194 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 It is stated that, in Rebekka^s pursuit of Rosmer, 
 there is cause for misery and unhappiness. In the 
 finished play, these two concepts are brought Into 
 psychological harmony, by making Rebekka the evil 
 genius who, In her passion for Rosmer, does not 
 scruple, by diabolic and repeated Insinuations, to 
 drive the weak-minded, sick-souled Beata Into the 
 mill race. In the first draft of Little Eyolf, Miss 
 Varg, the old " were-wolf," Is Johanna's (Rita's) 
 aunt; and she possesses little of the symbolic mean- 
 ing and hypnotic power of the finished figure. The 
 subtlety with which Ibsen has made of the " rat- 
 wife " a figure of lasting mystery and horror, an 
 impersonation of Death Itself, is an irresistible re- 
 minder of the weird magic of the author of The 
 Marble Faun. The " secrets of the alcove " re- 
 vealed In the completed play furnish the real cause 
 and motive for the mutual estrangement of Eyolf's 
 father and mother; and the memorable phrase, 
 " There stood your champagne — and you tasted It 
 not," was a brilliant, strong afterthought. The pre- 
 liminary draft of Hedda Gahler Is conspicuous for 
 the absence of that magic phrase, " vine leaves in 
 his hair," with which the erotic Hedda always con- 
 jures up a Bacchanalian image of the daemonic 
 Lovborg. And that potent formula, ** Liberty with 
 Responsibility," the one clue to the destruction of 
 Elllda's obsession (though even in the finished play 
 it gives a schematic note to the denouement) is 
 
HENRIK IBSEN 195 
 
 found nowhere In the forework to The Lady From 
 the Sea, In many of the finished plays are mem- 
 orable phrases and situations which fix the fancy 
 and knit the action and the characters closer to- 
 gether; while from the preliminary drafts are gone 
 numerous details which too strongly accentuate the 
 thesis or are In themselves, though Intrinsically in- 
 teresting, dramatically extraneous. 
 
 Ibsen's efforts at the emancipation of modern so- 
 ciety Inevitably took the form of life-struggles. It is 
 to the enduring profit of the stage that these life- 
 struggles always presented themselves to Ibsen as 
 dramas. And everywhere, In the study of his post- 
 humous works, we gain the Impression of a mighty 
 Intensity at work, creating, re-creating. Every- 
 where refinement, everywhere complication of mo- 
 tive, everywhere Increase in psychological depth and 
 richness. Superficial incidents of the exterior life are 
 sublimated Into vitally revealing incidents of the 
 Inner life. Ibsen now stands forth in a new light as 
 a dramatist. Every play appears as a marvellous 
 result of artistic compression and selection. Every 
 play Is Individual and distinctive; and yet all are 
 linked together with Invisible, hidden motives. All 
 rest upon the indestructible foundation of permanent, 
 enduring art. 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
** Indeed, it is not in the actions but in the worST 
 that are found the beauty and greatness of tragedies 
 that are truly beautiful and great; and this not 
 solely in the words that accompany and explain the 
 action, for there must perforce be another dialogue 
 beside the one which is superficially necessary. 
 And, indeed, the only words that count in the play 
 are those that at first seemed useless, for it is therein 
 that the essence lies. Side by side with the neces- 
 sary dialogue will you almost always find an- 
 other dialogue that seems superfluous ; but examine 
 it carefully, and it will be borne home to you that 
 this is the only one that the soul can listen to pro- 
 foundly, for here alone is it the soul that is being 
 addressed.** 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck : The Tragical in Daily Life; 
 from The Treasure of the Humble; p. iii. 
 
 t 
 
 i 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 The closing half of the nineteenth century exhibits 
 no marvellous and immutable fixations in the sphere 
 of consciousness. Like all the other epochs, it has 
 been a period of flux and reflux, of ebb and flow, of 
 mutation and transmutation. Any well-marked 
 devolution in the forms of literary art, in the eth- 
 ical and philosophical expressions of human con- 
 sciousness, has been checked by countercurrents, 
 setting contrariwise, towards light, freedom, spir- 
 ituality, truth. 
 
 The keen psychologist, intent upon the analy- 
 sis of the intricate and devious workings of the 
 mind, the intellect, and the human heart, first held 
 the world's gaze for a space; his day is not yet done. 
 He was succeeded by the Naturalist — bare of arm, 
 merciless knife in hand, waiting to dissect with surgi- 
 cal precision his human victim. Then came the 
 dilettante poco-curantists, the pastel Impressionists, 
 reproducing with effects of elusive significance the 
 outermost details of life, with their suggestions of 
 depths and abysms of thought and feeling. Here 
 was change in literary art ideals; but was it a pro- 
 gression or a retrogression? Realism was followed 
 
 X99 
 
200 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 by Its bastard progeny, Naturalism, to be followed In 
 its turn by Realism's remotest of artistic relations, 
 Impressionism. Psychology Is replaced by physiol- 
 ogy, and subsequently by photography; there Is dev- 
 olution here, and the devolution Is from the actual 
 to the artificial — mind, body. Integument. 
 
 Just as, in the physical world, to every action cor-5 
 responds a reaction, so may we expect the law of 
 tidal ebb and flow In the sphere of literary phe- 
 nomena. Edmond Rostand arose in France with 
 romance as his watchword. Forthwith the French 
 world forsook Zolaism and crowned Rostand with 
 the laurels of genius. Stephen Phillips in England, 
 a shining apparition in a gray world of naturalism, 
 only accentuated the swing of the pendulum away 
 from the pseudo-social and imperfectly truthful 
 drama of Pinero. A generation sated with honeyed 
 sentiment and pointless pruriency sits up with re- 
 newed vigor to listen to the provocative quips, the 
 sovereign satire of Bernard Shaw. Maurice Mae- 
 terlinck, at the very crest of the wave of reaction, 
 marks the return from the coarse and the artificial 
 to the spiritual and the true. He turns from the 
 realism of Hauptmann and Sudermann to the 
 mysticism of Marcus Aurelius, Ruysbroeck, Novalls, 
 and Thomas a Kempis; from the naturalism of Zola 
 and D'Annunzio to the supernaturalism of Guy de 
 Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 Individualism Is the most resonant note in the 
 
 ^Sl 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 201 
 
 symphony of modern thought; and individualism 
 and reaction in philosophy rang out the dying years 
 of the last century. To-day the three names that 
 are emblazoned on the oriflamme of Revolt are 
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Henrik Ibsen, and Maurice 
 Maeterlinck. Their supreme distinction is mo- 
 dernity — in art. In vitality of thought, In form of ex- 
 pression. Each in his particular sphere, they repre- 
 sent what Nietzsche has called the link between 
 Man and Superman, between Man as he Is and Man 
 as they would have him to be. Under their guid- 
 ance man may be enabled to " rise above himself to 
 himself and cloudlessly to smile." They represent 
 the restless, throbbing, unquiet spirit of the age. 
 They stand forth as apostles of regeneration — the 
 physical, mental and spiritual regeneration of the 
 individual. Each one soars over the most novel 
 spheres of thought, truth^s red torch aflame within 
 his brain. It Is by that ruddy and clarifying light 
 that we shall see our way clearly. Stockmann, 
 Monna Vanna, and Zarathustra eloquently attest 
 humanity's struggle towards the light. 
 
 Advancing along strikingly distinct paths and 
 unique each In his view of life, nevertheless these 
 three men — Nietzsche, Ibsen, Maeterlinck — in 
 reality are following radiating lines which converge 
 towards some far distant point. They follow the 
 so-called parallel lines of human endeavor which are 
 said to meet at some Utopian Infinity. In his millen- 
 
\ 
 
 202 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 nial philosophy of the Uebermensch, the late Fried- 
 rich Nietzsche — poet, philosopher, and prophet 
 — symbolizes the reaction of dynamism from the 
 mechanism of Darwin, of aristocratic anarchy 
 against the levelism of the age. The divinity of 
 Nietzsche's rhapsody is not a subject for Bertlllon 
 or Lombroso, but the " roaming, blond animal," 
 created through the felicitous conjunction of man's 
 cunning and Nature's process. The supreme ex- 
 altation of the individual, thus spake Zarathustra. 
 
 Henrik Ibsen in his dramas of revolt flung de- 
 fiance in the teeth of modern society. That 
 trenchant sentence, " The majority is always wrong," 
 seems to sum up his message to humanity. He has 
 taught the final efficacy and supremacy of will; but 
 his doctrine involves the salutary concession that 
 " submission is the base of perfection." He stands 
 out in grim aloofness the apostle of individual free- 
 dom — freedom of choice, freedom of the will, free- 
 dom from the false conventions and trammels of so- 
 ciety. He has etched his own personality Into the 
 century's page with the corrosive acid of his mordant 
 irony. 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck — poet, mystic, transcen- 
 dentalist — comes with gentle words of wise and as- 
 piring sincerity to impress upon the world the belief 
 that the development and disclosure of the human 
 soul is the ultimate aim and goal of existence. 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 203 
 
 Marking the spiritual reaction from the blatant 
 bestiality of Zolaism, he seeks to realize the Infinite, 
 to know the unknowable, to express the Inexpressible. 
 " Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt ! " Is his 
 eternal prayer. He Is Individualistic In the sense • 
 that he Is unique and essentially modern, not ex- 
 plainable as a product of the age, but rather as a 
 reactionary, hostile to all Its materialistic tendencies. 
 He heralds the dawn of a spiritual renascence. 
 
 Maeterlinck's first little volume of lyrics. Serves 
 Chaudes, expressive of his initial manner, most com- 
 pletely Identifies him with that band of poets and 
 mystics in France known as the Symbolists. There 
 Is no greater mistake than that of supposing that 
 the wide hearing he has gained Is attributable to the 
 peculiar eccentricities of his style, the novelties in 
 literary form he has employed, or the seeming in- 
 anities or solemn mystifications of his poetry. At 
 first there was about him a trace of the fumisterie, 
 that air of solemn shamming, which has helped to 
 make the Parisian " Cymbalists " (as Verlaine loved 
 to call them) a jest and a mockery. Perhaps he 
 first caught the most obvious tricks of his style, 
 those very idiosyncrasies his own fine instinct has 
 since taught him to discard from the school of Mal- 
 larme, Viele-Grifiin and Regnler. Yet the reiterant 
 
f 
 
 204 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ejaculations, the hyperethereal Imaginings of 
 Symbolist manner, are the symptoms of a tentatlvi 
 talent, not of an authoritative art. 
 
 Symbolism — the casting of the immaterial 
 thought into the material mold of speech, to use the 
 word in a broad connotation — marks the corre- 
 spondence between the outward visible sign and the 
 inward spiritual idea. One must distinguish with 
 the greatest care between the Symbolism of the 
 French school and that of Ibsen, of Hauptmann, or 
 of D'Annunzio. The point of departure for the art 
 of the French Symbolists was the effort, by tricks 
 of sound and rhythm, of figure and image, by allusion 
 and suggestion, to cast a languorous spell over the 
 reader, evoking rare and fleeting emotions, producing 
 strange and Indefinable impressions. As Henri de 
 Regnier expresses It : ** It Is the function of the poet 
 to express his own emotions. He realizes that his 
 Ideas are beautiful. He would convey them to the 
 reader as they are. It is then that the power of 
 common speech forces him to place known words 
 in uncommon sequence or to resurrect an archaism 
 that his idea may be better expressed. He Is in no 
 sense an analyst of the emotions but an artist, pure 
 and simple; his function Is not with life and nature, 
 but with the imagination." A Symbolist in this 
 sense Is an artist who finds the words at his com- 
 mand inadequate clearly to express his emotions, 
 and Is therefore compelled to employ words as sym- 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 205 
 
 bols, deeply suggestive in their meaning. It is ap- 
 parent that, with the Symbolists, the simplest words, 
 the homeliest figures, may take on untold signifi- 
 cance. The poetry of the Symbolists is character- 
 ized by peculiar, haunting and elusive beauty and 
 destined for the profoundest suggestiveness ; but 
 quite too often, it must be confessed, conveying no 
 meaning at all to anyone save to the initiated. 
 
 To compare Maeterlinck's early poems with the 
 ** unrhymed, loose rhythmic prose " of Walt Whit- 
 man is to make a perfectly obvious and yet at the 
 same time perfectly Irrelevant criticism. While 
 both are disjointed, formless, enumerative, Maeter- 
 linck's every line is charged with a certain vague 
 significance, suggestive of subtile and ever subtler 
 possibilities of Interest. Take a passage from Ser- 
 res Chaudes like the following: 
 
 " O hothouse in the midst of the forests ! 
 And your doors shut forever! 
 And all that there is under your dome, 
 And under my soul in your likeness! 
 The thoughts of a princess an-hungered, 
 The weariness of a sailor in the wilderness, 
 Brazen music at the windows of Incurables." 
 
 Is this pompous mystification or profound poetry? 
 Is it sense? As Bernard Shaw would say: " Is It 
 right, is it proper. Is it decent? " And yet the mor- 
 bid mind of modernity sighs through it all: he is 
 
2o6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 excluded by very reason of his supersensitive, exotic 
 soul from spontaneous and untrammelled com- 
 munication with nature. Witness the poignant 
 image of the princess, born In affluence suffering the 
 unimaglned pangs of hunger. The Isolation and 
 hopelessness are accentuated by the figure of the 
 sailor, longing for the cool waves and bracing salt 
 breezes of health, as he wanders with parched throat 
 over the hot sand of the endless desert. What 
 more laconically modern symbol than that of a brass 
 band passing under the windows of a hospital for 
 incurables I Lonely souls are these so laconically 
 sketched, obsessed with world-weariness, harassed ™ 
 with morbid self-distrust and uncertain of a goal. H 
 
 As an illustration of the beauty and finish and 
 simplicity of Maeterlinck's art as a poet, at Its high- 
 est and least symbolical pitch, may be cited Richard 
 Hovey's translation of Maeterlinck's unnamed 
 poem : 
 
 " And if some day he come back 
 What shall he be told? 
 Tell him that I waited, 
 Till my heart was cold. 
 
 " And if he ask me yet again, 
 Not recognizing me, 
 Speak him fair and sisterly, 
 His heart breaks, maybe. 
 
 1 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 207 
 
 " And If he asks me where you are, 
 What shall I reply? 
 Give him my golden ring 
 And make no reply. 
 
 " And if he should ask mc 
 
 Why the hall is left desolate? 
 Show him the unlit lamp, 
 And point to the open gate. 
 
 " And if he should ask me 
 How you fell asleep? 
 Tell him that I smiled, 
 
 For fear lest he should weep." 
 
 II 
 
 M. Maeterlinck owes his world reputation, not to 
 fad, to decadence or to symbolism. He Is admired 
 because he is the sincerest of literary artists, because 
 he is ever striving for that Truth which is Beauty. 
 His poetry, even when vaguest and most mysterious 
 in its strangely symbolic vesture, leaves always upon 
 the mind, or rather upon the senses, an Ineffaceable 
 impression of peculiar and unusual beauty. He can- 
 not be said to have created any great, distinctive, or 
 strikingly modern form of prose writing. Still his 
 prose wears a gentle simplicity, and a pensive appeal 
 that charms when the fulmlnatlons of the phantasma- 
 goric imagination tire the senses and polished periods 
 
EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 leave the heart unmoved. Such a book as Wisdom 
 and Destiny — a book that may truly be called noble 
 — marks a distinct epoch in spiritual and cosmic 
 evolution. The calm philosophy of Marcus Au- 
 relius; the longings after the Infinite, If haply they 
 may find it, of the fourteenth century mystic, Ruys- 
 broeck the admirable, and the gentle Novalis; the 
 transcendentalism of the Greek spirit in our own 
 literature, Emerson ; the " second sphere,'* the realm 
 of unconscious revelation of the Ibsen of The Lady 
 from the Sea and The Master Builder; the brood- 
 ing mysticism of the Shakspere of Hamlet — these 
 and other inspiring influences mingle with and color 
 Maeterlinck's own conception of the " inner life." 
 If, in Maeterlinck's interpretation of the world- 
 riddle, there is one charm more fascinating than an- 
 other, it is his disinterested search for truth. He is 
 never didactic, never even definitive in any ultimate 
 sense. Quite often he is actually found contradict- 
 ing himself, consciously doing so, in the hope of re- 
 tracing his steps a little way, aided by the faint glim- 
 mer of some new light, until he enter once more the 
 straight path to his goal. His books show that, in a 
 sense rightly understood, he is a scientific worker, 
 difficult as this is to reconcile with the vagueness and 
 groping insecurity of his mysticism. From the evi- 
 dence of his books, M. Maeterlinck has studied the 
 modern theories of auto-suggestion, hypnotism, tel- 
 epathy, psychology, and psychic phenomena. No 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 209 
 
 reader of The Life of the Bee can doubt that M. 
 Maeterlinck Is a scientific worker, although this ex- 
 quisite social history is the work of an artist and a 
 litterateur as well as of a scientist. His works — 
 poetry, prose, drama — all evidence his close study 
 and deep comprehension of modern scientific the- 
 ories, especially of a psychic or psychologic char- 
 acter, and these works evidence it concretely and 
 suggestively, but more often by mere implication. 
 
 It would be a serious mistake to Imagine M. 
 Maeterlinck the mere mouthpiece of the mystics of 
 other years. It is not to be doubted that his mys- 
 ticism is based upon a long and loving acquaintance 
 with the greatest mystics of the past. To find stand- 
 ards of comparison for a phenomenon like the rare 
 mind of this new-century mystic, we have to seek, 
 not In our own, but In another age. A comparison 
 of M. Maeterlinck's philosophy with that of the 
 mystics of the past shows similarity In fundamentals 
 to exist between them. But to say that M. Maeter- 
 linck follows Ruysbroeck here or Novalls there. Is 
 not an easy matter: with other mystics M. Mae- 
 terlinck has in common only mysticism. The point 
 of vantage from which he views the world, the eyes 
 with which he sees it, the transmuting mind, are all 
 his own. Nor has he studied modern science — 
 that of the body, the organism, that of the mind, the 
 intelligence, that of the soul, the higher emotions 
 — only to be thrown back upon himself in disap- 
 
210 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 pointment, disillusionment and despair. Rather, as 
 someone has recently said: "There Is evidence 
 that his mysticism is not so much a refuge from the 
 tyranny of scientific naturalism as the deliberate 
 choice of a man who finds In it confirmations of 
 countless hopes and suspicions science herself raised 
 within him.'* 
 
 Ill 
 
 Much has been said In praise of the technique of 
 Maeterlinck's first little no-plot plays — laudatory 
 classification of them as forms of art absolutely new 
 under the sun. Maeterlinck was Intimately familiar 
 with the cognate work of his countryman, Charles 
 van Lerberghe; and to Maeterlinck, as to Baude- 
 laire, Poe was the master. The art-form of which 
 Maeterlinck's no-plot plays are mere dramatic 
 transpositions is virtually a creation of the nine- 
 teenth century; and, with all their bizarre novelty, 
 these little plays appear as little else, technically, 
 than Short-stories cast In the dramatic mould. The 
 Short-story, as formulated by Professor Brander 
 Matthews, must always convey essential unity of im- 
 pression — or, as Poe phrased It, a totality of effect. 
 Intensive, cumulative force Is the most significant 
 distinction of this art-form. No one has ever 
 succeeded as a writer of Short-stories who had not 
 ingenuity, originality, the faculty of compression, 
 and, in many Instances, the touch of fantasy. As 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 211 
 
 an example of Maeterlinck's early manner in the 
 drama, consider, for example, that wonderfully con- 
 vincing study in hallucination, Maeterlinck's Uln- 
 truse — the most striking, awe-compelling, and, 
 withal, most original of his no-plot plays. 
 
 The grandfather, blind and helpless, is seated in 
 his arm-chair, with his three granddaughters around 
 him. The old man's beloved daughter has given 
 birth to a child, and lies ill in the inner chamber. 
 The atmosphere is pregnant with catastrophe, the 
 senses are chilled by the prevision of impending mis- 
 fortune. Overbrooded by anticipant foreboding, 
 the grandfather subconsciously feels the approach, 
 of death. His senses, subtile and acute beyond their 
 wont — from his blindness, perhaps — give him un- 
 mistakable warning. The gradual approach of some 
 unseen being, the fright of the swans, the sudden 
 hush of nature, the sound as of the sharpening of 
 a scythe, the ghostly creaking of the house door, the 
 noise of footsteps on the stair, the fitful gleams and 
 sudden extinguishing of the lamp — the significance 
 of all these signs and portents Is divined by the 
 blind old grandfather alone. When finally someone 
 is heard to rise in the pitchy blackness of the sit- 
 ting-room, the old man shudders with peculiar hor- 
 ror. The door of the inner chamber opens, and a 
 Sister of Charity mutely announces by a sign that 
 his daughter is dead. The Intruder has gained ad- 
 mittance. 
 
212 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 This little play, the dramtlc production of which 
 the late Richard Hovey confessed made an inefface- 
 able impression upon his consciousness, bears the 
 clearest stamp of unity of impression, of totality of 
 effect. The keynote of Its mood is cumulative 
 dread; while Ingenuity and originality are displayed 
 in every line of the conception. The art which well- 
 nigh makes the Impalpable Invade the realm of the 
 tangible, the supernatural to place one foot over 
 the border line of the natural, attains here some- 
 thing very like perfection. Fantasy fills every In- 
 terstice of the play. In Ulntruse as a psychic con- 
 cept, a deep and penetrating Insight Into subjective 
 states of mind In direct correspondence with move- 
 ments in the supernatural world Is revealed. It 
 is not so much that Maeterlinck has created a 
 new shiver, to quote Hugo on Baudelaire, as that 
 he has evoked a shiver In a novel and startling 
 way. 
 
 Ulntruse was chosen as an Illustration of the 
 dramatized Short-story because It excels all the 
 other no-plot dramas in power and Inevltableness. 
 Perhaps Les AveugleSj because of the quiescence 
 and paralyzed initiative of the groping blind man, 
 and because, too. Its conclusion is not " short, sharp, 
 and shocking,'* comes nearer to a Sketch cast in 
 dramatic form than a dramatized Short-story; but 
 certainly Les Sept Princesses and Ulnterieur are ex- 
 amples of the latter form as clearly as Is Ulntruse, 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 213 
 
 The artistic kinship of Maeterlinck with Mau- 
 passant and Poe becomes all the more patent when 
 we recognize Maeterlinck's no-plot dramas not only 
 as occult studies in hallucination but as dramatized 
 versions of the perfected art-form of these masters 
 of the Short-story. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is the fundamental faith of M. Maeterlinck 
 that the theatre of to-day needs reorganization and 
 reformation In order to conform to the subtler de- 
 mands of the higher and more complex life of our 
 epoch. The theatre, he affirms, has for its supreme 
 mission the revelation of Infinity, and of the gran- 
 deur as well as the secret beauty of life. He would 
 have a theatre in accordance with modern psychic 
 demands, giving a revelation of what the Parisian 
 mystic Schure calls the abtmes and profondeurs of 
 the soul. Carlyle also pleaded for a recognition of 
 what he called in his own speech the Eternities and 
 the Immensities. M. Maeterlinck would bring the "% 
 inner life of the soul closer to us ; he would push the f 
 actors further off. Thus he regrets that he has 
 ever seen Hamlet performed on the stage, since it 
 robbed him of his own conception of Its mystic sig- 
 nificance. The actor, the spectre of an actor, de- 
 throned his own image of the real Hamlet. From 
 the printed page starts forth the old Hamlet of his 
 dreams never again. 
 
2 14 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 His regret is for the loss of the " second sphere," 
 that subconscious realm where soul speaks to soul 
 without the intermediary of words. He hails the 
 coming of the Renascence of Wonder, the mystic 
 epoch when men shall penetrate deep into the soil of 
 their subliminal selves. The age, which, as Phillips 
 Brooks once said, " stands off and looks at itself " 
 — that age Maeterlinck heralds and summons. 
 Ibsen, too, has dreamed of this dawning day: Julian 
 perhaps in the end caught some faint prevision of 
 the " third kingdom." 
 
 Silence is the pall that hangs over the earlier 
 plays of Maeterlinck; the characters themselves are 
 quiescent and immobile. It is only in silence that 
 we can really know each other — in the fugitive look, 
 the chance meeting, the sudden hand-clasp. Only 
 in such moments do we truly come to know anything 
 that is worth knowing. Half conscious of his deep- 
 rooted faith in the meaning of presentiments, the 
 significance of sub-conscious revelations, M. Maeter- 
 linck wrote a number of plays surcharged with the 
 impalpable and imponderable weight of pathos and 
 groping nescience. " The keynote of these little 
 plays," he once wrote, ** is dread of the unknown 
 that surrounds us. I, or rather some obscure poet- 
 ical feeling within me (for with the sincerest of the 
 poets a division must often be made between the 
 instinctive feeling of their art and the thoughts of 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 215 
 
 their real life) seemed to believe in a species of 
 monstrous, invisible, fatal power that gave heed to 
 our every action, and was hostile to our smile, to 
 our life, to our peace and our love. Its intentions 
 could not be divined, but the spirit of the drama as- 
 sumed them to be malevolent always. In its es- 
 sence, perhaps, this power was just, but only in 
 anger; and it exercised justice in a manner so 
 crooked, so secret, so sluggish and remote, that its 
 punishments — for rewards there were never — 
 took the semblance of inexplicable, arbitrary acts of 
 fate. We had then more or less the idea of the God 
 of the Christians, blent with that of fatality of old, 
 lurking in nature's impenetrable twilight, whence it 
 eagerly watched, contested, and saddened the pro- 
 jects, the feelings, the thoughts, and the happiness 
 of man.'' 
 
 In those early plays the Interest hangs upon the 
 passage, rather than upon the victim, of fatality; 
 our grief Is not excited by the tragedy: we shudder 
 with wide-eyed horror at the argument of the Invis- 
 ible, the evidence of things not seen. By the Intui- 
 tive apprehensions of the soul, its Instinctive grop- 
 Ings, the Incomprehensible, disquieting movements In 
 nature, the dark forebodings of dumb, shadowy 
 events — by these means M. Maeterlinck made us 
 aware of the adumbration, the gradual approach, and 
 ultimate presence of the mysterious forces of Fate, 
 
2i6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Terror, and Death'. He objectified and concretize 
 for us those moments of life. 
 
 When . . . 
 
 In some nimble interchange of thought 
 The silence enters and the talkers stare." 
 
 4 
 
 The unnamed presence was always Death — 
 Death the intruder. In Ulntruse we waited with 
 tense expectancy and strained senses for his coming; 
 in Ulnterieur we accompanied him to the scene of 
 the eternal tragedy; in Les Aveugles we awaken 
 with a start to find Death in our very midst. Ter- 
 ror lurks behind a half-closed door, and all the 
 poignant mystery of the Universe seems embodied in 
 the figures of seven princesses sleeping in a dim 
 castle beside the sounding sea. There was no es- 
 cape from the obsession of some dire, inexpressibly 
 dreadful unknown presence. " This unknown,'' M. 
 Maeterlinck himself has said, " would most fre- 
 quently appear in the shape of death. The presence 
 of death — 'infinite, menacing, forever treacherously 
 active — filled every interstice of the poem. The 
 problem of existence was answered only by the 
 enigma of annihilation. And it was a callous, in- 
 exorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious 
 way with only chance to guide it; laying its hands 
 preferentially on the youngest and least unhappy, 
 for that those held themselves less motionless than 
 others, and that every too sudden movement in the 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 217 
 
 night arrested Its attention. And round it were 
 only poor, little, trembling, elementary creatures, 
 who shivered for an instant and wept, on the brink 
 of a gulf; and their words and their tears had im- 
 portance only from the fact that each word they 
 spoke and each tear they shed fell into this gulf, 
 and resounded therein so strangely at times as to 
 lead one to think that the gulf must be vast if tear 
 or word, as it fell, could send forth so confused 
 and muffled a sound.** 
 
 A time came in M. Maeterlinck's career when he 
 recognized the morbidness and unhealthlness of such 
 a view of life, and realized that, in the transition, 
 he had come out " on the other side of good and 
 evil." This conception of life may be truth, he 
 grants, but it is " one of those profound but sterile 
 truths which the poet may salute as he passes on 
 his way ** ; with it he should not abide. It is per- 
 haps this early conception which led him to avow 
 that he had written these plays for a theatre of 
 marionettes. The characters all silently and unre- 
 sistingly do the bidding of some unseen, unknown 
 power. Duse said of Maeterlinck: "He gives 
 you only figures in a mist — children and spirits.** 
 Even that " savage little legend '* of the misfortunes 
 of Malelne, M. MaeterHnck*s first play, with all its 
 violence, lust, bloodshed, tears and terror, is over- 
 brooded by haunting and inexpressible misery. 
 
 Octave Mi^eau wrote of this play : '' M. Mau- 
 
21 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 rice Maeterlinck nous a donne Vceuvre la plus 
 geniale de ce temps, et la plus extraordinaire et la 
 plus naive aussi, comparable et — oserairje dire? 
 — superieure en beaute a ce qu^il y a de plus beauW^ 
 dans Shakspere . . . plus tragique que Macbeth, 
 plus extraordinaire en pensee que Hamlet/' Plus, 
 plus, and again plus! Bernard Shaw delightedly, 
 though unjustly, accused even the precise and careful 
 Archer of conferring the " Order of the Swan " (the 
 Swan of Avon) upon Maeterlinck. 
 
 There are many suggestions of Shaksperean char- 
 acters in this little play — Hamlet, Ophelia, Juliet, 
 Lear, the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and Lady Mac- 
 beth; one rather feels, however, that the author of 
 this play is in no sense a " Belgian Shakspere," but 
 instead a rather morbid and immature young man, 
 re-interpreting and rehandling the plots and person- 
 ages of the master-poet, in the effort to express him- 
 self and his faith in terms of the psychic chirography 
 of to-day. Maleine is full of the unnamed terrors 
 of the Poe of The House of Usher, of ghost-haunted 
 regions, of dark, pestilential tarns — the Poe of 
 Ulalume and The Haunted Palace. It is not until 
 M. Maeterlinck's second, or rather third, period is 
 reached that his theories find plausibly human con- 
 cretizations. 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 219 
 
 The late Richard Hovey once spoke of Maeter- 
 linck as '* the greatest living poet of love, if not the 
 greatest poet of love that ever lived." The Mae- 
 terlinck of the second manner we recognize as es- 
 sentially the celebrant and Interpreter of Love. 
 
 In Pelleas and Melisande we have a. play of con- 
 ventional plot — a modern revision of the Da 
 Rimini story of Dante — ; yet in Maeterlinck's play 
 there Is no such thing as local color, no trace of Italy, 
 for example, no suggestion of the thirteenth century. 
 So distant Is the scene, so fanciful Is the setting — a 
 pathetic love-story projected against a gloomy back- 
 ground of old, forgotten castles — that we might al- 
 most think of It as taking place out of space and 
 time. It Is typical of the plays of this period, peo- 
 pled with princes and princesses from No-Man's 
 Land, named after the characters In the Morte 
 d^Arthur, striking stained-glass attitudes of pre- 
 Raphaelite grace; old men, symbolic of experience, 
 wisdom, abstract justice ; blind beggars. Intoning the 
 song of the world-malady; little wise children, whose 
 instinctive divination gives new veracity to the words : 
 " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings . . ." 
 There are castles In the depths of haunted forests, 
 fountains playing softly in the misty moonshine of 
 secret gardens, where errant princesses lose their 
 golden crowns In magic pools, or their wedding-rings 
 
220 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 in caverns echoing with the murmur of the 
 sea. These are pictures in which may faintly 
 be traced the lineaments of humanity; but the 
 figures are dim and confused, more abstract 
 than vital. In Pelleas and MeUsande the accent 
 is nowhere placed upon the human characters; 
 the stress is thrown upon forces of a supersensible 
 dreamland, beyond the frontier of the natural. 
 Throughout every scene, in almost every speech, 
 there lurks a hidden meaning, so suggestive, so 
 elusive, so profound, that the unembodled forces 
 of another world seem to adumbrate and control 
 the destinies of humanity. Melisande is a child- 
 princess, wedded through no will of her own to the 
 gaunt, rugged, silent Golaud. As soon as Melisande 
 and the young and handsome Pelleas, Golaud's half- 
 brother, meet, their mutual insight tells them that 
 they are destined for each other. Struggle as they 
 will against fate, the coils are too strong for them 
 and they succumb to the Inevitable call of soul to 
 soul. Through the little Yniold, his son by a former 
 marriage, Golaud learns of Melisande's infidelity, 
 surprises the lovers in each others arms, strikes 
 Pelleas dead, and gives Melisande a mortal wound. 
 Throughout the whole play there breathes an at- 
 mosphere of the most profound symbolism. Even 
 the simplest acts, the merest words of all the char- 
 acters, are charged and freighted with symbolic 
 meaning. The beautiful balcony episode, suggestive 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 221 
 
 as It may be of Romeo and Juliet, is not only 
 cast In exquisite poetic form, but Is animate with 
 tragic significance. The Incident of the flight of 
 Mellsande's doves, the fluttering of her hair to her 
 lover's lips, the loss of the wedding-ring, the cavern 
 scene, and the clandestine meetings beyond the walls 
 of the castle loom large with hidden Import. No- 
 where Is the novel dramatic method of M. Maeter- 
 linck more manifest than In this play. The faintest 
 movements of nature cooperate with the thoughts 
 and deeds of the characters to suggest the over- 
 shadowing of that divinity which shapes our ends. 
 
 As presented by a wholly French cast at Covent 
 Garden, London, In the season of 19 10, Debussy's 
 opera of Pelleas and Melisande seemed to me a 
 marvel of matchless beauty, of sight and sound. 
 The eery strains of this strange music seemed magi- 
 cally devised to express the fateful sadness of Mae- 
 terlinck's poem. The characters move as In a dream 
 through the exquisite scenes of their predestined 
 fate — with a hopelessness, a sad sense of Imminent 
 misfortune incomparably poetic and tragic. Such 
 collaboration Is a miracle of art: Maeterlinck him- 
 self might have passed Into the soul of Debussy and 
 inspired him. An even more memorable perform- 
 ance — If such be possible I — was given in the latter 
 part of August, 19 10, at M. Maeterlinck's own 
 home, the ancient Abbey of St. Wandrllle. The 
 changing scenes of this romantic play, with its antique 
 
222 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 setting, were all found In the Abbey itself and 
 environs. The few rapt spectators took their pre- 
 arranged places of vantage and spied, like eaves- 
 droppers, upon forlorn little Mellsande weeping In 
 the forest over the loss of her golden crown; upon 
 Golaud riding up to the castle gates on his white 
 charger, joyously bearing his young bride in his 
 arms; upon Pelleas and Mellsande engaging In 
 gentle converse, now In the stillness of the lime 
 trees, now beside the splashing waters of the foun- 
 tain; upon the prophetic bedside scene when Golaud 
 discovers the loss of Mellsande's betrothal ring; 
 upon the tower scene where Pelleas bathes In the 
 beauty of Mellsande's hair; upon the final tragic 
 scenes of suspicion, surprised love, assassination, 
 death. With such artists as M. Rene Maupre, 
 M. Jean Durozat, M. Severln-Mars, Mme. Leblanc, 
 Mile. Jeanne Even, and Mile. Gllberte Llvet- 
 tlnl, with such setting as the Abbey of Saint Wan- 
 drllle, Maeterlinck's beautiful drama had a mar- 
 vellous rendition that bids fair to remain unsur- 
 passed In the history of the production of his plays. 
 In all Maeterlinck's love-dramas — Alladine and 
 Palomides, Pelleas and Mellsande, and Aglavaine 
 and Selysette — the mood Is ever Individualistic, 
 symptomatic of the modern thinker. The action, 
 simple to the verge of bareness. Is a frail frame- 
 work through and beyond which we gaze Into the 
 depths of the human soul. Maeterlinck seems to 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 223 
 
 throw faint gleams of light into the dark pool 
 where humanity has lost its golden crown. The 
 march of events Is but a passing show, life Is a tiny 
 oasis in an illimitable desert, a narrow vale between 
 two eternities. The characters do not bring things 
 to pass; they are set in a magic maze of tragic desti- 
 nies: through them are ever sweeping the Impelling 
 forces of the universe. Action Is but the seeming; 
 emotion Is eternal reality. Deeds are but the eva- 
 nescent expression of the temporary; feelings are 
 the vital repository of Immortal truth. 
 
 The realities, the crises of life, are found In si- 
 lence and in sadness: '^ sunt lacrima rerumJ* We 
 see no vital, tremendous, self-captained soul, incar- 
 nate with the deep-seated elements of religion and 
 Christian morality. Love Is ever the victim, wan- 
 tonly broken upon the wheel of fate. The su- 
 premacy of destiny Is solemnly acknowledged, its 
 decrees accepted. The call of soul to soul cannot 
 be disregarded: the forces of Love and Chance con- 
 spire In the tragic outcome. 
 
 VI 
 
 To M. Maeterlinck, as both his plays and essays 
 affirm, tragedy to-day Is of necessity of a different 
 cast from the tragedy of the past. Speaking of his 
 art, Ibsen once significantly said: "We are no 
 longer living In the time of Shakspere." However 
 he may have carried his theory out, at least Gerhart 
 
224 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Hauptmann has said: " Action upon the stage will, 
 I think, give way to the analysis of character and to 
 the exhaustive consideration of the motives which 
 prompt men to act. Passion does not move at such 
 headlong speed as In Shakspere's day, so that we 
 present not the actions themselves, but the psycho- 
 logical states which cause them." Maeterlinck be- 
 lieves that the bold bloodshed and gaudy theatrl- 
 clsm of the conventional drama of the past must be 
 replaced in this modern day of analysis /and intro- 
 spection by psychic suggestion and the silent con- 
 flicts of the soul. The "character in action '* of 
 Shakspere will be superseded by the inverted " ac- 
 tion In character '* of Maeterlinck. Or, to be more 
 precise, life reveals Its meaning to us only In static 
 moments, In the passive intervals of our life. " It 
 is no longer a violent, exceptional moment of life 
 that passes before our eyes — It Is life Itself. Thou- 
 sands and thousands of laws there are, mightier and 
 more venerable than those of passion. ... It 
 Is only In the twilight that they can be seen and 
 heard. In the meditation that comes to us at the 
 tranquil moments of life." 
 
 Maeterlinck's ideal mood Is static. He protests 
 against the false anachronism which so dominates the 
 stage that dramatic art dates back as many years 
 as the art of sculpture. He cites modern examples 
 of the art of painting to prove that Marius triumph- 
 ing over the Cymbrians, or the assassination of the 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 225 
 
 Duke of Guise, is no longer the type. The drama 
 is no longer dependent upon the exhibition of violent 
 convulsions of life: " Does the soul flower only on 
 nights of storm?" It is only when man is at rest 
 that we have time to observe him. " To me, Othello 
 does not appear to live the august daily life of Ham- 
 let, who has time to live, inasmuch as he does not act. 
 Othello is admirably jealous. But is it not perhaps 
 an ancient error to imagine that it is at the moments 
 when this passion, or others of equal violence, 
 possess us, that we live our true lives ? I have grown 
 to believe that an old man, seated in his arm-chair, 
 waiting patiently, with his lamp beside him, giving 
 unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign 
 about his house, interpreting, without comprehend- 
 ing, the silence of doors and windows and the quiver- 
 ing voice of the light, submitting with bent head to 
 the presence of his soul and his destiny — an old 
 man who is conscious not that all the powers in this 
 world, like so many heedful servants, are mingling 
 and keeping vigil in his room, who suspects not that 
 the very sun itself is supporting in space the little 
 table against which he leans, or that every star in 
 heaven and every fibre of the soul are directly con- 
 cerned in the movement of an eyelid that closes or 
 a thought that springs to birth, — I have grown to 
 believe that he, motionless as he is, does yet live in 
 reality a deeper, more human, and more universal 
 life than the lover who strangles his mistress, the 
 
226 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 captain who conquers In battle, or ' the husband who' 
 avenges his honor.' " 
 
 VII 
 
 Preoccupied ceaselessly with the " disquiet of uni- 
 versal mystery," groping hesitatingly In that twilight 
 zone which vaguely delimitates the real and inti- 
 mates the over-real, Maeterlinck in his earlier fa- 
 talistic moods seemed content to look upon the legend 
 of the human chlniera with the " grave, wide-eyed 
 gaze of an Inspired child." He succeeded in diffus- 
 ing through this twilight zone that strange " lunar 
 brilliance " which Heine divined at times in Shaks- 
 pere. In his symbols there is some audible, al- 
 most sensable revelation of the Infinite; in Carlyle's 
 phrase, " the Infinite is made to blend itself with 
 the Finite, to stand visible, and, as it were, at- 
 tainable there." First, I think, in Aglavaine and 
 Selysette is there real descent to earth, a real adum- 
 bration of a primarily human problem. This play, 
 along with Sceiir Beatrice and Ardiane et Barhe Bleu, 
 marks the actual transition stage in Maeterlinck's 
 art from the drama of fatality, of pity and terror, 
 to the drama of human Interests, of real emotions, 
 and of direct volitional activity. Aglavaine and 
 Selysette is an illuminating essay, though seen in a 
 glass darkly, upon ideal possibHitles in human rela- 
 tionship in a future state of elevated moral con- 
 sciousness. The noble, soulful Aglavaine realizes 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 227 
 
 that she loves, and Is beloved by, Meleandre, al- 
 ready wedded to the childlike Selysette. Through 
 sympathetic communion w*Ith the lofty soul of Agla- 
 valne, the little Selysette awakes to a realization of 
 the shallowness of her fruitless, butterfly existence. 
 With her mate, there has been no high pilgrimage 
 to those uplands of peace where the soul truly flow- 
 ers. The unfolding, petal by petal, of this flower- 
 like, primrose soul is intimated with an art as ex- 
 quisite as it is finished. And yet the situation, 
 humanly speaking, is perilous, untenable. *' I 
 love you," says Aglavaine; "I love Meleandre, 
 Meleandre loves me, he loves you, too ; you love us 
 both, and yet we cannot live happily, because the 
 hour has not yet come when human beings may be 
 thus united." (Does the world offer no instances 
 to the contrary?) With the resolution born of a 
 hopeless certitude, Aglavaine attains the power of 
 sincere resignation and offers to go away forever. 
 Humanly consenting in the first glad rush of relief, 
 Selysette in the event attains the diviner resignation, 
 resolutely going out into the night of despair and 
 death that two souls, immemorially mated, may at- 
 tain the foreordained consummation of their destiny. 
 Librettos for music — Sin^spiele, as the Germans 
 say — ScKur Beatrice and Ardiane et Barhe Bleu 
 serve more clearly to mark the transition in Mae- 
 terlinck's attitude towards problems which concern 
 the interpreter of life. Sasur Beatrice is the Every- 
 
228 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 woman of human love — instinctive, sacrificial. She 
 flees the convent with her lover, and though exter- 
 nally besmirched with earthly contacts, she returns 
 in the end to sanctuary to find that the Virgin has 
 kept her place inviolate — a subtle vindication of 
 the sanctity of human Impulse. When the Abbess 
 intimates that love divine is a terrible burden, 
 Beatrice replies, " Mother, no. It is the love of 
 man that is the burden, the weary burden. . . . 
 I have said often, when I was not happy, God would 
 not punish if He once knew all. ... In other days 
 all folks ignored distress, in other days they cursed 
 all those that sinned; but now all pardon, and all 
 seem to know. . . .'' 
 
 The self-reliant Ardiane, of Maeterllnck^s version 
 of the old Blue Beard legend of a thousand trans- 
 formations. Is the direct progenitress of the pas- 
 sionate Joyzelle and the heroic Glovanna. Her in- 
 tuition is sure and supreme; for though she Is free 
 to open all doors but one, It Is the forbidden door 
 alone that she seeks. " Open the others if you will; 
 but all that is permitted us will tell us naught." 
 Truth lies not on the beaten path of convention, but 
 in the secret recesses of the soul. Guilty for a mo- 
 ment of human yielding to the sparkling allurements 
 of the senses, Ardiane recoils In time, and releases 
 her imprisoned sisters In captivity — only to find 
 that they are wedded to their chains. Without too 
 violent reference to the concrete — the vaticinations 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 229 
 
 of a Mary Wollstonecraft or the violences of a 
 Chrlstabel Pankhurst — it is obvious that Maeter- 
 linck is envisaging here the present and coming re- 
 volt of woman against her subjection; and enunciat- 
 ing quite definitely, if delicately, satiric commentaries 
 upon the " womanly woman." 
 
 VIII 
 
 The influence of much modern philosophy, of much 
 modern drama, is unmistakable. There is a secret 
 and abstract justice, a sphere of ethical equity, out* 
 side of and above the external domain of law, con- 
 vention and authority. The arbiter of human con- 
 duct must be, not the merciless dictum of the world, 
 but the mystical sense of justice deep-rooted in the 
 consciousness of the race. To the question: Which 
 of two forces which work within us, the one natural, 
 the other ethical, is the more natural and necessary? 
 Maeterlinck would doubtless answer, according to 
 Lorenzo Ratto, " The great ideas of humanity be- 
 long to the species, not to the individual. Justice is 
 perhaps an instinct whose tendency is the defence and 
 conservation of humanity. Ideal justice is innate 
 and is transformed by reason and will Into moral 
 force. Justice is within ourselves; outside of us is 
 infinite injustice, which may rather be called justice In- 
 complete, because exposed to all the errors and modi- 
 fications which result from clashing interests. While 
 we are benefited by following the dictates of this 
 
230 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Inner voice, Its Influence cannot extend to our sur- 
 roundings and modify the laws of nature. Its sole 
 result Is an Internal equilibrium, the balance of the 
 conscience In which we may enjoy material well- 
 being.'* 
 
 But how shall this human, Instinctive justice, per- 
 petually functioning within ourselves, find expres- 
 sion In a drama of nescience and fatalistic quietude? 
 How shall such a drama exist In the world of spec- 
 tators whose composite and aggregate passion Is 
 for character in visible action? After his long 
 period of probative experlmentalism followed by con- 
 templation — the reverse operation to that of the 
 pure theorist — Maeterlinck discovered and frankly 
 acknowledged the obligation of the dramatist writ- 
 ing for the actual theatre of to-day. " To penetrate 
 deeply Into human consciousness," he says In The 
 Double Garden, " is the privilege, even the duty of 
 the thinker, the moralist, the historian, novelist, and, 
 to a degree, of the lyric poet; but not of the drama- 
 tist. Whatever the temptation, he dare not sink Into 
 inactivity, become mere philosopher or observer. 
 Do what one will, discover what marvels one may, 
 the sovereign law of the stage. Its essential demand, 
 will always be action. With the rise of the curtain, 
 the high intellectual desire within us undergoes trans- 
 formation; and in place of the thinker, psychologist, 
 mystic or moralist, there stands the mere instinctive 
 spectator, the man electrified negatively by the 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 231 
 
 crowd, the man whose one desire is to see some- 
 thing happen." Nowhere have I seen a more ad- 
 mirable and succinct formulation of the essential 
 criterion of true drama — unless it be Brunetiere's 
 classical positing of the struggle of human wills; and 
 this, in the light of contemporary specimens of 
 drama, is subject to very wide modification and re- 
 statement. In Maeterlinck's case, it is peculiarly 
 noteworthy that his practice accompanies the actual 
 formulation of his hardly won discoveries. 
 
 Early in his career, Maeterlinck confessed that 
 when he went to a theatre, he felt as though he were 
 spending a few hours with his ancestors, who con- 
 ceived life as something primitive, arid and brutal. 
 In the dramas of the school of Dumas fits, he found 
 the most elementary of moral conflicts brought on 
 the stage — the husband avenging his honor, the pro- 
 mulgation of the rights of the illegitimate child, as- 
 pects of divorce, variations on the " unwritten law," 
 and so on. It was not until he pondered the dramas 
 of Ibsen and his followers that he discovered that 
 " the further we penetrate into the consciousness of 
 man, the less struggle do we discover." A mystic 
 who has lost faith in the healing efficacies of re- 
 vealed religion, Maeterlinck has undergone the in- 
 evitable attendant disillusion. And his dispassionate 
 contemplation of the eternal enigma has fixed in his 
 consciousness the irrevocable conviction that the 
 great duties, faiths, obligations and responsibilities 
 
232 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of the future will gently disengage themselves frmrT 
 the violent, bitter and all too human passions of to- 
 day. " A consciousness that Is truly enlightened 
 will possess passions and desires Infinitely less ex- 
 acting, Infinitely more peaceful and patient, more 
 salutary, abstract and general, than are those that 
 reside in the ordinary consciousness." In a world 
 of human beings, emanating justice from within and 
 living an Interior life of rare calm and benignity, 
 only the most pressing and most universal duties 
 will possess the power to disturb the internal equi- 
 librium of human consciousness. 
 
 IX 
 
 Monna Vanna is the summit of Maeterlinck's art 
 as a dramatist; and Joyzelle, though following It in 
 point of time, in reality is a link between Monna 
 Vanna and his earlier works. Indeed, it is a sort of 
 pendant to Monna Vanna and should be consid- 
 ered prior to and In connection with it. And I 
 think that the theoretical considerations outlined 
 above may serve to act as commentary upon both 
 plays. Joyzelle is more imaginative, poetic and 
 symbolic than Monna Vanna^ as Maeterlinck himself 
 said, but it is far less coherent and significant, rely- 
 ing upon such obvious symbolism. " It represents," 
 said Maeterlinck, " the triumph of will and love 
 over Destiny, or fatality as against the converse 
 lesson of Monna Vanna,** In order to Illustrate the 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 233 
 
 possibility of such a result of the struggle between 
 environment and personality, it was necessary, Mae- 
 terlinck further explained, to place the chief per- 
 sonages of the drama in very peculiar circumstances, 
 and to Invoke the aid of myth and symbolism. The 
 grounds for such a necessity are clear only in the 
 case of an artist of Maeterlinck's peculiar quality ; and 
 there can be no doubt that the circumstances in which 
 the characters are placed are decidedly " peculiar.'' 
 Merlin, the old seer, knowing the future through 
 the Intermediary of his familiar spirit, Arlelle — 
 symbolic Incarnation of his faculty of divination — 
 and realizing all that the future holds for his be- 
 loved son, determines to play the role of destiny in 
 order to ensure his happiness. Joyzelle loves Lan- 
 ceor. Merlin's son, with a perfectly human, instinc- 
 tive passion; and acts under all the cruel and harrow- 
 ing tests to which she is submitted by Merlin, with 
 forthright decisiveness and simplicity. Maeterlinck 
 fails to convince us that there is any real conflict — 
 merely the successful, but foreseen, surmounting of 
 all the tests Imposed; and at the end as at the be- 
 ginning, Joyzelle is identical with herself — fresh, 
 spontaneous, loyal unto death. To win her Lan- 
 ceor, she Is nerved even to crime ; but fate — or a 
 mechanical symbol for fate I — Intervenes. Mae- 
 terlinck loosely evades the moral Implication of this 
 Incident; for when Joyzelle naively Inquires, " Is it 
 then ordained that love should strike and kill all 
 
234 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 that attempts to bar the road?" the answer is, 
 do not know." It is Interesting to observe that Joy- 
 zelle is submitted to the same test as Vanna, with 
 this fundamental difference: upon the consent o 
 Vanna to a sacrifice of her person is conditioned the 
 material happiness and the lives of thousands; Joy- 
 zelle fights for the inner sanctity of individual and 
 personal love. Lanceor is a mere lay figure — • 
 the dupe of a Maeterlinckian Midsummer Night's 
 Dream; and in the strange story of this Ferdinand 
 and Miranda, Joyzelle is struggling for a consum- 
 mation of very dubious value. The play is note- 
 worthy in one respect, viewed in the light it throws 
 upon the evolution of Maeterlinck's art as a dra- 
 matist. Hitherto Maeterlinck has always vouch- 
 safed to fate the victory over humanity. In Joy- 
 zelle, Maeterlinck has given the victory to love — ^ 
 a love of authentic finality and enduring strength 
 
 X 
 
 Original and distinctive as Maeterlinck succeeds 
 in remaining through all his tentatives and experi- 
 ments, he is perhaps the most impressionable of 
 modern artists. The Influences that work in him 
 are lost in the mists of antiquity and find solid 
 ground in the most modern of the moderns. If at 
 times he seems the Incarnation of the Stoicism for 
 which we have to go to Marcus Aurellus to find a 
 parallel, at others he penetrates to the heart of 
 
 i 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 235 
 
 modern problems, and challenges comparison, as 
 moralist, even with Ibsen and Nietzsche. 
 
 Max Nordau contemptuously, though not inaptly, 
 characterized La Princesse Maleine as a sort of 
 cento out of Shakspere, a " Shaksperean anthology 
 for children and Patagonians." Indeed, La Prin- 
 cesse Maleine J and Joyzelle with its Tempest setting, 
 testify to Maeterlinck's preoccupation with the 
 scenic accessories and romantic violences of the 
 Shaksperean drama. Monna Fanna, as Professor 
 W. L. Phelps pointed out, owes its setting and one 
 of its structural features to Browning's Luria; and 
 Pelleas and Melisande finds its roots in the Dantean 
 story of the two who go forever on the accursed air. 
 And yet, in every case, Maeterlinck's adaptation, 
 modification, or amplification of the facts, material 
 or spiritual, and his re-presentation of the characters 
 he has chosen to reincarnate, reveal individuality, a 
 distinctive habit of mind, and originality of depic- 
 tion. These plays, in a sense, serve as Maeter- 
 linck's personal impressions of his adventures among 
 the masterpieces of Shakspere, Browning and Dante. 
 
 The most noteworthy influence visibly operant 
 upon the art and thought and life of Maeterlinck 
 came however, not from literature, but from life — 
 in the person of that woman who was eventually to 
 share all his joys and sorrows. The Treasure of the 
 Humble was dedicated to Mile. Georgette Leblanc; 
 and it is significant that in the year of its publication, 
 
236 
 
 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 1896, Maeterlinck leaves Flanders forever and 
 enters the great cosmopolitan world of Paris. Be- 
 hind him now lie the ancient spires, the dark canals, 
 the sluggish waters, the floating swans, the gloomy 
 atmosphere and phlegmatic spirit of his ancestral 
 city. Behind him lie the strange and morbid fancies 
 of his youthful days — the arabesque landscapes, 
 hidden grottoes, haunted castles, noxious moonlit 
 gardens; the pitiable, bloodless spectres, with their 
 frantic gestures of despair and stammering inco- 
 herent protests against immitigable doom. The 
 gray Stoic dons the bright colors of optimism; the 
 poet of the ethereal becomes the celebrant of the 
 humanly real. 
 
 Again in 1898, Maeterlinck dedicates a book, 
 Wisdom and Destiny^ to Mile. Leblanc — in words 
 eloquent of her influence: " I dedicate to you this 
 book, which is, in effect, your work. There is a col- 
 laboration more lofty and more real than that of 
 the pen; it Is that of thought and example. I have 
 not been obliged to imagine laboriously the resolu- 
 tions and the actions of a wise Ideal, or to extract 
 from my heart the moral of a beautiful reverie 
 necessarily a trifle vague. It has sufliced to listen to 
 your words. It has sufficed that my eyes have fol- 
 lowed you attentively in life; they followed thus the 
 movements, the gestures, the habits of wisdom her- 
 self." 
 
 Lovingly celebrated in his Portrait of a Lady, 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 237 
 
 with Its motto from La Bruyere: "He said that 
 the intelligence of this fair lady was like a diamond 
 in a handsome setting " — Mile. Leblanc finds real 
 incarnation In Monna Vanna, which she Is destined 
 to create with moving and magic force. Monna 
 Vanna Is Maeterlinck's great human challenge of 
 mystic morality to the modern world — no fourth- 
 dimensional drama of the spirit, " pinnacled dim In 
 the Intense Inane/' but a drama of flesh and blood, 
 of heart as well as of soul. It bears all the hall- 
 marks of the drama of to-day, even to Its ideal, 
 spectator. Its undulation of emotional process. Its 
 classic conflict of wills. It bears the pure Maeter- 
 linckian stamp as well — but this time the glorious 
 struggle of the Ideal morality against the purely 
 human passions of daily life. Monna Vanna Is the 
 apotheosis of womanhood — the fine flower of the 
 virginal type become volitional, latent In Aglavalne, 
 just stretching shining pinions In Ardlane. With 
 such high-minded disinterestedness Is it conceived 
 that our heart, In turn, goes out to the passionately 
 loving, but outraged husband, Guido; to the bar- 
 baric, but essentially noble Prinzivalle; to the old 
 Marco, sacrificing the love of his son to the Ideal 
 demands of the loftier morality; to Vanna, in her 
 evolution from blushing and tender femininity to 
 decisive and noble womanhood. The unresolved 
 cadence of its clamant finale Is our concession to the 
 mystic Maeterlinck. ** With conscious strength," 
 
EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 as Anselma Heine says, " Monna Vanna carries her 
 fault upon her shoulders like a coronation mantle, 
 and with uplifted gaze strides forth into happiness." 
 
 XI " 
 
 The Blue Bird, Maeterlinck's " Fairy Play in Five 
 Acts,'* is, on reflection, less a surprise than a con- 
 firmation. Here at last is the " anthology for chil- 
 dren " — neither from Shakspere, nor for Pata- 
 gonians — but pure Maeterlinck, an allegorical 
 fantasy of that search for ideal happiness with which 
 he is ever concerned. From the essay on Luck in 
 The Buried Temple there is a significant passage 
 which adumbrates this new fancy. " Let us unwear- 
 iedly follow each path that leads from our conscious- 
 ness to our unconsciousness. We shall thus succeed 
 in hewing some kind of track through the great and 
 as yet impassable roads that lead from the seen to 
 the unseen, from man to God, from the individual 
 to the universe. At the end of these roads lies 
 hidden the general secret of life." The Blue Bird 
 belongs to that modern literature of childhood's 
 dreamland, which finds such tragic exemplification in 
 Hauptmann's The Assumption of Hannele, such joy- 
 ous celebration in Barrie's Peter Pan. Maeterlinck 
 seems to be harking back to the ideas of his poet- 
 friend, Charles Van Lerberghe; and in this new cre- 
 ation gives us a real play for marionettes that would 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 239 
 
 have delighted the author of A Child's Garden of 
 Verses. 
 
 It is a future possibility of Man to discover the 
 soul of inanimate things, to conquer thus all the 
 forces which are now veiled from him and arrayed 
 against him, and to live in a pantheistic universe of 
 life, freedom and light. And it is Man's destiny 
 to pursue that ** great secret of things and of happi- 
 ness," which is the Blue Bird of the Maeterlinckian 
 fantasy. Some such general idea as this lies back 
 of the simple symbolism and allegory of this fairy 
 play. 
 
 In dreamland, Tyltyl and Myltyl, the children of 
 two old peasants, are visited by the fairy Berylune 
 who bids them start in search of the Blue Bird. 
 This Blue Bird she must have for her little girl who 
 Is very ill. *' We don't quite know what's the matter 
 with her; she wants to be happy . . ." — thus the 
 fairy Berylune, who to the children seems to bear a 
 strange resemblance to their neighbor, Madame Ber- 
 lingot. The green hat with a diamond ornament, 
 which Berylune gives to Tyltyl, enables him, by turn- 
 ing It a certain way, to see the inside of things, and 
 to summon the souls of the inanimate. No sooner 
 has Tyltyl turned the diamond than a wonderful 
 change comes over everything, and forth come 
 trooping the Hours, dancing merrily to the sound 
 of delicious music, the souls of the Quartern-loaves, 
 
240^ EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of Man's one absolutely faithful servant, the Dog; 
 the Cat, Water, " like a young girl, streaming, dis- 
 hevelled and tearful,'' Milk, " a tall, white bashful 
 figure who seems to be afraid of everything," sanc- 
 timonious Sugar, and a luminous creature of incom- 
 parable beauty, called Light. And now forthwith, 
 with these strange and sprightly attendants, the 
 children start on their quest for the Blue Bird. 
 
 At the fairy's palace, Berylune explains to the chil- 
 dren that if they can find the Blue Bird, they will 
 know all, see all, at last dominate the universe — 
 a Biblical reminder of that fruit of the tree of 
 knowledge, eating which man shall know all things, 
 both good and evil. They journey first to the Land 
 of Memory, and there meet their grandparents and 
 their long-lost brothers and sisters, who need only 
 to be remembered to live again. Here Tyltyl cap- 
 tures a bird which seems " blue as a blue glass mar- 
 ble"; but alas! as soon as they leave the Land of 
 Memory — for when we dwell on the past in loving 
 memory we idealize all things there — the bird is no 
 longer blue. 
 
 And so their pilgrimage continues to the palace 
 of Night, who lives in terror for fear Man will cap- 
 ture all his mysteries, and vanquish all his terrors. 
 Here Tyltyl takes a peep into the cavern of the 
 Ghosts who, as Night explains, ** have felt bored in 
 there ever since Man ceased to take them seriously " ; 
 at the Sicknesses, who are not happy since " Man 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 241 
 
 has been waging such a determined war upon them 
 
 — especially since the discovery of the microbes. 
 . . . The Doctors are so unkind to them." Though 
 not yet winter, one of the smallest almost escapes, 
 sneezing, coughing, and blowing Its nose: it's Cold- 
 in-the-Head. Nowhere can they find the Blue Bird 
 
 — not among the Wars, the Shades and Terrors, the 
 Mysteries, nor In the private locker where Night 
 keeps the " unemployed Stars, my personal Perfumes, 
 a few Glimmers that belong to me, such as Will-o'- 
 the- Wisps, Glow-worms and Fireflies, also the Dew, 
 the Song of the Nightingales, and so on . . ." 
 Finally, though warned that It Is not permitted to 
 open one great door, Tyltyl musters up courage, to 
 discover there 
 
 " the most unexpected of gardens, unreal, infinite, and 
 ineffable, a dream-garden bathed in nocturnal light, where, 
 among stars and planets, illumining all that they touch, 
 flying ceaselessly from jewel to jewel and from moonbeam 
 to moonbeam, fairylike blue birds hover perpetually and 
 harmoniously down to the confines of the horizon, birds in- 
 numerable to the point of appearing to be the breath, the 
 azured atmosphere, the very substance of the wonderful 
 garden." 
 
 Too easily dazzled by this glitter, they seize eag- 
 erly only those birds that are within reach — only 
 to discover when they are held to the light that the 
 birds are dead. 
 
242 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ri 
 
 In the Forest, betrayed by the treacherous Cat, 
 they are beset by all the trees and animals, who 
 know that if the Blue Bird is captured, their last 
 breath of freedom and independence of man ex- 
 pires. Though guarded zealously by the faithful 
 Dog, the children are hard put to it to defend them- 
 selves, and are rescued in the end only by the inter- 
 vention of Light. Next day they seek the Blue 
 Bird in the Graveyard — but they are not accom- 
 panied by Light, who might terrify the dead, nor 
 by Fire, " who would want to burn the dead, as of 
 old ; and that is no longer done . . ." Tyltyl turns 
 the jewel, and 
 
 " Then, from all the gaping tombs, there rises gradually 
 an efflorescence at first frail and timid like steam; then 
 white and virginal and more and more tufty, more and more 
 tall and plentiful and marvellous. Little by little, irre- 
 sistibly, invading all things, it transforms the graveyard into 
 a sort of fairy-like and nuptial garden, over which rise the 
 first rays of the dawn . . ." 
 
 Stunned and dazzled, Myltyl asks, looking In the 
 grass, " Where are the dead? " And Tyltyl, look- 
 ing, answers: "There are no dead . . .*' 
 
 Once again they resume their pilgrimage, this 
 time to the Kingdom of the Future peopled with the 
 Blue Children, who await the hour of their birth. 
 One prophesies that, once on earth, he will have 
 to " invent the thing that gives happiness " ; another 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 243 
 
 will invent a " machine that flies in the air like a bird 
 without wings *' (whether a Bleriot monoplane or a 
 Wright biplane is left in doubt) ; another will 
 " bring pure joy to the globe by means of ideas which 
 people have not yet had." At last white-bearded 
 Time, with scythe and hour-glass, appears upon the 
 threshold; and one catches a glimpse of the " white 
 and gold sails of a galley moored to a sort of quay, 
 formed by the rosy mists of the Dawn." As the 
 galley floats away to Earth, bearing the Blue Chil- 
 dren, Tyltyl and Myltyl hear an extremely distant 
 song of gladness and expectation. Tyltyl inquires, 
 "What is that? ... It sounds like other voices 
 . . ." To which Light responds, *' Yes, it is the 
 song of the mothers coming out to meet them." 
 
 The children at last return to earth, for Light 
 assures them that she has caught the Blue Bird and 
 has it hidden under her cloak. They awake in the 
 cottage of their parents, now illumined, as if by 
 magic, with strange, fresh beauty; and they talk so 
 strangely of their long dream-pilgrimage, more real 
 than reality, that their mother is alarmed for fear 
 they have discovered the hiding place of her hus- 
 band's brandy-bottle. When Madame Berlingot 
 enters, the children to her surprise call her Berylune, 
 and express sorrow that they have been unable to 
 find the Blue Bird. But Tyltyl offers his own little 
 turtle-dove for her sick child. She rapturously 
 seizes it and runs to present it to the invalid. In a 
 
244 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 d 
 
 moment she returns, '* holding by the hand a little 
 girl of a fair and wonderful beauty, who carries 
 TyltyPs dove pressed in her arms.'* The miracle is 
 wrought; here at last Is the Blue Bird. But as 
 Tyltyl, wishing to show her how to feed the dove, 
 momentarily takes It from her, it escapes and flies 
 away. \ 
 
 " Never mind, . . . don't cry ... I will catch 
 him again," says Tyltyl reassuringly. And with all 
 the grace of a Peter Pan appealing to the public 
 for their belief in fairies, Tyltyl steps to the front 
 of the stage and addresses the audience: 
 
 " If any of you should find him, would you be so 
 kind as to give him back to us? . . . We need him 
 for our happiness, later on . . ." 
 
 Maeterlinck's marvellous Imaginative faculty for 
 evocation of images of rare, strange beauty plays 
 through the scenic directions. That greatest of liv- 
 ing stage-managers, the Russian Stanislavsky, has 
 already realized Maeterlinck's intention In a pro- 
 duction notable for the magic beauty of its setting. 
 The Blue Bird was played in Moscow for consid- 
 erably more than a year, and has been produced all 
 over Russia literally by scores of companies. It 
 was most fitting that The Blue Bird should have 
 been successfully produced In London; for M. Mae- 
 terlinck has gracefully acknowledged Mr. Barrie as 
 " the father of Peter Pan, and the grandfather of 
 The Blue Bird.^' Fantastically, If somewhat con- 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 245 
 
 ventionally Imaginative, were the designs for The 
 Palace of the Night with Its stately quadrangle and 
 mystic, columned temple ; the Kingdom of the Future 
 with its succession of oval arches painted In cerulean 
 blue and the changing colors of ships and figures at 
 the embarcatlon of the unborn children for their 
 voyage to this world; the magic Garden filled with 
 radiant blue birds, ceaselessly fluttering hither and 
 thither, through the instrumentality of the wonder- 
 working biograph; and the austere dignity of the 
 Forest, with Its gnarled, primeval, dense-packed 
 trees. Children sat speechless and spellbound in un- 
 sophisticated contemplation of this youthful, modern 
 quest of a new Holy Grail, while men and women 
 read therein the meanings vouchsafed them by their 
 own life-quests. The pretty fantasy with its individ- 
 ualized figures, whether of abstraction or beast or 
 inanimate object, its eager, earnest children, Its easy 
 dialogue, its simple allegory and symbolism. Its light 
 hints of a secondary intention. Its poetic imaginative- 
 ness and above all its delicate and playful humor, 
 reveal a Maeterlinck who at once endears himself 
 to all who love children and to all who have ever 
 engaged in a perhaps not wholly fruitless quest for 
 that elusive and evanescent thing we call Happiness. 
 In Mary Magdalene, one divines another illustra- 
 tion of that ethereal mimetic instinct which haunts 
 Maeterlinck In some of the higher flights of his 
 dramatic fancy. In this effort to clothe reality in 
 
246 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 n 
 
 the garb of mysticism, there is something at once 
 thin, high and remote. As Maeterlinck has succes- 
 sively laid Dante, Shakspere, Browning, Strind- 
 berg and Barrie under contribution, so now he turns 
 to Paul Heyse, great German poet, the profound 
 creator of Maria von Magdala. Heyse's complex 
 tissue of emotion and conversion is a work of true 
 greatness; the interpretation, by Minnie Maddern 
 Fiske, of the great-souled Mary, swayed, overborne, 
 transfigured under the magic, pure spell of the 
 Master, I recall as a noble achievement of histrionic 
 art. 
 
 Actuated by feelings natural if not quite generous, 
 Heyse forbade the utilization by Maeterlinck of 
 motives employed in Maria von Magdala, Maeter- 
 linck nevertheless not only felt that the words of 
 Christ were available for all artists; he himself had 
 already imagined the crucial theme of the play in his 
 Joyzelle, written before he had ever seen Maria 
 von Magdala. Maeterlinck's Mary Magdalene, 
 despite its apparent imitativeness, stands fully justi- 
 fied in view of its strange beauty and authentic ar- 
 tistic worth. 
 
 In several of Maeterlinck's most remarkable 
 works for the stage, the problem which inspires his 
 muse Is the feminine sacrifice of virginity for ends 
 transcending the conventional and the personal. 
 Vanna will surrender herself — " nude beneath her 
 mantle " — to the barbarian conqueror. To save 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 247 
 
 the life of her lover, Joyzelle will yield herself to 
 Merlin — selfless in the transcendent sacrifice of 
 love. Now again, in Mary Magdalene^ Maeter- 
 linck once more concerns himself with this disquiet- 
 ing problem. 
 
 In Bethany, Appius, Lucius Verus, a military 
 tribune, and Mary Magdalene gather at the villa 
 of Annoeus Silanus, where they discuss the teach- 
 ings of Jesus, the itinerant preacher. The teachings 
 of Longinus are advanced in opposition to those of 
 Jesus; but it is Mary, with feminine intuition, who 
 perceives that the reasoning of Longinus neither 
 dispels sorrow nor heals the mortal wounds of the 
 heart. Across their discussions sounds the clear, 
 sweet, penetrating voice of Jesus, addressing a great 
 crowd nearby. Transfixed with an emotion of which 
 she can give no account, Mary moves as In a trance 
 towards Jesus. She must see that face, drown her 
 senses in the deeper meanings of those strangely 
 healing words. The crowd, with the cry " The 
 adulteress!" would stone her; but Jesus stills the 
 tumult. " He that is without sin among you, let him 
 cast the first stone at her I " 
 
 The miracle begins to work in Mary. The spirit 
 of Christ has touched her spirit. To the suit of the 
 enamored Verus, Mary is withheld from yielding by 
 a new, strange reluctance of which she Is but half 
 conscious. Gathered at the villa of Mary, the 
 friends discuss the marvel of the raising of Lazarus 
 
248 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 I 
 
 and invoke Roman and Greek philosophy to its 
 depths, in a spirit of defiant opposition. Suddenly, 
 without warning, the resurrected Lazarus appears 
 in their midst and addresses Mary: " The Master 
 calls you." Verus endeavors to hector Lazarus, to 
 free Mary from this new obsession. Moving as 
 if in a dream, and deaf to the impassioned en- 
 treaties of Verus, Mary follows Lazarus amid awe- 
 stricken silence. 
 
 At the house of Joseph of Arimathaea now 
 gather many followers of Christ — Nicodemus, 
 Lazarus, Cleophas, Zaccheus; Mary, Salome, 
 Martha, the sister of Lazarus, and others. As 
 they discuss plans for the rescue of the Christ, who 
 has been arrested and led away under the lash of 
 his Roman captors, comes Mary Magdalene, dis- 
 hevelled, barefoot — to plan a rescue, to arouse the 
 broken spirit of Christ's followers, who shrink from 
 the thought of consequences. Joseph of Arimathaea 
 asserts that Christ has made known his will and 
 desires no rescue — against which Mary passion- 
 ately protests. " We save those whom we love ; 
 we listen to them afterwards ! " Hither comes 
 Verus with the miracle wrought — for Pilate, eager 
 to evade responsibility, has consented to surrender 
 Christ to Verus; Christ will be permitted to escape, 
 for which Verus will suffer exile. To a Roman, 
 death is sweet compared to exile; but to win Mary, 
 he suffers even exile. The Christians plead with 
 
MAURICE MAETERLINCK 249 
 
 Mary to yield to Verus; but in the moment of 
 spiritual crisis, she seems endowed with heavenly 
 clairvoyance. " If I bought his life at the price 
 which you offer, all that He wished, all that He 
 loved, would be dead ! I should be destroying him 
 altogether, destroying more than himself, to gain for 
 him days that would destroy everything. . . ." As 
 Jesus passes beneath the window, to the blood- 
 thirsty shouts of the mob, " Crucify him I Crucify 
 him I ", the Magdalene stands motionless — not 
 bowed down with grief unutterable — but transfixed, 
 as if in ecstasy, illumined with the light of eternity. 
 In that sweet, sad vision of Soeur Beatrice, the 
 Maeterlinck, who once said that by the side of 
 women " one has at times a momentary but distinct 
 presentiment of a life that does not seem always 
 to run parallel with the life of appearances," re- 
 vealed a rare power of emotive, intuitive subtlety. 
 In Mary Magdalene that power has been elevated 
 to an even higher plane of serenity and wisdom. 
 The Magdalene knows the secret of truth — she 
 has become " the master of reality.'' Hers is the 
 spiritual divination to see that it profiteth not to 
 gain the whole world, even the salvation of the 
 life of the Master, and lose one's own soul. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 
 
''/ had genius f a distinguished name, high social 
 position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art 
 a philosophy and philosophy an art: I altered the 
 minds of men and the colours of things: there was 
 nothing I said or did that did not make people 
 wonder, I took the drama, the most objective form 
 known to art, and made of it as personal a mode of 
 expression as the lyric or the sonnet; at the same 
 time I widened its range and enriched its character- 
 ization. Drama, novel, poem in prose, poem in 
 rhyme, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I 
 touched, I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty: 
 to truth itself I gave what is false no less than what 
 is true as its rightful province, and showed that the 
 false and the true are merely forms of intellectual 
 existence, I treated art as the supreme reality and 
 life as a mere mode of fiction.. .1 awoke the im- 
 agination of my century so that it created myth and 
 legend around me. I summed up all systems in a 
 phrase and all existence in an epigram.^^ 
 
 De Profundis. 
 
 Wilde^s Works. Authorized Edition, 
 
 Vol, XL, pp. 45-46. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 
 
 In this age of topsy-turvydom — the age of Nietz- 
 sche, Shaw, Wilde, Chesterton — criticism masquer- 
 ades in the garb of iconoclasm; and fancy, fantasy, 
 caprice and paradox usurp the roles of scholarship, 
 realistic valuation, and the historic sense. The 
 ancient and honorable authority of the critic is un- 
 dermined by the complacent scepticism of the period. 
 And the gentle art of appreciation is only the in- 
 dividual filtration of art through a temperament. 
 The mania for certitude died with Renan, confidence 
 had its last leader in Carlyle, and authority re- 
 linquishes its last and greatest adherent in the 
 death of Brunetiere. The ease of blasphemy and 
 the commercialization of audacity are accepted facts; 
 we have lost the courage and simplicity for the ex- 
 pression of the truth unvarnished and unadorned. 
 " We know we are brilliant and distinguished, but 
 we do not know that we are right. We swagger in 
 fantastic artistic costumes; we praise ourselves; we 
 fling epigrams right and left; we have the courage to 
 play the egotist, and the courage to play the fool, 
 but we have not the courage to preach." The sym- 
 bol of art is no longer a noble muse, but only a 
 
 »53 
 
EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tricksy jade. Cntlcism, once the art of imaginative 
 interpretation, is now mere self-expression — as 
 Anatole France puts it, ** the adventures of a soul 
 among masterpieces." We are expected to believe 
 that the greatest pictures are those in which there 
 is more of the artist than the sitter. The defects 
 of current criticism are well expressed by a brilliant 
 Frenchman — Charles Nodier, was it not? — in the 
 opinion that if one stops to inquire into the probabil- 
 ities, he will never arrive at the truth I 
 
 The world has never seen an age in which there 
 was more excuse for questioning the validity of con- 
 temporary judgment. It would be the height of 
 folly to expect posterity to authenticate the vaporings 
 of an appreciation which, in shifting its stress from 
 the universal to the personnel, has changed from 
 criticism into colloquy, from clinic into causerie. In- 
 deed, it Is nothing less than a truism that the experi- 
 ence of the artist in all ages, according to the verdict 
 of history, is identical with itself. In the words of 
 Sidney Lanier: " ... the artist shall put forth, 
 humbly and lovingly, the very best and highest that 
 is within him, utterly regardless of contemporary 
 criticism. What possible claim can contemporary 
 criticism set up to respect — that criticism which 
 crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul 
 for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured 
 Galileo, bound Columbus In chains, drove Dante 
 into exile, made Shakspere write the sonnet, 
 
OSCAR WILDE 255 
 
 * WHen in disgrace with fortune and men*s eyes,* 
 gave Milton ^ve pounds for * Paradise Lost,' kept 
 Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chester- 
 field's doorstep, reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, 
 killed Keats, cracked jokes on Gluck, Schubert, Bee- 
 thoven, Berlioz and Wagner, and committed so 
 many other impious follies and stupidities that a 
 thousand letters like this could not suffice even to 
 catalogue them?" The verdict of the intellectuels 
 has always been a veritable stumbling block in the 
 path of genius. 
 
 " It is from men of established literary reputa- 
 tion," asserts Bernard Shaw, ** that we learn that 
 William Blake was mad; that Shelley was spoiled 
 by living in a low set ; that Robert Owen was a man 
 who did not know the world; that Ruskin is in- 
 capable of comprehending political economy; that 
 Zola is a mere blackguard, and Ibsen is Zola with 
 a wooden leg. The great musician accepted by his 
 unskilled listener, is vilified by his fellow musician. 
 It was the musical culture of Europe which pro- 
 nounced Wagner the inferior of Mendelssohn and 
 Meyerbeer." 
 
 It is not enough to say, with the brilliant author 
 of Contemporains, that contemporary criticism is 
 mere conversation; it is often little more than mere 
 gossip. One is often inclined to question, with 
 Lowell, whether the powers that be, in criticism, 
 are really the powers that ought to be. Especially 
 
256 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Is this true of a time uniquely characterized by Its 
 tendency to relentless rehabilitation. The immoral 
 iconoclast of a former age becomes the saintly 
 anarch of this. The jar of lampblack Is exchanged 
 for a bucket of whitewash; and In this era of renova- 
 tion the soiled linen of literary sinners emerges 
 translucent and immaculate from the presses of the 
 critical laundry. We are darkly and Irretrievably 
 given over Into the hands of those whom Mr. Robert 
 W. Chambers has aptly termed ^' repairers of repu- 
 tations.** 
 
 In view of the premises, it may appear at once 
 paradoxical and perverse to attempt any criticism 
 at all, especially of the works of a man like Oscar 
 Wilde, whose mere name to many is a synonym foi^l 
 the appalling degeneracy of an age lashed by the 
 polemics of Ibsen, the objurgations of Tolstoi, the 
 satire of Shaw, and the Invective of Nordau. All 
 that pertains to Wilde has for long been res tacenda 
 In English society; and he himself, to use his own 
 phrase, has passed from a sort of eternity of fame 
 to a sort of eternity of Infamy. In many Instances, 
 the critical works dealing with Wilde have been 
 marred by wrong-headed judgment, unhealthy de- 
 fence, and attempted justification. The fatal flaw 
 of contemporary criticism, as Brunetiere says. Is that 
 we do not see our contemporaries from a sufficient 
 height and distance. That we are unable to profit 
 by what Nietzsche terms " the pathos of distance,** 
 
OSCAR WILDE as? 
 
 Is a deficiency that cannot be remedied. But at 
 least it Is the prerogative of art, peculiarly of the 
 art of criticism, to make the attempt, if not to fix 
 the position, certainly to express judgment upon the 
 work of contemporaries. Irresistibly there arises 
 the conscientious proposition of the question whether 
 the work of Wilde is worthy of genuine critical 
 study. In speaking of Sainte Beuve, self-styled the 
 " naturalist of the human heart," Emile Faguet once 
 remarked that men are, without being entirely right, 
 at least not entirely wrong in ignoring many faults 
 In the man who possesses the virtue proper to his 
 own profession. People are accustomed to overlook 
 dissipation In the brave soldier, Intolerance In the 
 compassionate priest, harshness in the successful 
 ruler. One might even instance that frail woman, 
 mentioned in Holy Scripture, who was forgiven be- 
 cause she loved much. The point of departure for 
 an estimate of Wilde is to be found, neither In a 
 sense of outrage against society nor In a groping 
 for hopeless excuse behind the Imperfect researches 
 of pathological criminology. The reason for any 
 future study of Wilde Is to be found either in the 
 palliative charm of his personality as friend and 
 temperament as artist, or in the orchidaceous 
 modernity and brilliant exoticism of his spoken and 
 written art. In art, as In life, much virtue Inheres 
 in the professional conscience; and the peccable artist 
 in all ages has been granted a hearing on account 
 
258 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of his unfaltering love of art. " If one loves 
 at all," Wilde once wrote, " one must love it be- 
 yond all other things in the world, and against such 
 love the reason, if one listened to it, would cry out. 
 There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. 
 It is something entirely too splendid to be sane. 
 Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note 
 will always seem to the world to be pure visionaries." 
 And with all his affectation of singularity, his as- 
 sumption of the dangerous and delightful distinction 
 of being different from others, his joyous treading 
 of the primrose path of self-exploitation, his aesthetic 
 posturing, charlatanry, and blague — Oscar Wilde 
 I was assuredly a personality of whose life art formed 
 the dominant note. :M 
 
 The biography of such souls as D^Annunzio, Ver- 
 laine, Dowson, or Wilde connotes the infinitely deli- 
 cate and complex task of tracing that thin demarca- 
 tive line which divides the famous from the infamous. 
 Nor is the contemplation of the personal failure of 
 a brilliant artist like Wilde — drifting derelict upon 
 the tumultuous sea of passion — either congenial 
 or edifying. There is no more tragic spectacle than 
 that of a man of genius who is not a man of honor. ; 
 And yet, until vaster and more definitive studies of 
 the problems of homosexuality, of degeneracy, and 
 of criminal pathology shall have been completed, 
 Wilde will continue to be what Byron has been 
 aptly termed: "a fascinating trouble." There is 
 
OSCAR WILDE 259 
 
 a sort of melancholy fascination inherent in the de- 
 termination of the causes underlying discrepancy be- 
 tween purpose and performance, between art and 
 morality. The spirit warreth against the flesh, the 
 flesh against the spirit. The selfsame soul which 
 joyfully mounts to the shining summits of art cries 
 forth its despairing Mea Culpa from the depths of 
 life. In the heart of every man is lodged not only 
 a Paradiso, but a Purgatorio, As artist and man, 
 Oscar Wilde might truly have said with Omar 
 Khayyam: " I myself am Heaven and Hell." 
 
 There exists no more salient exemplification of 
 the reality of the identity between destiny and human 
 character than is to be discovered in the case of 
 Oscar Wilde. The crux oi his mania was blindness 
 to the truth that the man who is the lackey of his 
 passion can never be the master of his fate. The 
 secret of his downfall is found in the fact that this 
 leader in the ranks of individualism was not the 
 captain of his own soul. ** Not even the most in- 
 significant actions, '^ says one of Echegaray's char- 
 acters in El Gran GaleotOy " are in themselves 
 insignificant or lost for good or evil. For, 
 concentrated by the mysterious influences of modern 
 life, they may reach to immense effects.'' Wilde's 
 life signally exemplifies, in Amiel's words, " the 
 fatality of the consequences incident to human acts." 
 It was Wilde's tragedy to drink to the dregs " the 
 bitter tonic draught of experience," and to realize, 
 
26o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 in infinite wretchedness and isolation, the trut 
 George Eliot's dictum that consequences are unpity- 
 ing. In his own words, " I. forgot that every little 
 action of the common day makes or unmakes char- ; 
 acter, and that therefore what one has done in the \ 
 secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the I 
 housetop." What strange and pathetic prophecy in 
 his eery poem, Helas! 
 
 To drift with every passion till my soul 
 Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, 
 Is it for this that I have given away 
 Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? 
 Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll 
 Scrawled over on some boyish holiday 
 With idle songs for pipe and virelay, 
 Which do but mar the secret of the whole. 
 
 Surely there was a time I might have trod 
 The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance 
 Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God 
 Is that time dead? Lo! with a little rod 
 I did but touch the honey of romance — 
 And must I lose a soul's inheritance? 
 
 No one would deny to Wilde the title of a Prince 
 of Paradoxers. And yet this acolyte of the obverse, 
 to whom perversity was a passion, never created so 
 puzzling a paradox as the paradox of his own life. 
 He to whom humanity was always a disquieting 
 prbblern has bequeathed himself as a far more dis- 
 
 1 
 
OSCAR WILDE 261 
 
 quieting problem to humanity. Irony incarnate, yet 
 unconscious, lay In his reiterated injunction that it 
 is not so much what we say, nor even what we do, 
 but what we are that eternally matters. He yearned 
 to live and to live more abundantly — ** to be, to 
 know, to feel ... to go through everything, to 
 turn every page, to experience all that can be ex- 
 perienced upon the earth." He early confessed that 
 he *' wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the 
 garden of the world " ; and he went forth into the 
 world with that passion in his soul. But he ate only 
 the bitter-sweet fruit of the trees of pleasure; and 
 it turned to ashes upon his tongue. If he ate of the 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge, it was knowledge 
 of evil, not of good. This master of the half-truth 
 is condemned In the very phrase; it was the fate 
 of his character not simply to know, but to wish to 
 know, only the half of the truth, of the meaning 
 of life. 
 
 " Virtue," says Bernard Shaw, " consists, not in 
 abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it." Judg- 
 ing by the criterion of this post-NIetzschean valua- 
 tion of virtue, Wilde was, constitutionally and con- 
 genltally, one of the most vicious of men. If Wilde 
 could be termed virtuous in any sense. It was in no 
 other than the professional sense. In his life as 
 artist, it was his sincerity to be insincere. The final 
 verity about the man Is that, through the refractory 
 lens of his temperament, all truth appeared encased 
 
262 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 in a paradox. Far from being universal or fun3a^ 
 mental, truth to Wilde was so individual, so personal 
 a thing that the moment it became the property of 
 more than one person, it became a falsehood. If^ 
 his art ever ceased to live for its own sake, it was 
 because it lived for Wilde's sake. Indeed Wilde was 
 of his essence what the French call personnel; and 
 a work of art, as he phrased it, is always the unique 
 result of an unique temperament. To Ibsen, cre- 
 ation in art consisted in holding judgment-day over 
 oneself. To Wilde, creation in art consisted in the 
 celebration of a holiday of mentality. In the guise 
 of interpreter of the modern spirit, he was always 
 happening upon the discovery of a great, an unique 
 truth; and this he flippantly and condescendingly 
 consented to communicate to that boorish monster, 
 the public. Art was an Ivory tower in which dwelt 
 the long-haired seraph of the sunflower. The drama 
 was merely a platform for the flair of the flaneur. 
 All the world was a stage for the wearer of the 
 green carnation. 
 
 It has ceased to be a paradox to attribute an ex- 
 alted, if extravagant sense of virtue, sanity, and 
 morality to Walt Whitman, to Ellsee Reclus, to 
 Bernard Shaw. Their notions of right, of justice, 
 and of morality differ from those of the average 
 man — Zola's Vhomme moyen sensual — In that they 
 sharply diverge from, and not Infrequently trans- 
 cend, the conventional standards, the perfunctory 
 
OSCAR WILDE 263 
 
 concepts of right living and just conduct. If 
 Wilde could be said to have any morals, it was a faith 
 in the artistic validity of poetic justice. If he could 
 be said to have any conscience, it was the profes- 
 sional conscience of the impeccable artist — of Poe, 
 of Pater, of Sainte Beuve. If he could be said to 
 have a sense of right, it was a sense of the right of 
 the artist to live his own untrammelled life. 
 
 Nothing is easier than acquiescence in Wilde's 
 dictum that the drama is the meeting place of art 
 and life. And yet nowhere more clearly than in 
 Wilde's own plays do we find the purposed divorce 
 of art from life. It was his fundamental distinction, 
 in the role of critic as artist, to trace with admirable 
 clarity the line of demarcation between unimagina- 
 tive realism and imaginative reality. The methods 
 of Zola and the Naturalistic school always drew 
 Wilde's keenest critical thrusts. The greatest 
 heresy, in his opinion, was the doctrine that art con- 
 sists in holding up the camera to nature. He was 
 even so reactionary as to assert that the only real 
 people are the people who never exist. The view 
 of Stendhal, that fiction Is un miroir qui se promene 
 sur la grande route, found as little favor in his eyes 
 as the doctrine of Pinero that the dramatists are the 
 brief and abstract chronometers of the time. The 
 function of the artist, In Wilde's view, is to invent, 
 not to chronicle; and he even goes so far as to say 
 that if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his 
 
264 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 i 
 
 personages, he should at least pretend that they are 
 creations, and not boast of them as copies. To the 
 charge that the people in his stories are " mere 
 catchpenny revelations of the non-existent," he un- 
 blushingly retorted: " Life by Its realism Is always 
 spoiling the subject-matter of art. The supreme 
 pleasure In literature Is to realize the non-existent." 
 
 II 
 
 One year before Arthur Pinero and two years 
 before Bernard Shaw, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie 
 Wills Wilde was born at No. i Merrion Square, 
 Dublin, on October i6, 1854. His parents, both 
 brilliant and distinguished figures, took a leading 
 part in the life of their age; and certain of the dis- 
 tinctive traits of each find striking reproduction in 
 their unhappy son. Mr., afterwards Sir, William 
 Wilde, Oscar's father, early distinguished himself 
 in the field of letters; but the logical bent of his 
 mind was toward medical study, which he pursued 
 in London, Berlin and Vienna. He devoted his first 
 year's fees as a physician. Indeed, more, the first 
 thousand pounds of his professional earnings, to the 
 founding of St. Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital where 
 the poor could be treated for eye and ear diseases; 
 and his distinction as a physician won him the title 
 of " the father of modern otology." He received 
 many honors, including knighthood, during his life- 
 time ; but it was Oscar Wilde's misfortune to inherit 
 
OSCAR WILDE 265 
 
 from his father, not his talents as a scientific spe- 
 cialist, but his vicious traits as immoralist and liber- 
 tine. Just as Bernard Shaw derived his musical bent 
 from his mother, so Oscar Wilde derived his literary 
 sense, in great measure, from his brilliant mother — 
 Jane Francesca Elgee. Signing her verses " Sper- 
 anza " and her letters " John Fanshaw Ellis," this 
 woman of genius, as Sir Charles Gavan Duffy called 
 her, contributed frequently to The Nation, of 
 Dublin, from 1847 on; and her celebrated National- 
 ist manifesto, Jacta Alea Est, inspired by Williams' 
 The Spirit of the Nation, gave her a notoriety little 
 short of treasonable. In savoir faire, in all the arts 
 of the salon, Lady Wilde was unexcelled; and it was 
 the testimony of all who met her that she was a 
 personage. In her son are reproduced certain 
 marked characteristics: indifference to practical af- 
 fairs of life, brilliancy in the art of social converse, 
 profound aversion to " the miasma of the common- 
 place," and a moral laxity of tone in conversation 
 which, in her case, found no counterpart in her 
 actual life. 
 
 " Under * direct inheritance ' or * transmission by 
 blood,' " records one of Wilde's recent biographers, 
 " may, perhaps, be classed his literary capacity, his 
 gifts of poetry, languages, of ready mastery of diffi- 
 cult studies, his love of the beautiful, the sound com- 
 mon-sense of his normal periods, his family and per- 
 sonal pride, and his moral courage in the face of dan- 
 
266 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 
 ger, but also an indifference to the dangers of alco 
 holism, an aversion from failure, physical, social 
 and mental, an exaggerated esteem, on the other 
 hand, for wealth, titles and social success, a tolerance 
 for moral laxness." 
 
 As a very small lad, Oscar was spoken of by his 
 mother as " wonderful," as a child of phenomenal 
 versatility. His fondness for mystery and romance 
 was born through his tours with his father in quest 
 of archaeological treasures; and his natural wit was 
 sharpened by listening to Ireland's thought and wit 
 In the salon of his mother. It was at his father's 
 dinner-table and in his mother's drawing-room, as 
 has been justly said, that the best of his early educa- 
 tion was obtained; but he doubtless gained not a 
 little from his schooling at the Portora Royal 
 School. He had no aptitude for mathematics, nor 
 was his talent for composition at this time In evi- 
 dence; but he had a marvellous faculty of Intellectual 
 absorption, mastering the contents of a book In an 
 incredibly short space of time. He kept aloof from 
 his companions, practised his wit in bestowing nick- 
 names upon them, and enjoyed nothing more than 
 leading his teachers into long discussions of some 
 point which " Intrigued his fancy." His brilliancy 
 In reading and Interpreting the classics was proven 
 at the time of his entrance to Trinity College, Dub- 
 lin — October, 1871. Like his great-uncle Ralph, 
 Oscar won the Berkeley Gold Medal at Trinity, as 
 
OSCAR WILDE 267 
 
 well as a scholarship ; but he never held his scholar- 
 ship, preferring to seek better things at Oxford. 
 
 " I want to get to the point," Oscar Wilde says in 
 De Profundis, " where I shall be able to say quite 
 simply, and without affectation, that the two great 
 turning-points in my life were when my father sent 
 me to Oxford-and when society sent me to prison." 
 Certain It is that at Oxford he first began to ex- 
 hibit that devotion to art, that attachment to litera- 
 ture, and that passion for beauty which were the 
 foundations for whatsoever of value is to be found 
 in his writings. Here he sat under Ruskin; and 
 there is little reason to doubt that the artistic and 
 personal influence of Ruskin upon Wilde was far 
 from inconsiderable. " The influence of Ruskin was 
 so great," we read in a biographical notice of Wilde, 
 " that Mr. Wilde, though holding games in abomina- 
 tion, and detesting violent exercise, might have been 
 seen of grey November mornings breaking stones on 
 the roadside — not unbribed, however ; * he had the 
 honour of filling Mr. Ruskin's especial wheelbar- 
 row,' and it was the great author of * Modern 
 Painters ' himself who taught him how to trundle 
 it." There is, however, little reason to believe, in 
 spite of the evidence of The Soul of Man Under 
 Socialism, that in Wilde's mind were sown any of 
 the seeds of that " practical interest in social questions 
 which is the * Oxford Movement of to-day.' " Rus- 
 kin's influence upon Wilde is chiefly exhibited in the 
 
268 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 growth of the latter's artistic tastes; for Wilde's 
 rooms at Oxford were noted for their beautiful 
 decoration and for the display of collections of 
 " objects of vertu!* Recall his well-known remark: 
 " Oh, would that I could live up to my blue china I ** 
 In his early Oxford days he began to contribute both 
 prose and verse to magazines published in Dublin, 
 notably to Kottahos and The Irish Monthly, About 
 this time he visited Italy; and although inclined, 
 through the spiritual element in art, to Roman Ca- 
 tholicism, — even writing notable poems such as 
 Rome Unvisitedy which won high praise from Cardi- 
 nal Newman, — his faltering faith lacked the strength 
 of ultimate conviction. 
 
 Wilde's journey in Greece with the party which 
 accompanied John Pentland Mahaffy was the pro- 
 foundest determinative influence which had yet come 
 into his life. And If It did not make of him a 
 " healthy Pagan," certainly it was a confirmation of 
 all his dreams and visions of beauty undreamed and 
 unimaginable. In his own words, in regard to this 
 experience, " the worship of sorrow gave place again 
 to the worship of beauty." For a time he dreamed 
 of the beauty of religion; for all time afterwards he 
 devoted himself In art to the religion of beauty. It 
 has been suggested that Wilde's classical studies at 
 Oxford so familiarized him with certain pathologi- 
 cal manifestations that he really failed to realize 
 their horror; and the brilliant French symbolist, 
 
OSCAR WILDE 269 
 
 Henri de Regnler, does not hesitate to attribute his 
 downfall to the fact that he had so steeped himself 
 in the life of by-gone days that he did not realize 
 the world in which he was actually living. Oscar 
 Wilde believed that ** he lived in Italy at the time 
 of the Renaissance or in Greece at the time of Soc- 
 rates. He was punished for a chronological 
 error. . . ." 
 
 During his stay at Oxford, he acquitted himself 
 very ably in his classes; and possibly through the 
 happy chance that Ravenna, which he had recently 
 visited, was announced as the topic for the Newdi- 
 gate competition, he won the Newdigate prize for 
 English Verse in 1878. This poem exhibits a great 
 advance on his previous work, and in many respects, 
 despite its lack of a controlling central thought, de- 
 serves high praise. On leaving Oxford, he went up 
 to London in the role of a " Professor of ^Esthetics 
 and Art critic," according to Foster's statement In 
 the Alumni Oxoniensis. Now he began to assume 
 that " affectation of singularity " which so distinc- 
 tively marked the author of Melmoth the Wanderer 
 — that eccentric genius, the toast of Baudelaire and 
 Balzac — Oscar Wilde's great-uncle, Charles Mat- 
 urin. Like Zola, like Shaw, Wilde realized that 
 this is an age of push and advertisement. He saw 
 years of neglect at the hands of the public stretching 
 out drearily before him If he did not force himself, 
 by sensational methods, upon its attention. When 
 
270 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the treasures of his mentality went for naught, he 
 unhesitatingly focussed the public gaze upon the 
 eccentricities of his personality. Like Thomas Grif- 
 fiths Wainewright, he assumed the " dangerous and 
 delightful distinction of being different from others.** 
 Prior to this time, his garb was characterized by no 
 marks of affectation or preciosity; but he now hit 
 upon the spectacular device of outre and bizarre 
 costume. Celebrities often exhibit a harmless and 
 pardonable penchant for peculiarity of dress — the 
 scarlet waistcoat of Gautier, the monk's cowl of 
 Balzac, the vaquero costume of Joaquin Miller. In 
 his role of aesthete, Wilde wore a " velvet coat, knee- 
 breeches, a loose shirt with a turn-down collar, and 
 a floating tie of some unusual shade, fastened in a 
 Lavalliere knot, and he not infrequently appeared in 
 public carrying in his hand a lily or a sunflower, 
 which he used to contemplate with an expression of 
 the greatest admiration ! *' It was Wilde*s pompous 
 pose, as the high priest of iEstheticism, to plume 
 himself upon the discovery of whatsoever of real 
 beauty exists In nature and art; by Inference, those 
 whose eyes were not thus opened to the miracles of 
 the common day were " hopelessly private persons " 
 — termed Philistines. Wilde and his cult were shin- 
 ing marks for the wit, satire and caricature of Du 
 Maurler and Burnand; W. S. Gilbert caricatured 
 Wilde in " Patience,** and Punch overflowed with 
 
OSCAR WILDE 271 
 
 cartoons and skits of which the following is a typical 
 example : 
 
 "^Esthete of ^Esthetes! 
 What's in a name? 
 The poet is WILDE 
 But his poetry's tame." 
 
 Wilde's notoriety was enhanced by a pseudo social 
 lionization; but in spite of a certain sort of super- 
 ficial lustre attaching to him, he was regarded with 
 suspicion — the suspicion that at any time his lion's 
 skin, as in the fable, might fall to the ground and 
 reveal only a braying ass. Thus he began his career 
 under the cloud of a not unjustifiable suspicion of 
 reclame^ quackery, and Imposture; and it is a sus- 
 picion that not only his life, but even his death, have 
 been Inadequate to allay. At any rate his notoriety, 
 though won by questionable and unworthy means, 
 enabled him to secure a publisher for his first volume 
 of verse ; and won him an invitation to lecture In the 
 United States. He was encouraged to visit Amer- 
 ica not as the author of a book of poems which had 
 been most widely read in America, but as the much- 
 discussed leader of the " ^Esthetic Movement and 
 School." Some verses in the World, in which Wilde 
 IS labelled " Ego Up to Snuffibus Poeta " appeared 
 just before his departure for New York; they 
 sound the dominant note of public opinion: 
 
272 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 " Albeit nurtured in Democracy, 
 
 And liking best that state Bohemian 
 
 Where each man borrows sixpence and no man 
 
 Has aught but paper collars ; yet I see 
 
 Exactly where to take a liberty. 
 
 " Better to be thought one, whom most abuse 
 For speech of donkey and for look of goose, 
 
 Than that the world should pass in silence by. 
 Wherefore I wear a sunflower in my coat. 
 
 Cover my shoulders with my flowing hair. 
 Tie verdant satin round my open throat, 
 
 Culture and love I cry, and ladies smile, 
 
 And seedy critics overflow with bile, 
 
 While with my Prince long Sykes's meal I share.*' 
 
 1 
 
 Wilde paid to the full the penalty for making 
 himself a " motley to the view.^* Never afterwards 
 was he allowed to forget that the way of the hla- 
 giieur is hard. Hj 
 
 In America he was greeted with amused incred- 
 ulity, treated as a diverting sort of literary curiosity, 
 ridiculed, satirized, caricatured. His intellectual ar- 
 rogance gave tone to his remark at the New York 
 Customs House: "I have nothing to declare but 
 my genius." He was violently attacked In many 
 quarters, and few cared to face the ridicule Inevitably 
 consequent to any defence of his theories and prac- 
 tice. Not a few personages of distinction, never- 
 theless, showed him courtesy and hospitality, among 
 
OSCAR WILDE 273 
 
 whom may be mentioned John Boyle O'Reilly, Julia 
 Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clara Mor- 
 ris, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Joaquin Miller, 
 General Grant and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. 
 Although Wilde, as one of his friends records, suf- 
 fered poignantly from the attacks directed against 
 him, he cannot be absolved from the charge of oc- 
 casionally provoking them. " I am not exactly 
 pleased with the Atlantic. It is not so majestic as 
 I expected," gave rise to an infinitude of humorous 
 verse ; and his oft-quoted remark about Niagara was 
 nothing more nor less than a clever bait thrown 
 out to the press: " I was disappointed with 
 Niagara. Most people must be disappointed with 
 Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and 
 the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one 
 of the earliest if not the keenest disappointments in 
 American married life." Such provoking pleas- 
 antries Inevitably excited amused comment — notably 
 his description of American girls as " little oases of 
 pretty unreasonableness In a vast desert of practical 
 common-sense." Most people attended his lectures 
 out of vulgar curiosity to see and to laugh at this 
 licensed buffoon; it did not seem to occur to them, 
 as we read In a contemporary review In the Sun, 
 that his lecture was " not a performance so trifling 
 as to insult the intelligence of the audience, but a 
 carefully prepared essay which proves Its author 
 to be a man of cultivation, taste, imagination, educa- 
 
274 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 tion and refinement." One of his lectures was de- 
 scribed to me, by one who heard it, as a weak solution 
 of Ruskin; and this is a fair indication of the con- 
 temporary valuation. The truth of the matter is 
 that his lecture on the English Renaissance was 
 a very artistic and capable, if somewhat paradoxical 
 and precious appreciation of the significance of that 
 movement. And his Decorative Art in America 
 was a simple and straightforward expression of 
 many sane, practical truths which the utilitarian 
 thrust of modern art has amply substantiated. Not 
 by any means is it to be understood that Wilde 
 originated all the ideas he gracefully presented; he 
 simply gave concrete expression to much that was in 
 the air in the art criticism of the day. " As a plea 
 for the encouragement of the handicraftsman," 
 writes Mr. Glaenzer In regard to Decorative Art 
 in America; " for the rejection of the hideously 
 naturalistic tendency in house-furnishing; for the es- 
 tablishment of museums, enriched by the finest ex- 
 amples from the finest periods of decorative art; 
 for their beautiful surroundings for children, and for 
 schools in which these children might develop their 
 artistic proclivities under the guidance of artists and 
 capable artisans — as a plea for all that is beautiful, 
 noble and sane in art, this lecture falls little short 
 of being a masterpiece." 
 
 Now that his " apostolic task," to his secret re- 
 lief, was concluded, Wilde lightly disclaimed any in- 
 
OSCAR WILDE 275 
 
 tention of continued charlatanry. Of his connection 
 with the ^Esthetic Movement, he said In 1883: 
 ** That was the Oscar WUde of the second period. 
 I am now In my third period." He settled in Paris 
 in the Hotel Voltaire, and soon made himself 
 known, through presentation copies of his Poems, to 
 a number of the leading figures In the world of art 
 and letters In Paris. Well received In many quar- 
 ters, Wilde numbered among his acquaintances Victor 
 Hugo, Edmond de Goncourt, Paul Bourget, Al- 
 phonse Daudet, Sarah Bernhardt, and many of the 
 leaders of the Impressionist school of painters. His 
 success In Parisian circles would have been greater 
 if he had only possessed the necessary reserve and 
 tact. His desire to " astonish the natives," to in- 
 dulge In affectations and extravagances of dress, and 
 to talk paradoxical stuff about art and letters, rather 
 rubbed the Parisians the wrong way. He took 
 Balzac for his model, wore the Balzacian cowl when- 
 ever he was at work, and carried on the street a 
 replica of that celebrated Canne de Monsieur Balzac 
 perpjetuated In the novel of Delphlne Gay. His 
 imitation of Balzac took one good direction: he be- 
 gan to take Infinite pains with his art. During 
 this period Wilde wrote The Duchess of Padua, a 
 five-act drama In the Elizabethan style. Under the 
 influence of Poe, through Baudelaire, whose Fleurs 
 de Mai made a profound Impression upon Wilde, 
 he wrote a strangely pagan and sensual poem The 
 
276 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Sphinx — an excellent type of the derivative poem, 
 of the art which is not spontaneous. But all his 
 diligent application temporarily went for naught. 
 The Duchess of Padua was refused by Mary Ander- 
 son for whom it was written; and the proceeds of 
 the sale of Wilde's property in Ireland could not 
 long survive the onslaughts made upon it by his 
 extravagant mode of life; his literary work brought 
 him nothing. And so, in the summer of 1883, he 
 returned to London to try a hazard of new fortunes. 
 There he was conspicuously dedicated to oblivion by 
 a prominent journal in an article entitled " Exit 
 Oscar." To which Wilde buoyantly replied : " If 
 it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I 
 was forgotten, then there Is no difference between 
 fame and obscurity." 
 
 During the years from 1883 to 1891, the output 
 of Wilde was quite small — he gave himself up to 
 the art of living rather than to the art of writing. 
 For a time, at first, he was compelled once more 
 to take the lecture platform, this time In England; 
 but he resolutely refused to make capital out of the 
 eccentricities of his personal appearance and cos- 
 tume. During one of his lecture tours, he met In 
 Dublin the lovely Constance Lloyd, who became his 
 wife on May 29, 1884. Mrs. Wilde's dowry en- 
 abled the young couple to lease a house in Tite 
 Street, decorated under the direction of Whistler, 
 who became a close acquaintance of Wilde. Garbed 
 
OSCAR WILDE 277 
 
 in a charming " aesthetic " costume of the period, 
 Constance Wilde was a beautiful picture in the artis- 
 tic Tite Street setting with her chestnut hair touched 
 with gold, blue-green eyes, brunette skin with vivid 
 cheeks and lips. Decoration not entertainment was 
 her role; for while bright in manner and conversa- 
 tion, she paled into insignificance in face of the con- 
 versational dazzle of her husband. This couple for 
 a time were the cynosure of fashionable London. 
 Wilde's mots were repeated everywhere; and Mrs. 
 Wilde's sartorial taste set the fashion. Even the 
 slightest details of the Wilde household were chron- 
 icled as matters of interest in the social and artistic 
 world. For several years Wilde wrote various 
 signed and unsigned articles for the press, purely 
 ephemeral in character, and a number of those 
 beautiful modern fairy tales which combine a 
 delicacy of fancy with a touch of social philosophy, 
 rarely charming and arresting. But it became in- 
 creasingly difficult for Wilde to earn a living; and 
 even Whistler — in The Gentle Art of Making Ene- 
 mies — took a hand in facilitating his downhill 
 progress. When Messrs. Cassell and Company of- 
 fered him the editorship of The Woman^s World 
 in 1887, he was in no position to refuse; and his 
 connection with that magazine lasted from October, 
 1887, to September, 1889. If he was not precisely 
 a success as an editor, though conscientious and in- 
 dustrious at this period, it was because his taste was 
 
278 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 too refined, too artistic and subtle for the clientele 
 of his magazine. It is the verdict of his greatest 
 admirers, especially among foreign critics, that the 
 works which he wrote between the time of his mar- 
 riage and the year 1892 entitle him to an exalted 
 place in English literature, and give him rank as a 
 philosopher of acute penetration and delicate insight. 
 There were The Happy Prince and The House of 
 Pomegranates — fanciful Mdrchen shot through 
 with a sensitive and beautiful social pity, like em- 
 broidered, jewelled fabrics firmly filiated with a 
 crimson thread. There was The Picture of Dorian 
 Gray, reminiscent of Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, rich 
 in opulent fancy, in subtle mystery, and in the 
 strangely ominous prevision of its author's own com- 
 ing fate. And there, too, was The Soul of Man 
 Under Socialism, that brilliant and paradoxical rev- 
 elation of Wilde's temperament — a brochure which 
 has gone triumphantly forth to the very ends of the 
 earth. Last, and highest, was Intentions, that mi- 
 raculous masterpiece of connected writings, with its 
 inverted truisms and forthright paradoxes, its fanci- 
 ful reasoning and reasonable fancy — quintessence 
 of style, of form, of taste in art. 
 
 During the years from 1892 to 1895, Wilde 
 attained to remarkable success as a playwright; and 
 at last the rewards of literature flowed without ces- 
 sation Into the pockets of this lavish spendthrift. 
 Lady Windermere^ s Fan, A Woman of No Impor- 
 
OSCAR WILDE 279 
 
 tancCj An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of 
 Being Earnest, were phenomenal successes; and at 
 one time three of Wilde's plays could have been wit- 
 nessed on a single night in London. But in March, 
 1895, the downfall came; and the information for 
 criminal libel which Wilde, in a state verging upon 
 intoxication, laid against the Marquess of Queens- 
 berry, was the beginning of his undoing. Wilde at 
 last was hoist by his own petard. The history of the 
 two trials, Wilde's condemnation and disgrace, his 
 two years of poignant anguish and physical suffering 
 in prison, his subsequent piteous descent to disaster 
 and death — the harrowing details may be learned 
 elsewhere. Suffice it to say that his predisposition 
 to vice through inheritance, the fearful effect upon 
 him of intoxicants which seemed to lash his brain 
 to madness, and the indulgence in ultra-stimulative 
 food and drink in the two or three years imme- 
 diately preceding his disgrace serve, in the eyes of 
 the specialist in pathology and degeneracy, as In- 
 dicative causes of his downfall and ruin. There 
 survive from the days of imprisonment his greatest 
 poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and that soul 
 autobiography De Profundis — morbid, pitiable, yet 
 wonderful mixture of confession and palliation, 
 penance and defiance, self-incrimination and excul- 
 pation. Wonderful document — true confession or 
 disingenuous plea, soul creed or soul blasphemy! 
 " Man is least himself when he talks in his own 
 
28o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 n 
 
 person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the 
 truth." There Is no means, to be sure, of escaping 
 the everlasting return of life upon art — art, the 
 mirror which the Narcissus of artists holds up to 
 himself. Let us, however, remember with Novalis 
 that he who is of power higher than the first is a gen- 
 ius. Nietzsche says, " All that is profound loves 
 a mask." And even if, occasionally and unwittingly, 
 we traverse the circuit from art to life, at least we 
 may have the satisfaction of making the attempt to 
 dissociate the merits of the dramatist from the 
 demerits of the man. 
 
 i| 
 
 In 1882, Wilde wrote to Mr. R. D'Oyly Carte, " 
 manager of the Savoy Theatre, London, that his 
 play Vera; or The Nihilists was meant not to beflj 
 read, but to be acted. This opinion has never 
 received any support from either critic or public. 
 Written when Wilde was only twenty-two years old 
 {The New York Worlds August 12, 1883), this 
 play early enrolled him under that drapeau roman- 
 tique des jeunes guerriers of which Theophlle 
 Gautler speaks; yet the time doubtless came when 
 Wilde regarded Vera, as he certainly regarded 
 his first volume of poems, merely In the light of a 
 youthful indiscretion. Unlike Ibsen, Pinero or 
 Phillips, Wilde was fortified by experience neither as 
 actor nor manager; there Is no record that he ever. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 281 
 
 like Bernard Shaw, acted even In amateur theatricals. 
 A cousin in near degree to W. G. Wills, the drama- 
 tist, painter and poet, Wilde may have derived his 
 dramaturgic talent in some measure from the same 
 source. In youth he learned the graceful arts of 
 conversation in the brilliant salon of his mother. 
 Lady Wilde; and his predilection for the dialogue 
 form early revealed itself in certain of his critical 
 essays. 
 
 The play Vera ushers us into the milieu of 
 Henry Seton Merriman's The Sowers, but it bears 
 all the fantastic earmarks of the yellow-backed fus- 
 tian of the melodramatic yarn-spinner, Marchmont. 
 One might easily imagine it to be the boyish effusion 
 of a romantic youth in the more recent day of Von 
 Plehve, Gorki, and the Douma. " As regards the 
 play itself,'' wrote Wilde to the American actress, 
 Marie Prescott, in July, 1883, "I have tried in it 
 to express within the limits of art that Titan cry of 
 the people for liberty which, in the Europe of our 
 day, is threatening thrones and making Govern- 
 ments unstable from Spain to Russia, and from 
 north to southern seas. But it is a play, not of 
 politics, but of passion. It deals with no theories 
 of Government, but with men and women simply; 
 and modern Nihilistic Russia, with all the terror of its 
 tyranny and the marvel of its martyrdoms, is 
 merely the fiery and fervent background In front 
 of which the persons of my dream live and love. 
 
 ( 
 
282 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 With this feeling was the play written, and with this 
 aim should the play be acted.'* Despite these lofty 
 and promising words, the play warrants no serious 
 consideration — even though It won the admiration 
 of the great American actor, Lawrence Barrett. 
 
 A pscudo-F oiks drama, Vera Images the con- 
 flict between despotism and nihilism, between a 
 vacillating, terror-obsessed Czar and a Russian 
 Charlotte Corday. The " love Interest " Inheres in 
 the struggle of the Czarevitch, who is in sympathy 
 with the people, between his duty to the Empire 
 and his love for the people's champion, the Nihll- 
 iste Vera. The theme Is one that well might fire 
 to splendid efforts; but Instead of creatures of flesh 
 and blood, looming solid In a large humanity, we 
 see only thin cardboard profiles — bloodless puppets 
 shifted hither and thither, as with Sardou, at the 
 bidding of the mechanical showman. One-sided In 
 the possession of only one feminine role, the play Is 
 largely taken up with Interminable passages of 
 pointless persiflage between superfluous characters. 
 To one who knows the later WUde, Vera seems 
 less like a predecessor of the comedies than a con- 
 temporary parody; this WUde has acquired no mas- 
 tery of the arts of epigram, paradox and repartee. 
 In the denouement, Vera, chosen by lot to assassinate 
 her lover the Czarevitch, now become Czar, turns 
 upon her own breast the dagger meant for him, and 
 then tosses it over the balcony to the ravening con- 
 
 
OSCAR WILDE 283 
 
 splrators below with the cry, " I have saved Rus- 
 sia ! " — this is the very acme of the " theatric " in 
 the worst sense, the very quintessence of Adelphi 
 melodrama. Not inapposite, perhaps, was the 
 characteristic paragraph in Punch (December 10, 
 188 1 ) under Impressions du Theatre: — 
 
 The production of Mr. Oscar Wilde's play " Vera " is 
 deferred. Naturally no one would expect a Veerer to be 
 at all certain; it must be, like a pretendedly infallible fore- 
 cast, so very weather-cocky. " Vera " is about Nihilism ; 
 this looks as If there was nothing in It. But why did Mr. O. 
 Wilde select the Adelphi for his first appearance as a 
 dramatic author, In which career we wish him all the success 
 he may deserve? Why did he not select the Savoy? Surely 
 where there's a donkey cart — we should say D'Oyly Carte 
 — there ought to be an opportunity for an 'Os-car ? 
 
 In the Wilde of the " third period," as he de- 
 scribed himself in 1883, is revealed a strangely dif- 
 ferent man from the apostle of aestheticism. If he 
 has not learned to scorn delights, at least he has 
 learned to live laborious days. He takes up his 
 quarters at the Hotel Voltaire in Paris, and though 
 still guilty of affectation in his assumption of the 
 cane and cowl of Balzac, yet he takes the great 
 French master for his model and disciplines himself 
 to that unremitting labor which, in Balzac's view, is 
 the sine qua non, the law, of art. Recall the 
 precious anecdote of Wilde's day's work upon his 
 
284 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 manuscript — deleting a comma In the forenoon and 
 re-inserting it in the afternoon I In these days of 
 the theatrical " star," for whom *' parts " are es- 
 pecially written — Cyrano for Coquelin, Vanna for 
 Mme. Maeterlinck, the Sorceress for Bernhardt, 
 Ulysses for Tree, Lady Cicely Waynflete for Terry, 
 and so on — Wilde thought to play his part In writ- 
 ing The Duchess of Padua for Mary Anderson, the 
 distinguished actress, now Mrs. de Navarro. 
 
 In a letter to The Times, London, March 3, 
 1 893, Wilde affirmed : ** I have never written a play 
 for any actor or actress, nor shall I ever do so. 
 Such work Is for the artisan in literature, not for 
 the artist.'' This affirmation Is both illogical and 
 disingenuous; and is belled by the account of his 
 biographer. 
 
 The Duchess of Padua, with its Websterian 
 title, is a play laid In the sixteenth century — century 
 of tears and terror, of poetry and passion, of mad- 
 ness and blood. While lounging In his cowl, in Imi- 
 tation of Balzac, Wilde was evidently studying 
 Victor Hugo instead; and in The Duchess of Padua 
 there Is not a little besides of the bombast, fustian 
 and balderdash of Webster and Tourneur. In re- 
 ality. The Duchess of Padua is an almost lyrical 
 echo of the Shaksperean strain — positively raptur- 
 ous In Imltatlveness. If Lady Macbeth, after the 
 murder, say that " A little water clears us of this 
 deed," and, later, " Who would have thought the 
 
OSCAR WILDE a^S 
 
 old man to have had so much blood In him/* Wilde's 
 Duchess, after killing her husband, voices the juven- 
 ile plagiarism : 
 
 " I did not think he would have bled so much, but 
 I can wash my hands in water after/' 
 
 If Dogberry voices the opinion that '* they that 
 touch pitch will be defiled," Wilde's dispenser of 
 comic relief can cap it only with such feeble repetition 
 as, " if one meddles with wicked people one is like 
 to be tainted with their wickedness." Unable to 
 catch the magic sheen and heroic gleam of his 
 original, Wilde gives us not an original creation but 
 an appreciative commentary marred by its false 
 rhetoric, exaggerativeness, and toploftical strain. 
 Wilde was only too ready to employ the " strong " 
 curtain, after the fashion set by Hugo, as a conces- 
 sion to modern taste ; in every other respect, this play, 
 in pure externals, is so faithful in its reproduction of 
 the Elizabethan style as to seem but one remove 
 from refined caricature. 
 
 And yet the play possesses real interest and 
 charm, not perhaps for its subject but because of its 
 spiritual and emotional content — the violently 
 transitional moods of romantic passion. It Is a tale, 
 in five acts, of the love of the gentle Beatrice, 
 Duchess of Padua, and of the young Guldo Fer- 
 rantl, sworn to avenge the inhuman murder of his 
 noble father at the hands of the old and heartless 
 Duke, the husband of Beatrice. Ferranti and Bea- 
 
286 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 trice have just confessed their love for each other, 
 when the pre-arranged message reaches Ferranti 
 that the hour to strike down the Duke Is come. He 
 tears himself away from Beatrice In definitive fare- 
 well, with poignant agony, crying out that a certain 
 Insurmountable obstacle stands In the way of their 
 love. That night, as he pauses outside the Duke's 
 chamber meditating upon assassination, there comes 
 to Ferranti the belated recognition not only that he 
 can never approach Beatrice again with the blood 
 of the murdered Duke upon his hands, but that such 
 a revenge Is deeply unworthy of the memory of his 
 noble father. But as Anael comes forth from the 
 murder of the Prefect to her Djabal, comes forth 
 Beatrice to her Guido. For under the tyranny of 
 her love for Guido, she has slain him to whom she 
 was ever but a worthless chattel — the Duke, the sole 
 obstacle to the fulfilment of her passion. Guido re- 
 coils from her upon whose hands is the blood which 
 he himself had solemnly — but suddenly ! — refused 
 to shed. And though Beatrice, like Juliet, Is trans- 
 formed Into a very " Von Moltke of love," she can- 
 not, with all the mustered array of her forces, storm 
 the bastion of Guido's soul. So sudden and so su- 
 preme is her own revulsion of feeling that she finds 
 herself passionately denouncing Ferranti to the 
 passers-by as the assassin of her husband. Follows 
 the trial of Ferranti for his life — a scene quite mem- 
 orable for Its undulation of emotional process, the 
 
OSCAR WILDE 287 
 
 conflicting fears and hopes of the heart-wrung 
 Duchess, and the crisis: Ferranti's false confession 
 that the murderer is none other than himself. Vis- 
 iting the condemned Ferranti in his cell, the heart- 
 broken Duchess, in the excess of her spiritual agony, 
 takes poison; and Guido, realizing at last the inner, 
 essential nobility of her character, avows for her 
 his undying love, and dies upon the point of his 
 dagger. 
 
 The Duchess of Padua is noteworthy for its ten- 
 der lyrism, the delicate beauty of its imagery, and 
 its glow of youthful fire; and despite its mimetic 
 stamp, displays real power in instrumentation of 
 feeling and in the temperamental and passional 
 shades of its mood. The play links itself to Hardy 
 and to Whitman, rather than to Shakspere, In its 
 intimation of purity of purpose as the sole criterion 
 of deed. For here Wilde, concerned less with the 
 primitive basis of Individuality than with the funda- 
 mental impulses of instinctive temperament, reveals 
 life as fluid and evolutional. " In every creature," 
 writes Hedwig Lachmann, the critic of Wilde, 
 " lurks the readiness for desperate deeds. But when 
 all is over, man remains unchanged. His nature 
 does not change, because for a moment he has been 
 torn from his moorings. After the stormy waters 
 which forced Its overflow have run their course, the 
 river once more glides back into Its bed." Like 
 Maeterlinck's Joyzelle, Beatrice is forgiven, not be- 
 
2S8 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 cause " Who sins for love sins not,'* but because she 
 has loved much. In Wilde's own startling words — 
 in The Soul of Man under Socialism^ written some 
 eight years later — : *' A can cannot always be esti- 
 mated by what he does. He may keep the law and 
 yet be worthless. He may break the law and yet 
 be fine. He may be bad without ever doing any- 
 thing bad. He may commit a sin against society, 
 and yet realize through that sin his true per- 
 fection." Maeterlinck maintains that justice is a 
 very mysterious thing, residing not in nature or in 
 anything external, but, like truth, in ourselves. It is 
 in this play, as Mr William Archer has said, that 
 Wilde reveals himself a poet of very high rank. 
 Nothing is easier, and therefore possibly more mis- 
 leading, than to say that The Duchess of Padua is 
 not du theatre; for the tests of its suitability for the 
 stage have been inconclusive. To Wilde's intense 
 disappointment, it was refused by Mary Anderson; 
 but it was afterwards produced in the United States 
 by Lawrence Barrett with moderate success. Al- 
 though announced as in preparation in the Publish- 
 ers' List for 1894, The Duchess of Padua was 
 actually not published until ten years later — in the 
 fine translation of Dr. Max Meyerfeld of Berlin. 
 An unauthorized prose re-translation from Meyer- 
 feld's German version was first published in English. 
 The original manuscript of the play, stolen from 
 Wilde's house in 1895, has never come to light; the 
 
OSCAR WILDE 289 
 
 best version, based on a prompt copy used by Wilde 
 and containing his own corrections, is found in the 
 authorized edition of his works, edited by Robert 
 Ross. In addition to its production in America with 
 Lawrence Barrett and Mina Gale in the leading 
 roles, there have been at least two productions on 
 the continent. At Hamburg, Germany, in Decem- 
 ber, 1904, where it was produced under the most ad- 
 verse circumstances, the play proved a failure, being 
 withdrawn after three nights. And when it was 
 produced in Berlin early in 1906 it was killed by 
 the critics, resulting in a heavy loss for its champion. 
 Dr. Meyerfeld. The play is " theatrical " in the 
 proper sense, and, despite its reverses, might, I 
 think, afford a suitable medium for the talent of a 
 Julia Marlowe or an Ellen Terry under favoring 
 conditions. It is interesting to note that Wilde 
 at the end of his life acknowledged, according to Mr. 
 Robert Ross, that The Duchess of Padua artistically 
 was of minor importance. 
 
 It was Wilde's pleasure, during his frequent 
 visits to Paris, to delight the French world of art 
 and letters with brilliant causeries. The masterly 
 ease and exquisite purity of his French were a mar- 
 vel to all who heard him. And Wilde once ex- 
 plained (Pall Mall Gazette, June 29, 1892) the 
 idea he had in mind in writing the play of Salome 
 in French : — " I have one instrument that I know 
 I can command, and that is the English language. 
 
290 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 There was another instrument to which I had lis- 
 tened all my life, and I wanted once to touch this 
 new instrument to see whether I could make any 
 beautiful thing out of it. . . . Of course, there 
 are modes of expression that a Frenchman of letters 
 would not have used, but they give a certain relief 
 or color to the play. A great deal of the curious 
 effect that Maeterlinck produces comes from the 
 fact that he, a Flamand by grace, writes in an alien 
 language. The same thing is true of Rossetti, who, 
 though he wrote in English, was essentially Latin 
 in temperament." In this connection, " Leonard 
 Cresswell Ingleby " pertinently quotes Max Beer- 
 bohm's remark that Walter Pater wrote English as 
 though it were a dead language. Although Wilde^s 
 Salome was revised by Marcel Schwob, it still bore 
 after the revision, slight as it must have been, the 
 trail of the foreigner. The English version, by 
 Lord Alfred Douglas, is a marvellously sympathetic 
 and poetic rendition. 
 
 In writing his Salome, Wilde was strongly in- 
 fluenced by Herodias, one of Gustave Flaubert's 
 Trots Contes, though in Flaubert's tale it is at 
 the instigation of Herodias that Salome dances for 
 the head of the prophet. Gomez Carrlllo, the Span- 
 ish translator of Salome, records that Wilde said 
 to him at the time he was writing the play: ** If 
 for no other reason, I have always longed to go to 
 Spain that I might see in the Prado Titian's Salome, 
 
OSCAR WILDE 291 
 
 of which Tintoretto once exclaimed : * Here at last 
 is a man who paints the very quivering flesh!'" 
 And Carrlllo mentions that only Gustave Moreau's 
 picture, immortalized by Huysmans, unveiled for 
 Wilde the " soul of the dancing princess of his 
 dreams." Whilst Wilde has twisted the Biblical 
 story to his individual ends, his interpretation is 
 said to follow a fairly widespread tradition — as 
 hinted at, for instance, in Kenan's Life of Jesus, 
 In both Sudermann's Johannes and Massenet's opera 
 of Herodiade, Salome is the object of Herod's in- 
 fatuation. Wilde has given the Biblical story an 
 interpretation fundamentally dramatic in its abnor- 
 mality. As a reconstltutlon of classic antiquity, 
 Salome belongs erotlcally to the school of Pierre 
 Louys' Aphrodite and Anatole France's Thais, Like 
 Poe, like Baudelaire, like Maeterlinck, Wilde has 
 revealed with masterful If meretricious artistry, 
 the beautiful In the horrible. 
 
 Salome is a fevered dream, a poignant picture — 
 it is like one of those excursions into the macabre 
 with which Wilde succeeded in fascinating the Pa- 
 risians. In It one discerns the revolting decadence 
 of an age when vice was no prejudice and sensuality 
 no shame; we hear the resonance of lawless pas- 
 sion, and the reverberations of obscure, half-divined 
 emotions. The characters stand forth In chiselled 
 completeness from the rich Galilean background like 
 the embossed figures upon a Grecian urn. The in- 
 
292 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 q 
 
 satiable, sensual Herodias, symbolic figure of the 
 malady of that age; and Herod, the Tetrarch, 
 obsessed with profoundly disquieting Inclinations to 
 unlawful passion, ultimately cutting at a single blow 
 the Gordlan knot of his problem, for the untying 
 of which he lacks both courage and conscience. 
 Like HebbeFs Daniel, Jokanaan is a wonderfully 
 realized figure — the incarnation of a primitive, in- 
 tolerant prophet, the voice crying in the wilderness 
 — commanding rapt attention far less by what he 
 says than by what he is. There is Salome — " she 
 Is like a dove that has strayed ... she is like a 
 narcissus trembling in the wind . . . she is like a 
 silver flower. . . . Her little white hands are flut- 
 tering like white butterflies." She is unmoved at 
 first by any strangely perverse, nameless passion for 
 the forbidden. But as In a dream, a memory o 
 forgotten, yet half-divined reality, erotic passion 
 wakens under the spell of Jokanaan's presence; and 
 his scorn, his anathemas, his objurgations rouse to 
 life and to revolt within her the dormant instincts 
 of an Herodias. She will sing the swan song of 
 her soul In the paean of the dance, and for the sake 
 of revenge so ensnare the plastic Herod in the 
 meshes of her perilous and dissolving beauty that 
 he can refuse her nothing — even though It were 
 the half of his kingdom. The world swims In a 
 scarlet haze before her eyes; and though lust, scorn, 
 revenge, and death meet in that terrible kiss of a 
 
OSCAR WILDE 293 
 
 woman scorned, the hour of her own fate has struck. 
 Impressive, awful, Imperial, Herod speaks the la- 
 conic words : ** Kill that woman ! " Salome, daugh- 
 ter of Herodias, Princess of Judea, is crushed be- 
 neath the shields of the soldiers, and her death 
 sounds the death knell of a decadent and degenerate 
 age. A new epoch of culture Is at hand. 
 
 In Salome, Wilde depicts a crystallized embodi- 
 ment of the age, rather than the age itself. To the 
 naturalism of sensation Is super-added stylistic sym- 
 metry and. In places, what Baudelaire termed su- 
 preme literary grace. The Influence of Maeter- 
 linck is inescapable in the simplicity of the dia- 
 logue In places, the iterations and reverberations of 
 the leading motives, the evocation of the atmosphere 
 and Imminence of doom. Nature symbolically co- 
 operates In Intensifying the feeling of dread; and 
 we dimly entertain the presentiment of vast and 
 fateful figures lurking In the wings. In such pas- 
 sages as the long protests of Herod, there Is all the 
 decorative opulence of Flaubert; and in the mouth 
 of Salome the poetic phrasing holds at times a moon- 
 lit radiance. With all its verbal jewellery, the dia- 
 logue Is at times momentously laconic; as In the 
 words of Salome In explanation of Herod's passion: 
 " Why does the Tetrarch look at me all the while 
 with his mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids? It 
 Is strange that the husband of my mother looks at 
 me like that. I know not what It means. Of a 
 
294 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 truth I know it too well." Wilde declared that 
 Salome was a piece of music — with its progressive 
 crescendo, emotional pasan and tragic finale. And 
 Richard Strauss justified Wilde's dictum in his opera 
 Salome of far-flung notoriety, asymmetric in its 
 form, barbaric in its passion, most arresting at the 
 emotional climax of Salome's erotomania. It is 
 significant that this, the one play of Wilde's not 
 primarily written for the stage, is a true drama in 
 the most real sense, bearing the stamp of the con- 
 viction of the real artist. No credence need be 
 given the statement of Gomez Carrillo, in his El 
 Origen de la Salome de Wilde, that this play was 
 written for Sarah Bernhardt. The play was written 
 in Paris at the turn of the year 1891-2; and Wilde 
 himself said to an interviewer (June, 1892), a state- 
 ment supported by Mr. St. John Hankin: ** A few 
 weeks ago I met Madame Sarah Bernhardt at Sir 
 Henry Irvlng's. She had heard of my play, and 
 asked me to read it to her. I did so, and she at 
 once expressed a wish to play the title-role." It Is 
 lamentable that Salome focusses attention upon ab- 
 normal and lascivious states of feeling, indicative of 
 Wilde's own degeneracy. When I last heard Strauss' 
 opera at the Royal Opera House in Berlin, this Im- 
 pression was deepened and Intensified by the " argu- 
 ment of the flesh," and the potent Instrumentality of 
 the temperamentally Intense music. And yet, withal, 
 
OSCAR WILDE 295 
 
 Salome is Wilde's one dramatic achievement of real 
 genius, an Individual and unique literary creation. 
 
 Since Wilde's death, The Duchess of Padua has 
 been printed in both German and English versions; 
 of the unpublished plays, only A Florentine Tragedy, 
 a fragment, was saved by Wilde's executor, Mr. 
 Robert Ross, from the house at 16 TIte Street, 
 Chelsea. The manuscript of The Woman Covered 
 with Jewels Is so fragmentary as to be negligible. 
 Mr. Wlllard, the romantic actor, likewise possessed 
 a copy of A Florentine Tragedy, agreeing In every 
 particular with the one recovered by Mr. Ross; In 
 each the opening scene was gone, showing that Wilde 
 had never written it. " It was characteristic of the 
 author," says Mr. Ross, " to have finished what he 
 never began." It has since been published (Luce, 
 Boston) with an Introductory note by Mr. Ross; he 
 also narrated the history of the play's recovery In 
 the Tribune (London) in June, 1906. The opening 
 act has been supplied by Mr. T. Sturge Moore, well 
 known as the poet of The Vinedresser and Other 
 Poems, Absalom, The Centaur^s Booty, etc., and 
 the critic of Diirer and Correggio. This bit of re- 
 construction in A Forentine Tragedy Is remarkable, 
 alike for catching Wilde's tone and for its individual 
 charm. Though the play was originally written for 
 Mr. George Alexander and afterwards submitted to 
 Mr. Wlllard, It did not see the footlights In England 
 
296 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 until June i8, 1906, when it was produced together 
 with Salome by the Literary Theatre Club, at the 
 King's Hall, Covent Garden. In Dr. Max Meyer- 
 feld's translation, the play has been produced with 
 moderate success in Germany (Leipzig, Hamburg 
 and Berlin). 
 
 A Florentine Tragedy is a much slighter per- 
 formance than Salome; and acting both deep and 
 subtle Is required to vitalize the characters into real 
 human semblance. It Is the triangular affair — with 
 a difference; and the denouement Is a startling climax. 
 In the absence of the merchant SImone, his fair 
 young wife Blanca is visited by the Florentine 
 Prince, Guldo BardI, and courted in Young Lochln- 
 var fashion : 
 
 O, make no question, come! 
 
 They waste their time who ponder o'er bad dreams. 
 
 We will away to hills, red roses clothe, 
 
 And though the persons who did haunt that dream 
 
 Live on, they shall by distance dwindled, seem 
 
 No bigger than the smallest ear of corn, 
 
 That cowers at the passing of a bird ; 
 
 And silent shall they seem, out of earshot 
 
 Those voices that could jar, while we gaze back 
 
 From rosy caves upon the hill-brow open, 
 
 And ask ourselves if what we see is not 
 
 A picture merely — if dusty, dingy lives 
 
 Continue there to choke themselves with malice. 
 
 Wilt thou not come, Bianca? Wilt thou not? 
 
OSCAR WILDE 297 
 
 Simone entering, interrupts the ardent courtship; 
 and with Southern subtlety feigns the utmost regard 
 for his guest. They chat, with an undercurrent of 
 meaning in their words, while the old merchant dis- 
 plays his gorgeous wares. Interest quickens in the 
 discovery that Simone is " playing " the egoistic 
 Guido, cunningly drawing him by almost impercepti- 
 ble gradations into a trial of skill — or shall it be a 
 duel? Bianca holds aloft a torch to the struggle 
 until Simone disarms Guido. As they close with 
 each other, daggers drawn, Bianca dashes her torch 
 to the floor, — only In the end to hear Guido die the 
 death of a poltroon. With an exclamation " Now 
 for the other I " Simone rises from his bloody work 
 and gazes at his trembling wife. The splendid man- 
 hood of her husband has dazzled her; and in wonder 
 and subjugation she goes towards him with arms out- 
 stretched, murmuring the words, " Why did you not 
 tell me you were so strong? " Her tremendous re- 
 vulsion of feeling is matched by one no less instan- 
 taneous or momentous than her own. And with the 
 words, " Why did you not tell me you were so beau- 
 tiful? '*, Simone takes Bianca in his arms and kisses 
 her on the mouth. Strange lovers, stranger recon- 
 ciliation ! 
 
 IV 
 
 A new, a strikingly different Wilde, next makes his 
 dehut in the society comedy. Wilde's earlier plays 
 
298 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 brought him nothing, scarcely even notoriety; for 
 the British public could not be persuaded to believe 
 that any work of poetic beauty or dramatic art could 
 emanate from a licensed jester, angler before all for 
 the public stare. Wilde had incontestibly estab- 
 lished his reputation as a buffoon ; and once a buffoon, 
 always a buffoon! One may truly say of Wilde, as 
 Brandes once said of Ibsen, that at this period of 
 his life he had a lyrical Pegasus killed under him. 
 Like Bernard Shaw, Wilde was forced to the con- 
 clusion that the brain had ceased to be a vital organ 
 in English life. As he expressed it, the public used 
 the classics as a means of checking the progress of 
 Art, as bludgeons for preventing the free expression 
 of Beauty in new forms. It was his aim to extend 
 the subject-matter of art; and this was distasteful 
 to the public since it was the expression of an indi- 
 vidualism defiant of public opinion. And to Wilde, 
 public opinion represented the will of the ignorant 
 majority as opposed to that of the discerning few. 
 Far from holding that the public is the patron of the 
 artist, Wilde vigorously maintained that the artist is 
 always the munificent patron of the public. The 
 very bane of his existence was the popular, yet pro- 
 foundly erroneous, maxim that " the drama's laws 
 the drama's patrons give." The work of art, he 
 rightly avers, is to dominate the spectator : the spec- 
 tator is not to dominate the work of art. The drama 
 must come Into being, not for the sake of the theatre. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 299 
 
 but through the Inner, vital necessity of the artist for 
 self-expression. He scorned the field of popular 
 novelism, not only because it was too ridiculously 
 easy, but also because to meet the requirements of 
 the sentimental public with its half-baked conceptions 
 of art, the artist would have to " do violence to his 
 temperament, would have to write, not for the ar- 
 tistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half- 
 educated people, and so would have to suppress his 
 individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, 
 and surrender everything that is valuable to him." 
 In his search for lucrative employment for his in- 
 dividual talents, his eye fell upon the comic stage. 
 It dawned upon him that Tom Robertson, H. G. 
 Byron and W. S. Gilbert — to say nothing of Sheri- 
 dan — were still living factors in the English drama, 
 and that the style of Dumas fils, in the Scribishly 
 " well-made " pattern, met the most important re- 
 quirements of popular taste. While little scope was 
 allowed the creator of the higher forms of dra- 
 matic art, in the field of burlesque and light, even 
 farcical comedy, the artist was allowed very great 
 freedom in England. It was under the pressure of 
 such convictions that Wilde now sought a hazard of 
 new fortunes. 
 
 The four society comedies which Wilde wrote in 
 rapid succession, which immediately gained huge 
 success in England, and have since been played to 
 vastly appreciative audiences in Europe and the 
 
300 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 United States, are so similar in style, treatment and 
 appeal as almost to warrant discussion as a unique 
 genre. Only The Importance of Being Earnest 
 really differentiates itself, generically, from its pre- 
 decessors. 
 
 Lady Windermere's Fan, perhaps the most cele- 
 brated of Wilde's comedies, is concerned with 
 the hackneyed theme of the eternal triangle — the 
 theme of Odette, Le Supplice d*une Femme, and 
 countless other comedies of the French school. 
 Only by means of the flashing dialogue is Wilde 
 enabled to conceal the essential conventionality 
 and threadbare melodrama of the plot. The 
 characters are lacking in the ultimate stamp of re- 
 ality, functioning primarily as social types in a situa- 
 tion, only secondarily as individuals working out 
 their own salvation. And yet somehow he has man- 
 aged to give them the " tone of their time," and to 
 endow them with that air of social ease in a draw- 
 ing-room which is the essential to comedy in an en- 
 lightened society. The following scene in which 
 Mrs. Erlynne discovers the letter of farewell from 
 Lady Windermere to her husband, is significant 
 and dramatically impressive; but it seems obviously 
 suggested by the incident in Ibsen's Ghosts, which 
 inspired the title. 
 
 Parker, Her Ladyship has just gone out of the 
 house. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 301 
 
 Mrs. Erlynne. (Starts, and looks at the servant 
 with a puzzled expression on her face,) Out of the 
 house ? 
 
 Parker. Yes, madam — her ladyship told me 
 she had left a letter for his lordship on the table. 
 
 'Mrs. Erlynne. A letter for Lord Windermere? 
 
 Parker. Yes, madam. 
 
 Mrs. Erlynne. Thank you. {Exit Parker. 
 The music in the ballroom stops.) Gone out of her 
 house I A letter addressed to her husband ! ( Goes 
 over to bureau and looks at letter. Takes it up 
 and lays it down again with a shudder of fear. ) 
 No, no ! It would be impossible ! Life doesn't re- 
 peat its tragedies like that I Oh, why does this 
 horrible fancy come across me ? Why do I remem- 
 ber now the moment of my life I most wish to for- 
 get? Does life repeat its tragedies? {Tears open 
 letter and reads it, then sinks down into a chair 
 with a gesture of anguish.) Oh, how terrible! 
 The same words that twenty years ago I wrote to her 
 father! and how bitterly I have been punished for 
 it! No; my punishment, my real punishment is to- 
 night, is now ! 
 
 One other scene, that in which Mrs. Erlynne 
 finally persuades Lady Windermere to return to her 
 husband and child, is a situation of very nearly real 
 seriousness on the stage ; it is Wilde's mistake to put 
 into the mouth of Mrs. Erlynne only the words the 
 
302 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 average spectator expects her to say, not the ex- 
 pression of the sentiments a woman who had passed 
 through her devastating experience would inevitably 
 feel. 
 
 In A Woman of No Importance, Wilde pretends 
 to break a lance in behalf of even justice at the 
 hands of society for men and women who have 
 committed Indiscretions. In his own words, this 
 play is the embodiment of his conviction that there 
 should not be '* one law for men and another law 
 for women." He was too much preoccupied with 
 his thesis to make his characters real human beings; 
 and the epigrammatic brilliance of the dialogue 
 gives a sort of family resemblance to many of the 
 " characters." Playing with great restraint, sim- 
 plicity and finesse, Marlon Terry as Mrs. Arbuthnot 
 won the sympathy of her audience at a recent revival 
 I attended at His Majesty's Theatre, London; but 
 Beerbohm Tree could not accomplish the miracle of 
 vitalizing Lord Illingworth. Hester Worsley 
 argues with futility against a jury " packed " against 
 her declamatory prudery; and Gerald is a brainless 
 dolt. Lady Hunstanton and Lady Caroline Ponte- 
 fract are delightful and naive, comic admixtures of 
 natural shrewdness, kindliness of heart, and surpass- 
 ing British Ignorance and Insularity. The opening 
 scene Is something new in drama, the forerunner of 
 Don Juan in Hell and Getting Married; indeed, 
 Wilde declared that he wrote the first act of A 
 
OSCAR WILDE 303 
 
 Woman of No Importance in answer to the com- 
 plaint of the critics that Lady Windermere's Fan 
 was lacking in action. " In the act in question," 
 said Wilde, " there was absolutely no action at all. 
 It was a perfect act I " Wilde once asked Ouida 
 what she herself considered the chief feature in her 
 work which won success. ** I am the only living 
 English writer," she replied, " who knows how two 
 Dukes talk when they are by themselves ! " It 
 might, with truth, be said of Wilde that he was the 
 only living English writer who knew how two 
 Duchesses talk when they are by themselves. 
 
 Jn Ideal Husband is somewhat more compact 
 and straightforward than either of the two previous 
 comedies; the dialogue is more immediately ger- 
 mane to the action; the epigram is less frequently 
 employed for the sake of covering deficiencies of 
 plot or tiding over lapses in interest. Wilde was a 
 curious mixture of the ultra-modern and the senti- 
 mental reactionary. The triteness of his technique 
 was balanced by his facility in contriving " scenes,'* 
 " situations," and " curtains." The modernity of 
 his dialogue is matched by the mawkish convention- 
 ality of his moral fond. The long soliloquy at the 
 beginning of the third act of Lady Windermere's 
 Fan appears hopelessly antiquated as a theatrical 
 device to a generation bred on Ibsen's rigorous 
 technique; and yet Wilde imitated- Ibsen in long 
 9tage directions, descriptive of the characters of his 
 
304 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 plays. Bernard Shaw himself could not have im- 
 proved upon Wilde's thumb-nail sketch of Sir Robert 
 Chiltern : 
 
 A man of forty, but looking somewhat younger. Clean- 
 shaven, with finely-cut features, dark-haired and dark-eyed. 
 A personality of mark. Not popular — few personalities 
 are. But intensely admired by the few, and deeply respected 
 by the many. The note of his manner is that of perfect 
 distinction, with a slight touch of pride. One feels that he 
 1^ conscious of the success he has made in life. A nervous 
 temperament, with a tired look. The finely-chiselled mouth 
 and chin contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in 
 the deepset eyes. The variance is suggestive of an almost 
 complete separation of passion and intellect, as though 
 thought and emotion were each isolated in its own sphere 
 through some violence of will-power. There is no nervous- 
 ness in the nostrils, and in the pale, thin, pointed hands. 
 It would be inaccurate to call him picturesque. Picturesque- 
 ness cannot survive the House of Commons. But Vandyck 
 would have liked to paint his head. 
 
 The real difference between the spirit of Wilde 
 and the spirit of Ibsen is exhibited in the denoue- 
 ment of An Ideal Husband as contrasted with that 
 of The Pillars of Society. Ibsen's " hero '' ulti- 
 mately confesses his moral delinquency in the most 
 public way, and the curtain falls upon a self-hu- 
 miliated and repentant man ready to " begin over 
 again " in order to work out his own salvation. 
 Aside from a good scare, Sir Robert Chiltern is not 
 
OSCAR WILDE 305 
 
 only allowed to go scot-free, but is actually elevated 
 to a vacant seat in the Cabinet! Wilde is reported 
 to have said: '* Nobody else's work gives me any 
 suggestion. It is only by entire isolation from 
 everything that one can do any work. Idleness gives 
 one the mood, Isolation the condition. Concentra- 
 tion on one's self recalls the new and wonderful 
 world that one presents In the color and cadence of 
 words In movement." It is matter for regret that 
 not Ibsen, but Sardou and Dumas fits usually gave 
 Wilde his suggestions. For with all his faults, he 
 possessed in rich measure " the sense of the thea- 
 tre." His plays ran so smoothly that the public was 
 convinced that it was an easy task to write them. 
 At the height of Wilde's fame, Bernard Shaw la- 
 conically remarked : " I am the only person in 
 London who can't sit down and write an Oscar 
 Wilde play at will I" 
 
 It was Wilde's characteristic contention that there 
 never would be any real drama in England until It 
 is recognized that a play Is as personal and Indi- 
 vidual a form of self-expression as a poem or a pic- 
 ture. Here Wilde laid his finger upon his own fun- 
 damental error. By nature and by necessity, the 
 drama Is, of all the arts, the most Impersonal: Vic- 
 tor Hugo said that dramatic art consists In being 
 somebody else. So supreme an Individual was Wilde 
 that he lacked the dramatic faculty of Intellectual self- 
 detachment. Conversationally he could never be 
 
3o6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 anybody but himself. To Bernard Shaw, Wilde ap- 
 peared as, in a certain sense, the only thorough 
 playwright in England — because he played with 
 everything: with wit, philosophy, drama, actor and 
 audience, the whole theatre. The critics thought 
 that An Ideal Husband was a play about a bracelet; 
 but Wilde maintained — and not without show of 
 reason — that they missed its entire psychology: 
 " The difference in the way in which a man loves a 
 woman from that in which a woman loves a man; 
 the passion that women have for making ideals 
 (which is their weakness), and the weakness of a 
 man who dares not show his imperfections to the 
 thing he loves." They did not miss Wilde's be- 
 setting sin, however: manufacturing the great ma- 
 jority of his characters, as talkers, in the image and 
 superscription of Wilde. It is little short of ^s-ljl 
 tounding that Wilde's comedies are resplendent by 
 reason of qualities which have no intrinsic or organic « 
 relation to dramatic art. ^H 
 
 The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's 
 nearest approach to the creation of an unique genre. 
 It is characteristic of Wilde that his most important 
 comedy was cast in the most frivolous form. Per- 
 haps additional testimony to its value and essential 
 novelty is found in the fact that German critics, 
 deceived by its extravagant plot, branded it as of 
 no value! Its point of departure is the titular pun; 
 but its real purpose could not have been better ex- 
 
OSCAR WILDE 307 
 
 pressed than In the sub-title: " A Trivial Comedy 
 for Serious People." Though Wilde, rather sug- 
 gestively, chose to designate it on one occasion as a 
 " rose-coloured comedy," the truth is that It is an 
 epigrammatic extravaganza, cast in the form of 
 farce. Meredith's " oblique ray " floods It through- 
 out, and the action proceeds to the humanely malign 
 accompaniment of " volleys of silvery laughter." 
 Based on the absurd complications arising from the 
 endless employment of aliases and written In the 
 light, French style, this play Is actually social satire 
 on the fantastic plane. I recall the strong sense of 
 the genuinely comic with which I was affected on once 
 seeing in London Sir George Alexander as Worth- 
 ing, in that devastating entry in deep mourning for 
 the loss of the brother he had glibly invented — 
 only to happen upon his friend who is at that moment 
 personating the fictitious brother I Like Shaw's You 
 Never Can Tell, it is psychological farce; and the 
 characters, to borrow a phrase of Mr. Huneker's, 
 indulge in " psychical antics." Its congeners arc 
 St. John Hankin's The Charity that Begins at 
 Home, Shaw's The Philanderer, and Barrie's The 
 Admirable Crichton. Mr. St. John Hankin has 
 pertinently remarked that the type of play Wilde 
 struck out in The Importance of Being Earnest was 
 the only quite original thing he contributed to the 
 English stage — in which view he has been sup- 
 ported by the clever German, Alfred Kerr. Among 
 
308 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 German critics, Hermann Bahr is noteworthy in re-' 
 fusing to consider Wilde as fundamentally frivolous, 
 maintaining that his paradoxes rest upon a profound 
 insight into humanity. " Wilde says serious and 
 often sad things that convulse us with merriment, not 
 because he is not * deep,' but precisely because he is 
 deeper than seriousness and sadness, and has recog- 
 nized their nullity." Wilde always affirmed that he 
 respected life too deeply ever to discuss it seriously. 
 Illuminating — almost prophetic ! — is Shaw's char- 
 acterization of Wilde, evoked by this play on its 
 original production: 
 
 ** Ireland is, of all countries, the most foreign to 
 England, and to the Irishman (and Mr. Wilde is 
 almost as acutely Irish as the Iron Duke of Wel- 
 lington) there is nothing in the world quite so ex- 
 quisitely comic as an Englishman's seriousness. Itfl|| 
 becomes tragic, perhaps, when the Englishman acts 
 on it; but that occurs too seldom to be taken into 
 account, a fact which intensifies the humour of the 
 situation, the total result being the Englishman ut- 
 terly unconscious of his real self, Mr. Wilde keenly 
 observant of it, and playing on the self-unconscious- 
 ness with irresistible humour, and finally, of course, 
 the Englishman annoyed with himself for being 
 amused at his own expense, and for being unable to 
 convict Mr. Wilde of what seems an obvious mis- 
 understanding of human nature. He is shocked, 
 too, at the danger to the foundations of society when 
 
OSCAR WILDE 309 
 
 seriousness is publicly laughed at. And to com- 
 plete the oddity of the situation, Mr. Wilde, touch- 
 ing what he himself reverences. Is absolutely the 
 most sentimental dramatist of the day." 
 
 The comedies of Oscar Wilde stem not from the 
 Ibsen of Lovers Comedy, but from the Dumas fils 
 of Francillon, the Sardou of Divorgons, and the 
 Sheridan of The School for Scandal, Nor are 
 they lacking In that ^rain de folie which was the sign 
 manual of Mellhac and Halevy, of Gilbert and Sul- 
 livan. In verve, esprit and brilliance Wilde is close 
 akin to his compatriot and fellow townsman, Ber- 
 nard Shaw; In both we find a defiant Individualism, 
 a genius for epigrammatic formulation of the truth, 
 and a vein of piquant and social satire. Inferior to 
 Shaw in most respects, Wilde surpasses him in two 
 features: the sensitiveness of his taste, and the re- 
 markable social ease of his dialogue. As an artist 
 Wilde was generously endowed with the discretion 
 which Henry James aptly terms the " conscience of 
 taste"; and, unlike Shaw, he was far more intent 
 upon amusement than upon Instruction. To at- 
 tempt analysis of Wilde's comedies were as profitless 
 as to inquire into the composition of a souffiee or the 
 ingredients of a Roman Candle. It is enough that 
 he translates us into le monde ou Von ne s'ennuie 
 pas. Why carp because Wilde's theatric devices are 
 
3IO EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 as superficial as those of Scribe, his sentimentality 
 as mawkish as that of Sydney Grundy, and his mor- 
 alizing as ghastly a misfit as the Mea Culpa of 
 Dowson or the confessional of a Verlaine I 
 
 The phenomenal popularity of Wilde's comedies 
 in an epoch of culture associated with naturalism inM 
 art is significant testimony to his rare quality as a ''" 
 purveyor of intellectual pleasure. In the category 
 of the great drama of the day considered as drama 
 — Ibsen, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hervieu, Strind- 
 berg — they have no place, in that in no ultimate 
 sense are they conditioned by the fundamental laws 
 of the drama. They are deficient in final portraiture 
 of character, the play and interplay of really vital 
 emotions, and the indispensable conflict of wills and 
 passions withoiit which drama is mere sound and 
 fury signifying nothing. Bernard Shaw pronounced 
 Wilde the arch-artist: he was so colossally lazy. 
 An aesthetic and luxurious idler, Wilde was incapable 
 of sustained and laborious pre-occupation with his 
 art work. It has been told of Wilde that he filled 
 notebooks with the casual inspirations of his own 
 conversation and made his plays out of these note- 
 books. It was true, though sounding like the vain- 
 est of poses, that even when his life was most free 
 from business cares he never had, as he put it, either 
 the time or the leisure for his art. In the deepest 
 sense, he lacked what Walter Pater called the re- 
 sponsibility of the artist to his material; although 
 
OSCAR WILDE 311 
 
 this Is not to say that he failed to recognize, from the 
 standpoint of style, the beauty of the material he em- 
 ployed, and to use that beauty as a factor in pro- 
 ducing the aesthetic effect. Like Thomas Griffiths 
 Wainewrlght, he sought to put Into practice the 
 theory that " life Itself Is an art, and has Its modes 
 of style no less than the arts that seek to express It." 
 And the great drama of his life, as he confessed to 
 Andre Gide, was that he had given his genius to his 
 life, to his work only his talent. 
 
 There Is no term which so perfectly expresses the 
 tone of Wilde's comedies as nonchalance. The as- 
 tounding thing Is that. In his smcere effort to amuse 
 the public, he best succeeded with the public by hold- 
 ing it up to scorn and ridicule with the lightest 
 satire. " If we are to deliver a philosophy," says 
 Mr. Chesterton, in speaking of contemporary life, 
 " It must be In the manner of the late Mr. Whistler 
 and the ridentem dicere verum. If our heart Is to 
 be aimed at, It must be with the rapier of Steven- 
 son, which runs through without either pain or 
 puncture." If our brain Is to be aroused, he might 
 have added. It must be with the paradox and epigram 
 of Oscar Wilde. Horace Walpole once said that 
 the world is a comedy for the man of thought, a 
 tragedy for the man of feeling. He forgot to say 
 that It Is a farce for the man of wit. It was Wilde's 
 creed that Ironic imitation of the contrasts, absurdi- 
 ties, and inconsistencies of life, its fads and fancies, Its 
 
EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 quips and cranks, its follies and foibles, give far more 
 pleasure and amusement than faithful portraiture of 
 the dignity of life, its seriousness and profundity, 
 its tragedy, pity, and terror. His comedies are 
 marked, not by consistency in the characters, con- 
 tinuity of purpose, or unity of action, but only by per-, 
 sistence of the satiric vein and prevalence of the 
 comic mood. Like Flaubert, Wilde gloried in de- 
 moralizing the public, and he denied with his every 
 breath Sidney Lanier's dictum that art has no enemy 
 so unrelenting as cleverness. His whole literary 
 career was one long, defiant challenge to Zola's 
 pronunciamento : Vhomme de genie n^a jamais ^^ 
 d* esprit. ■■ 
 
 While the dialogue of Wilde's comedies, as the 
 brilliant Hermann Bahr has said, contains more 
 verve and esprit than all the French, German, and 
 Italian comedies of to-day put together, neverthe- 
 less our taste Is outraged because Wilde lacks a de- 
 veloped sense for character, and employs a conven- 
 tional and time-worn technique. Wilde's figures 
 are lacking in vitality and humanity; it is impossible 
 to believe in their existence. Put Wilde's cleverest 
 sayings into the mouths of characters other than 
 those that utter them — and the play remains 
 essentially unaltered. The characters are mere 
 mouthpieces for the diverting ratiocinations of their 
 author, often appearing less as personalities than as 
 personified customs, embodied prejudices and con- 
 
OSCAR WILDE 313 
 
 ventlons of English social life. By means of these 
 pallid figures, Wilde has at least admirably succeeded 
 in interpreting certain sides of the English national 
 character. The form of his comedies approximates 
 to that of the best French farces, but his humor has 
 the genuine British note. There Is no escaping the 
 Impression, however, that his characters are autom- 
 atons and puppets — masks which barely suffice to 
 conceal the lineaments of Wilde. Here we see the 
 raisonneuTy the commentator, much as we find him in 
 Dumas jils, or In Sudermann. It is in this way that 
 Wilde Itentlfies his characters, not with their proto- 
 types In actual life, but with himself. 
 
 As Bernard Shaw may be said to have Invented 
 the drama of dialectic, so Oscar Wilde may be said 
 to have Invented the drama of conversation. 
 
 In 1 89 1 Walter Pater wrote: ** There is always 
 something of an excellent talker about the writings 
 of Mr. Oscar Wilde; and In his hands, as happens 
 so rarely with those who practise It, the form of 
 dialogue Is justified by Its being really alive. His 
 genial laughter-loving sense of life and Its enjoyable 
 Intercourse goes far to obviate any crudity that may 
 be In the paradox, with which, as with the bright 
 and shining truth which often underlies It, Mr. 
 Wilde startling his ' countrymen ' carries on, more 
 perhaps than any other, the brilliant critical work 
 of Matthew Arnold." This characterization Is the 
 very truth Itself. It Is Interesting to recall Wilde's 
 
314 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 confession that Keats, Flaubert, and Walter Pater 
 were the only writers who had influenced him. 
 
 Jean- Joseph Renaud and Henri de Regnier have 
 paid eloquent tributes to Wilde as a master of the 
 causerie. A great lady once fantastically said of 
 him : ** When he is speaking, I see round his head a 
 luminous aureole." The mere exaggeration of the 
 phrase is testimony to Wilde's mastery in utterance 
 of golden words. " He was," says W. B. Yeats, 
 *' Incomparably the finest talker of his epoch. It 
 was, perhaps, because I admired his conversation so 
 much that I never fully appreciate his books. They 
 remind me of something else. Incomparably more 
 spontaneous. Both he and George Moore seemed 
 to me like Tennyson's Launcelot, who, by sheer 
 vehemence of nature, all but saw the Grail 
 — but the full vision was only for the meek 
 Galahad." Wilde's inventive and imaginative 
 faculty was Inexhaustible; and for hours at a 
 time he could recite poems In prose, indulge in 
 a riot of paradox and epigram, or descant with 
 miraculous and exquisite eloquence upon paint- 
 ing, literature, art, and — above all — upon life. 
 The beauty of his sentences was the beauty of the 
 arabesque; his eloquence was the eloquence of the 
 rhythmical. In It all lurked the defect of the florid, 
 the gaudy, the over-elaborated. Like the Japanese 
 painters, Hokusal and Hokkei, Wilde was an artist 
 In the little; and his art found room for expansion 
 
OSCAR WILDE . 315 
 
 only In the microcosm. He was a slave to the 
 Scheherazade of his fancy, and unsparingly lavish In 
 the largess of his wit. He realized that he was a 
 past-master In the gentle art of making conversation, 
 and he nonchalantly Ignored Goethe's precept: 
 " Bllde, Kunstler, rede nicht ! " The result Is, that 
 he does not construct, he only sets off a mine. His 
 art Is the expression of his enjoyment of verbal pyro- 
 technics. The height of his pleasure was to shock 
 the average Intelligence. The result In his comedies, 
 while vastly diverting. Is deplorable from the stand- 
 point of dramatic art. For the conversations are 
 disjointed, and. In the dramatic sense, Incoherent, In 
 that they live only for the moment, and not at all 
 for the sake of elucidation and propulsion of the 
 dramatic process. The comparison with Shaw In 
 this particular Immediately suggests Itself; but the 
 fundamental distinction consists In the fact that 
 whereas In Shaw's comedies the conversation, witty 
 and epigrammatic to a degree. Is strictly germane to 
 the action, with Wilde the conversation, with all Its 
 sparkling brilliancy, Is in fact subsidiary and beside 
 the mark. As Hagemann has said, In Wilde's 
 comedies the accent and stress Is thrown wholly upon 
 the epigrammatic content of the dialogue. 
 
 At bottom and In essence, Wilde Is a master In 
 the art of selection. He Is eminently successful In 
 giving the most diverting character to our moments 
 as they pass. His art Is the apotheosis of the mo- 
 
3i6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ment. " What may not be said," he once asked, 
 "for the moment and the moment's monument " ? 
 Art itself, he averred, is " really a form of exaggera- 
 tion, and selection, which is the very spirit of art, is 
 nothing more than an Intensified ode of over-em- 
 phasis." Wilde was a painter, a Neo-Impressionist. 
 From the palette of his observation, which bore all 
 the radiant shades and colors of his temperament, 
 he selected and laid upon the canvas many brilliant 
 yet distinct points of color. Seen in the proper light 
 and from the just distance, the canvas takes on the 
 appearance of a complete picture — quaint, unique, 
 marvellous. It is only by taking precisely Wilde's 
 point of view that the spectator is enabled to syn- 
 thesize the isolated brilliant points into a harmonious 
 whole. Oscar Wilde is a Pointilliste. 
 
 There is no room for doubt that Oscar Wilde 
 was, as Nordau classed him, a pervert and a degen- 
 erate. And yet his case warrants distrust of the 
 dictum that an artist's work and life are fundamen- 
 tally indissociable. Wilde was a man, not only of | 
 multiple personality, but of manifest and disparate 
 achievement. The style is not always the man ; and 
 the history of art and literature reveals not a few 
 geniuses whose private life could not justly be cited 
 in condemnation of their pictures, their poetry, or 
 their prose. It Is Indubitable that Wilde, with his 
 frequently avowed doctrine of irresponsible individ- 
 ualism and Pagan insistence upon the untrammelled 
 
OSCAR WILDE 317 
 
 expansion of the Ego, gave suicidal counsel to the 
 younger generation. He based his apostolate upon 
 the paradox; and as he himself asserts, the paradox 
 IS always dangerous. In his search for the elusive, 
 the evanescent, the Imaginative, he found certain 
 exquisite truths ; but they were only very partial and 
 obscure truths, embedded in a mass of charmingly 
 phrased, yet damnably perverse, falsehood. Much 
 of his verse — flagrant output of what Robert 
 Buchanan maliciously crystallized In the damning 
 phrase, " The Fleshly School of Poetry " — Is a 
 faithful reflex of his personality and feeling, with Its 
 morbid and sensuous daydreams. Its vain regrets for 
 " barren gain and bitter loss," Its unhealthy and 
 myopic vision. Its obsession with the wanton and the 
 macabre. And yet, in spite not only of these things 
 but also of the persistent reminder of alien Influences, 
 certain of his poems are lit with the divine spark 
 and fitfully flame out with startling and disturbing 
 lustre. 
 
 As an artist in words, as prose stylist, Wilde was 
 possessed of real gifts. To read his confession is 
 to realize that art was the passion of his life : " To 
 give form to one's dreams, to give shape to one's 
 fancy, to change one's Ideas Into Images, to express 
 one's self through a material that one makes lovely 
 by mere treatment, to realize in this material the 
 immaterial ideal of beauty — this is the pleasure of 
 the artist. It is the most sensuous and most Intel- 
 
31 8 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 lectual pleasure In the whole world.'* The social 
 ease of his paradoxes, the opulence of his Imaginative 
 style, the union of simplicity and beauty of phrase- 
 ology with vague and sometimes almost meaningless 
 gradations and shades of thought, his Insight into the 
 real meaning of art, his understanding of the " thing 
 as in Itself It really Is," and his rapt glimpses of art's 
 holy of holies — all these things, at times and In In- 
 tervals, were his. His faculty of Imitation was 
 caricature refined and sublimated to an Infinite de- 
 gree; and, with less real comprehension of the 
 arcana of art, Wilde might have been the author of 
 a transcendent Borrowed Plumes, And If he him- 
 self did not actually and literally masquerade In 
 the literary garments of other men, certainly he 
 possessed that rare faculty, now almost a lost art, 
 of creeping into another's personality, temporarily 
 shedding the husk of self, and looking out upon the 
 world with new and alien eyes. There lies, it 
 would seem, the secret of his genius — the faculty 
 of creative and Imaginative Interpretation in its ul- 
 timate refinement. He was ever the critic as artist, 
 never the creator In the fine frenzy of creation. It 
 has been said of him that he knew everything; but 
 in the last analysis his supreme fault, both as man 
 and artist, was his arrogance and his overween- 
 ing sense of superiority. Breaks down in Wilde's 
 case — as does many another truism — the maxim : 
 Tout comprendre (fest tout pardonner. 
 
OSCAR WILDE 319 
 
 " To be free,'* wrote a celebrity, " one must not 
 conform." Wilde secured a certain sort of free- 
 dom in the drama through his refusal to conform 
 to the laws of dramatic art. He claimed the privi- 
 leges without shouldering the responsibilities of the 
 dramatist. He imported the methods of the 
 causerie into the domain of the drama, and turned 
 the theatre into a house of mirth. Whether or no 
 his destination was the palace of truth, certain it 
 is that he always stopped at the half-way house. 
 Art was the dominant note of his literary life; but 
 it was the art of conversation, not the art of 
 drama. His comedies, as dramas, were cheap 
 sacrifices to the god of success. He made many 
 delightful, many pertinent and impertinent observa- 
 tions upon English life, and upon life in general; 
 but they had no special relation to the dramatic theme 
 he happened for the moment to have in mind. His 
 plays neither enlarge the mental horizon nor dilate 
 the heart. Wilde was too self-centred an egoist 
 ever to come into any real or vital relation with life. 
 It was his primal distinction as artist to be con- 
 sumed with a passionate love of art. It was his 
 primal deficiency as artist to have no genuine sym- 
 pathy with humanity. And although he imaged life 
 with clearness, grace, and distinction, certain it is 
 that he never saw life steadily, nor ever saw it 
 whole. 
 
 Wilde called one of his plays The Importance 
 
320 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 of Being Earnest, In his inverted way, he aimed 
 at teaching the world the importance of being friv- 
 olous. Only from this standpoint is it possible to 
 appreciate, in any real sense, Wilde, the comic dram- 
 atist. Wilde is the arch enemy of boredom and 
 ennui; we can always enjoy him as a purveyor of 
 amusement and a killer of time. We are warned 
 by his own confession against taking Wilde, 
 as dramatist, too seriously. Nor should we take 
 Wilde's own deliverances too seriously. " The 
 plays are not great," he once confessed to Andre 
 Gide. " I think nothing of them — but If you only 
 knew how amusing they are ! " And the author of 
 The Decay of Lying added: ** Most of them are_ 
 the results of bets I " 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
"It was easy for Ruskin to lay down the rule 
 of dying rather than doing unjustly; but death is 
 a plain thing: justice a very obscure thing. How 
 is an ordinary man to draw the line between right 
 and wrong otherwise than by accepting public opin- 
 ion on the subject; and what more conclusive ex- 
 pression of sincere public opinion can there be than 
 market demand? Even when we repudiate that and 
 fall back on our private judgment, the matter 
 gathers doubt instead of clearness. The popular 
 notion of morality and piety is to simply beg all the 
 most important questions in life for other people; 
 hut when those questions come home to ourselves, 
 we suddenly discover that the deviVs advocate has a 
 stronger case than we thought: we remember that 
 the way of righteousness or death was the way of 
 the Inquisition; that hell is paved, not with bad in- 
 tentions, but with good ones . . /' 
 
 Note on Modern Prizefighting, appended to Cashel Byron's 
 Profession (authorized edition), H. S. Stone & Co., Chicago, 190X. 
 
BERNARD SHAW 
 
 That modern Samuel Johnson, the late Benjamin 
 Jowett, once spoke of Benjamin Disraeli as " a com- 
 bination of the Arch-Priest of Humbug and a great 
 man." Not otherwise has Bernard Shaw been 
 freely characterized In this day and generation. 
 The world-famed American showman, P. T. 
 Barnum, built up a fortune upon the sweet and simple 
 faith that the American people love to be ** hum-, 
 bugged." In the minds of many, Bernard Shaw has 
 become a world-author through the possession of a 
 similar faith : that not America alone, but the whole 
 world loves to be humbugged. f^The public im- 
 agination demands a best man everywhere,) Shaw 
 once said; ** and If Nature does not supply him the 
 public invents him. The art of humbug is the art 
 of getting Invented in this way." According to the 
 pontiffs of literature, a large part of Shaw's stock 
 in trade consists In making himself " a motley to the 
 view." Interrogated once as to the reason for his 
 eccentric conduct, Charles Baudelaire complacently 
 replied, '^ Pour etonner les sots** Were Bernard 
 Shaw challenged for the reasons for his eccentricity, 
 he would doubtless reply, " To astonish the wise." 
 
 3*3 
 
 V 
 
324 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 In a very literal sense does he subscribe to the Shak- 
 sperean view: "All the world's a stage, and men 
 and women only players." In this day of persistent 
 self-puffery, Bernard Shaw has deliberately chosen 
 to stand in the limelight, to occupy the focus of the 
 stage of the world. " In England as elsewhere the 
 spontaneous recognition of really original work be- 
 gins with a mere handful of people," he once said, 
 " and propagates itself so slowly that It has become 
 a commonplace to say that genius, demanding bread, 
 is given a stone after its possessor's death. The 
 remedy for this Is sedulous advertisement. Accord- 
 ingly, I have advertised myself so well that I find 
 myself, while still In middle life, almost as legendary 
 a person as the Flying Dutchman." 
 
 / 
 
 ^ 
 
 Even at the beglnnmg of the twentieth century, 
 much virtue still inheres in the statement that life 
 has its realities behind Its shows. Whoever would 
 write the natural history of a literary phenomenon 
 like Bernard Shaw must first disabuse his mind of 
 the popular fantastic notions In regard to his life 
 and personality. The legend of Saint Bernard 
 fades Into thin air before the plain recital of the life 
 of Mr. Shaw. The year 1856, which witnessed the 
 demise of the " first man of his century," Heinrich 
 Heine, likewise witnessed the birth of the " laugh- 
 ing Ibsen," Bernard Shaw, in Dublin, Ireland, on 
 
 ^r 
 
BERNARD SHAW 3^5 
 
 July 26th. Cursed with an impecunious father, he 
 was early apprenticed to a land agent in Dublin to 
 be taught the meaning of thrift. Blessed with a 
 mother of rare talent for music, he unconsciously 
 acquired a knowledge and appreciation of music 
 which was to play no insignificant role in his later 
 life. Revolted by the social pretensions and preju- 
 dices of his family, who " revolved impecuniously 
 in a sort of vague second-cousinship round a bar- 
 onetcy," he soon became animated with a Carlylean 
 contempt for that type of snobbery denominated 
 " respectability in its thousand gigs." He boasts 
 of the fact that as a schoolboy he was incorrigibly 
 idle and worthless, since the training of four schools 
 he successively attended did him a great deal of harm 
 and no good whatever. But it must not be sup- 
 posed that his youthful years were barren in educa- 
 tive influence. Parrot-like, he would whistle the 
 oratorios and operatic scores he heard repeatedly 
 practised at home by the musical society of which his 
 mother was a leading figure — much as the street- 
 gamin of to-day whistles the latest piece of ragtime 
 music. Before he was fifteen, according to his own 
 confession, he knew at least one important work by 
 Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rossini, 
 Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Gounod, from cover 
 to cover. -For hours at a time the lad of fifteen 
 used to frequent the deserted halls of the National 
 Gallery of Ireland; with his " spare change " he 
 
326 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 bought the volumes of the Bohn translations of 
 Vasarl, and learned to recognize the works of a 
 considerable number of Italian and Flemish painters. 
 
 It was the mature conviction of his later years 
 that all the people he knew as a boy in Ireland were 
 the worse for what they called their religion. On 
 hearing the American evangelists, Moody and 
 Sankey, the young sixteen-year-old Shaw was driven 
 to protest In Public Opinion — his first appearance 
 in print — that if this were Religion, then he must 
 be an Atheist. Indeed, as he said a few years ago, 
 " If religion is that which binds men to one an- 
 other, and irreligion that which sunders, then must 
 I testify that I found the religion of my country in 
 its musical genius and its irreligion in its churches 
 and drawing-rooms." 
 
 l^j^Unlike his colleagues in criticism of later years, 
 William Archer and Arthur Bingham Walkley, 
 graduates of Edinburgh and Oxford respectively, 
 Bernard Shaw despised, half ignorantly, half pene- 
 tratingly, the thought of a university education, for 
 it seemed to him to turn out men who all thought 
 alike and were snobs. 
 
 He went Into the land office, where he learned 
 how to collect rents and to write a good hand. But 
 although he retained his place solely for the sake 
 of financial Independence, his heart and brain were 
 a thousand miles away. Finally his work grew un- 
 bearably irksome to him, and in the year 1876 he 
 
BERNARD SHAW 327 
 
 deliberately walked out of the land office forever. 
 Shortly afterwards, he joined his mother in London 
 
 — the future theatre for the display of his unequal, 
 if brilliant and versatile genius. 
 
 During the following nine years, from 1876 to 
 1885, Shaw turned his hand with only indifferent 
 success to many undertakings, j It was not simply a 
 crime, it was a blunder to have been an Irishman 
 
 — and consequently an alien to everything genuinely 
 English^ Shaw's unembarrassed frankness passed 
 for outrageous prevarication, his cleverest jest for the 
 most solemn earnest. Like Oscar Wilde, he learned 
 the crippling disadvantage of being an Irishman of 
 superior mentality, ever trifling in a world of ideas. 
 Whatever he did met with failure; his lightest plays 
 of fancy were as unwelcome to the English public 
 as were his heaviest efforts at blank verse, at criticism 
 of music, at journalistic hack work. Through his 
 acquaintance with Chichester Bell, of the family of 
 that name, so celebrated for scientific invention and 
 notable research, he became interested in physics 
 and acquainted with the works of Tyndall and 
 Helmholtz. He even worked for a time with a 
 company formed in London to exploit an invention 
 of the great American inventor, Thomas A. Edison. 
 After various attempts, of which this was the last, 
 to assist his parents by endeavoring to earn an honest 
 living for himself, he finally gave up trying, he con- 
 fesses, to commit this sin against his nature. It Is 
 
328 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 true that his life was not without its diversions ; for 
 his talent as a congenial accompanist on the piano 
 assured his entree into a certain desirable circle of 
 musical society in London; and the great library at 
 Bloomsbury and the priceless picture galleries at 
 Trafalgar Square and Hampton Court, certainly, 
 were not lacking In a hospitality of which he gladly 
 availed himself. 
 
 During the five years from 1879 to 1884 inclu- 
 sive, he devoted his energies ruthlessly to the pro- 
 duction of five novels, one of them never published, 
 which were to lead, if not to the immediate estab- 
 lishment of literary position, certainly to the forma- 
 tion of valuable friendships and acquaintances of 
 lifelong standing. Again and again he sent forth 
 his manuscripts; but they were invariably returned 
 by the publishers. His Iconoclasm, his freedom of 
 thought and expression, his Ibsenic frankness in deal- 
 ing with the gray, garish aspects of contemporary 
 life, were In Inverse ratio to the requirements of 
 the conservative, unprogresslve London publishers. 
 Unwilling to sacrifice his art, resolved " to paint 
 man man, whatever the Issue,'* and determined not 
 to disavow the principles at which he had arrived, 
 he accepted the alternative — the temporary failure 
 of his novels. 
 
 To the Socialist revival of the 'eighties, the world 
 owes the credit for the discovery of Bernard Shaw. 
 In 1879, Shaw first met the late James Lecky, and 
 
BERNARD SHAW 329 
 
 acquired the grounding in Temperament, the fond- 
 ness for Phonetics, and the early incentive to public 
 speaking which have borne such abundant fruit in 
 his later career. Through Lecky's influence, Shaw 
 joined, and became a constant debater in, the Zeleti- 
 cal Society, a debating club modelled on the once 
 famed Dialectical Society. Here Shaw first met 
 Sidney Webb, that able Socialist economist, and soon 
 became his close friend and co-worker. Shaw sub- 
 sequently joined the Dialectical Society and re- 
 mained faithful to it for a number of years. From 
 this time on, he evinced the greatest interest in public 
 speaking, and persistently haunted public meetings 
 of all sorts. One night, in 1883, he wandered into 
 the Memorial Hall in Farrington Street; by chance 
 the speaker was the great Single-Taxer, Henry 
 George. For the first time did the importance of 
 the economic basis dawn upon Shaw's mind. He 
 left the meeting a changed man; and soon was de- 
 vouring George's Progress and Poverty and Marx's 
 Das Kapital with all the ardor of youth and burning 
 social enthusiasm. While Shaw refused to sub- 
 scribe to all the economic theories of Marx, and 
 later v ictoriously re futed him on the question of 
 the Theory gjf_Yalu£j he realized the overwhelming 
 validity of the " bible of the working classes " as a 
 jeremiad against the bourgeoisie. During these 
 days, he spoke early and often, at the street corner, 
 on the curbstone, from the tail of a cart. He once 
 
330 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 said that he first caught the ear of the British public 
 on a cart In Hyde Park, to the blaring of brass 
 bands ! 
 
 In practical conjunction with Sidney Webb, Gra- 
 ham Wallas and Sidney Olivier, although they act- 
 ually joined at different times, Shaw became a mem- 
 ber of the Fabian Society after It had been in exist- 
 ence only a short time. His connection with that 
 society is a matter of history, and finds tangible 
 evidence to-day, not only in books and pamphlets, 
 but also in the actual Socialist and Labor repre- 
 sentation In the London County Council and British 
 parliament. Suffice it to say that, from the very 
 first, his influence made itself most strongly felt 
 upon the society, and for many years he has been 
 the guiding spirit in its rouncils. Through the es- 
 tablishment of certain Socialist journals during the 
 'eighties, Shaw's novels began to find their way into 
 print. An Unsocial Socialist and Cashel Byron^s 
 Profession appeared in To-day^ printed by Henry 
 Hyde Champion, later by Belfort Bax and James 
 Leigh Joynes, among others; The Irrational Knot 
 and Love Among the Artists appeared in Our Cor- 
 ner, published by the brilliant orator and Socialist 
 agitator, Mrs. Annie Besant. They made no impres- 
 sion upon the British public, but greatly pleased such 
 men as William Archer, William Morris, Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, and William E. Henley, who gave 
 either public or personal expressions of their ap- 
 
BERNARD SHAW 331 
 
 preclatlon. From time to time in the last fifteen 
 years they have been published in both England and 
 America, with varying, but in general, with unusual 
 success in this day of Infinlteslmally short-lived suc- 
 cesses. 
 
 From 1883 on, Shaw was daily coming in contact 
 with the brilliant spirits of the younger generation 
 in Socialism, and with the leaders in thought and 
 opinion on the side of vegetarianism, humanitarian- 
 ism and land nationalization. There were James 
 Leigh Joynes, who had been arrested in Ireland 
 with Henry George; Sidney Olivier, afterwards a 
 distinguished author and now Governor of Jamaica ; 
 Henry Hyde Champion, the well-known Socialist; 
 Henry Salt, an Eton master, married to Joynes' 
 sister; and Edward Carpenter, the greatest living 
 disciple of Walt Whitman. After joining the Fa- 
 bian Society, Shaw's constant associates were Hubert 
 Bland, Graham Wallas, Sidney Olivier, and Sidney 
 Webb ; and through his Socialist activities he became /|\ 
 a friend of William Morris, who was never a 
 Fabian, but who maintained an attitude of the 
 broadest tolerance towards all the Socialist sects. In 
 their early days the Fabians were as Insurrectionary 
 In principle as the other Socialist bodies in London; 
 not until the election in 1885 did the line of cleavage 
 between the Fabian Society and the Social Demo- 
 cratic Federation clearly appear. At this time, the 
 Fabian Society openly denounced the conduct of the 
 
332 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 1 ac-* 
 
 Council of the Social-Democratic Federation in ac- 
 cepting money from the Tory party in payment of 
 the election expenses of Socialist candidates as cal- 
 culated to disgrace the Socialist movement in Eng- 
 land. In the following two years, the Fabian So- 
 ciety took little or no part in the organization ofA 
 insurrectionary projects in London; and finally, after 
 many debates with that section of the Socialist 
 League known as Anti-Communist, headed by Jo- 
 seph Lane and William Morris, definitely discounte- 
 nanced Kropotkinism among its members. Indeed, 
 they finally demolished Anarchism in the abstract, 
 as Shaw said, " by grinding It between human nature 
 and the theory of economic rent." j 
 
 When Shaw first joined the Zeletical Society, he 
 was the poorest of debaters; but he possessed the 
 nerve to make a fool of himself. He practised 
 platform oratory incessantly, haunted hole-and- 
 corner debates of all sorts, and seized every op- 
 portunity to make himself proficient in the art of 
 public exhibition of his views. He joined the 
 Hampstead Historic Club, and there learned the 
 theories of Marx through the necessity of elucidat- 
 ing them for his colleagues. He was one of a pri- 
 vate circle of economists, which afterwards de- 
 veloped into the British Economic Association; at 
 these meetings the social question was Ignored, and 
 the discussions were conducted solely on an eco- 
 nomic basis. In this way Shaw became thoroughly 
 
BERNARD SHAW 333 
 
 grounded in economic theory; and In this way also, 
 he learned supremely well the art of public speak- 
 ing. As a speaker, Shaw far excelled William 
 Morris; lacking the genius for oratory of a Charles 
 Bradlaugh or an Annie Besant, he yet combined the 
 imperturbability of a Sidney Webb with the wit of 
 an Oscar Wilde. Ever on the alert, he is keen, 
 incisive, and facile as a public speaker; he has every 
 faculty about him when he mounts the platform. 
 He combines the devastating wit of the Irishman -^ 
 with the penetrating logic of the Frenchman. He 
 gave hundreds of lectures and addresses, and fre- 
 quently debated in public in London and the 
 provinces, for many years; and always at his own 
 expense — for the Cause. His speech Is always a 
 challenge. *' Call me disagreeable, only call me 
 something," he vigorously clamors; "for then I 
 have roused you from your stupid torpor and made ^ 
 you think a new thought! " ^ 
 
 In principle and in practice, Shaw is a strictly ; 
 constitutional Socialist; he has no faith In revolu- 
 tionary measures, save as the very last resort against ' 
 direst tyranny. Inspired by Philip WIcksteed's at- 
 tack on Marx's Theory of Value, Shaw devoted a 
 great deal of time to the study of the economic 
 theories of the late Stanley Jevons; and with the 
 aid of the Jevonlan machinery exposed the fallacies 
 in the Marxian Theory of Value. 
 
 Furthermore, he denied the existence of what is 
 
334 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 called the war of classes ; \he did everything possible 
 to reduce Socialism to an intellectual rather than to 
 an emotional basis, to envisage it as a product of 
 economic factors rather than of insurrectionism. 
 His position is admirably summed up in the follow- 
 ing passage : 
 
 " The Fabian declares quite simply that there is 
 no revolution, that there exists no war of classes, 
 that the salaried workers are far more imbued with 
 conventions and prejudices and more bourgeois than 
 the middle class itself; that there is not a single 
 legal power democratically constituted, without ex- 
 cepting the House of Commons, which would not be 
 much more progressive were it not restrained by the 
 fear of the popular vote; that Karl Marx is no 
 more infallible than Aristotle or Bacon, Ricardo or 
 Buckle, and that, like them, he has committed errors 
 now obvious to the casual student of economics; that 
 a declared Socialist is, morally, neither better nor 
 worse than a liberal or a conservative, nor a work- 
 man than a capitalist; that the workman can change 
 the actual governmental system if he so desires, 
 while the capitalist cannot do so, because the work- 
 man would not permit him ; that it is an absurd con- 
 tradiction in terms to declare that the working 
 classes are starved, impoverished and kept in igno- 
 rance by a system which loads the capitalist with 
 food, education, and refinement^ of all sorts, and at 
 the same time to pretend that the capitalist is a 
 
BERNARD SHAW 335 
 
 scoundrel, harsh and sordid in spirit, while the work- 
 man Is a high-minded, enlightened and magnanimous 
 philanthropist; that Socialism will eventuate in the 
 gradual establishment of public rule and a public ad- 
 ministration set Into effective action by parliaments, 
 assemblies and common councils; and that none of 
 these rules will lead to revolution nor occupy more 
 plaoe in the political programme of the time than a 
 law for the regulation of manufactures or the ballot 
 would do now: in a word, that the part of the So- 
 cialist will be a definitely fixed political labor, to 
 struggle not against the malevolent machinations of 
 the cap^alist, but against the stupidity, narrowness, 
 in a W(5rd, the idiocy (in giving to the word its pre- 
 cise aAd original sense) of the class which actually 
 suffers most from the existing system." ^ 
 
 Bernard Shaw resumed his literary labors rather 
 late in the 'eighties, and has been diligent as a man 
 of letters ever since. Indeed, his is an unusually 
 checkered career, since he has, at one time or an- 
 other, dipped Into almost every phase of authorship. ^ 
 For a tkne, through the kind offices of Mr. William 
 Archer, Shaw was enabled to write criticisms of 
 books and pictures in The World; and at times also 
 he wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette and Truth, In 
 1888, Shaw joined the editorial staff of The Star 
 on the second day of Its existence; but his Socialist 
 
 "^Les Illusions du Socialisme, by Bernard Shaw; L'Humaniti 
 Nowelle, August, 1900. 
 
336 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 utterances so alarmed the editor, the brilliant wit. 
 P. O'Connor, that Shaw was given a column to fill 
 with comments on current music — a subject harm- 
 less from the political point of view at least. Here 
 Shaw gave free vent to his eccentricity, and the 
 paper fairly blazed with his jests and hardiesses, his 
 follies and foibles, his quips and cranks. Dissem- 
 bling his wide knowledge of music, especially 
 modern music, by means of an air of irresponsible 
 levity and outrageous flippancy, he gave no ground 
 for suspicion of the existence in these delightful sallies 
 of a solid substratum of genuine criticism. As 
 " Corno dl Bassetto," he vied with his colleague, A. 
 B. Walkley, the dramatic critic for The Star, in 
 furnishing rare entertainment for the readers of that 
 first of London half-penny papers. 
 
 When Louis Engel resigned his position as 
 musical critic on the staff of The World, the post 
 fittingly fell to Bernard Shaw, who for long had 
 slowly been saturating himself In the best music 
 from Mozart to Wagner, from London to Bayreuth. 
 Until now, he had made no stir In the world of 
 letters — few people knew who " C. dl B." really 
 was. But as a successor of Louis Engel, he entered 
 into his new duties with zeal and zest, and created 
 a new standard for The World by his brilliant and 
 witty critiques. *' Every man has an Inalienable 
 right to make a fool of himself," Victor Hugo once 
 wrote; " but he should not abuse that right." Ber- 
 
 I 
 
BERNARD SHAW 337 
 
 nard Shaw stopped just short of abuse of his inalien- 
 able right. Like a street fakir, he announced the 
 value of his wares with sublime audacity. He 
 adopted the haughty tone of superiority of a Wilde 
 or a Whistler, although he did it always not only in 
 the wittiest but also in the most good-natured way 
 imaginable. The oculist who once examined his 
 eyes seems to have been the unwitting cause of first 
 diverting the rewards of literature in his direction. 
 The ophthalmic specialist declared that Shawns vision 
 was " normal," at the same time explaining that 
 the vision of nine-tenths of the people In the world is 
 abnormal. Shaw at once leaped to the conclusion 
 that his intellectual as well as his physical vision 
 was normal, while that of the " damned compact, 
 liberal majority " was aberrant, myopic, astygmatlc. 
 Too conscientious to put on a pair of abnormal 
 spectacles and aberr his vision to suit the taste of 
 the astygmatlc nine-tenths of the reading public, too 
 poor to attempt transcripts of life in order to win 
 the support of the one-tenth which, because of nor- 
 mal vision, was therefore as impecunious as him- 
 self, he turned critic and appeared before the British 
 public as Punch. He had only to open his eyes 
 and describe things exactly as they appeared to him, 
 to become known as the most humorously extrava- 
 gant paradoxer in London. He succeeded In 
 demonstrating once again the old, old proposition 
 that truth is stranger than fiction. 
 
338 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 After a while the exuberant " G. B. S./* as he 
 signed himself in The World, set out in search of 
 new fields to conquer. When Mr. Frank Harris 
 — who possessed the virtues, as well as some of 
 the faults, of Mr. Edmund Yates — revived The 
 Saturday Review, Shaw was chosen as dramatic 
 critic. He at once characteristically broke the sa- 
 cred tradition of anonymity, till then — 1895 — 
 inviolate in its columns. In earlier years, Shaw had 
 often spoken to deaf ears; for his was the strange 
 language of a Robertson, a Gilbert, a Wilde. In 
 all that he wrote there was that contradictoriness be- 
 tween letter and spirit, so characteristic of the Celtic 
 genius. Everything struck his mind at such an 
 acute angle as to give forth prismatic refractions of 
 dazzling and many-hued brilliancy. His first great 
 period began as critic on The World, when he 
 zealously lauded Wagner, daringly defied the aca- 
 demic school of British music, and gaily set himself 
 up as the infallible critic of the musical world. And 
 now as dramatic critic on The Saturday Review^ he 
 achieved in a few years the reputation of the most 
 brilliant journalistic writer in England. 
 
 Like Taine, he realized the important truth that 
 those things we agree to call abnormal, are in 
 reality normal, and appear quite naturally in the 
 ordinary course of events. Accordingly, he devised 
 a well-known formula for readable journalism: 
 
BERNARD SHAW 339 
 
 " Spare no labor to find out the right thing to say; 
 and then say it with the most exasperating levity, as 
 if it were the first thing that would come into any 
 one's head." He expressed the belief that good 
 journalism is much rarer and more important than 
 good literature; and by his own rare and unique 
 work he gave a practical proof of the truth of his 
 conviction. He led a magnificent crusade in behalf 
 of Ibsen and in defiance of Shakspere. If, on the 
 one hand, he praised Ibsen to the skies for the 
 intellectual content of his plays, on the other hand 
 he upbraided Shakspere for his lamentable poverty 
 in the matter of philosophy. If he saw in Ibsen a 
 disheartened optimist disagreeably intent upon im- 
 proving the world, he saw in Shakspere a vulgar 
 pessimist, with vanitas vanitaum eternally upon his 
 lips. If Ibsen not infrequently jarred his sensibili- 
 ties with the ultra-realism of his clinical demonstra- 
 tions, Shakspere gave him unfeigned pleasure by the 
 music of his language — his " word-music " as it has 
 been called — his delightful fancy, his large per- 
 ception of the comic, and his incomparable art as a 
 story-teller. When Shaw finished his dramatic ca- 
 reer, he had the gratification of the knowledge that 
 while Ibsen was not popular on the English stage, 
 he was nevertheless recognized by the highest au- 
 thorities as the greatest of living dramatists. And 
 he boasted on severing his connection with The 
 
340 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Saturday Review ^ that whereas, when he began his 
 work as a dramatic critic, Shakspere was a divinity 
 and a bore, now he was at least a fellow-creature ! 
 
 At last, in 1898, he severed his connection with 
 The Saturday Review and became a dramatist by 
 profession. He had, by dogmatic assertions, itera- 
 tion and reiteration of his merits as wit, raconteur 
 and paradoxer, so he declares, actually succeeded in 
 establishing his Uterary prestige for all time. He 
 might dodder and dote, platitudinize and pot-boil; 
 but, once convinced, the dull but honest British jrj,- 
 telligence could not be shakeii! He Kad tecome the 
 jester at the court of King Demo s — the confessor 
 of the sovereign public. And that public rewarded 
 him at last with eager appreciation of all his sallies 
 and hon mots. 
 
 II 
 
 As a comic dramatist, Shaw has always won the 
 joyous appreciation of his auditors, never the intel- 
 lectual perception of the critic. No general grasp 
 of his originality and essentially novel dramatic 
 technique, as Ibsen, as Maeterlinck, are understood, 
 has yet been achieved by the English-speaking public. 
 This, it cannot too decisively be asserted, is due, not 
 to the failure of the public to appreciate his dramas, 
 but to the slovenliness of dramatic criticism in per- 
 ceiving the genuine technical novelty of his dramatic 
 form. Even this decisive statement must be modi- 
 
BERNARD SHAW 341 
 
 fied by the admission that Shaw, with his passion 
 for comical mystification, has taken a certain sort 
 of impish delight in averring that he is really a con- 
 servative In technique, following in the beaten path 
 of classic dramatic tradition. "I find that the 
 surest way to startle the world with daring innova- 
 tions and originalities," he has said more than once, 
 ** Is to do exactly what playwrights have been doing 
 for thousands of years ; to revive the ancient attrac- 
 tion of long rhetorical speeches; to stick closely to 
 the methods of Mollere; and to lift characters bodily 
 out of the pages of Charles Dickens.'* 
 
 There are two fundamental Ideas, consistently 
 held and strenuously maintained by Shaw, which, 
 rightly understood, effectually shatter the super- 
 ficial theory that he Is an artistic mountebank, ex- 
 ploiting the theatre as an instrumentality for shal- 
 low ends. Back of all surface manifestations lies 
 the supreme conviction of Shaw that the theatre of 
 to-day, properly utilized, is an instrumentality for 
 the molding of character and the shaping of con- 
 duct no whit Inferior to the Church and the School. 
 Indeed, the modern Church seems to be losing Its 
 hold upon the great masses of the people through 
 Its divorce from the central realities of practical 
 living, the insincerity of ministers In veiling from 
 the congregation the theological doubts aroused by 
 the " higher criticism " which they dare not express, 
 the circular monotony of the Scriptural exegesis 
 
342 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 which stands forever in the way of forthright dis- 
 cussion of the fortifying realities and possibilities of 
 sheer living. The university of to-day, in many 
 cases, far from being a pioneer in the advancement 
 of the frontier of art, staggering, strange, forward- 
 looking, remains the citadel of conservatism, the 
 stronghold of literary " stand-pattism," turning Its 
 eyes ceaselessly backward upon the acknowledged 
 literary masterpieces — these and these only — and 
 timidly shrinking from the bold task of assaying the 
 literary gold^of the future. 
 
 / *^n the spirit of the ancient Greeks, Shaw sees in 
 the theatre of to-day an Infinitely powerful instru- 
 mentality for popular education and social Instruc- 
 tion. Indeed, the theatre may even go further, and 
 / by popularizing great sociological, philosophical and 
 / religious ideas, exercise an almost incalculable effect 
 j upon the social morals of a whole people. It is 
 \ Shaw's basic conviction that the theatre of the future 
 \is in the hands of the sociological dramatist who 
 / may, if he but will, make It as important a social 
 1 institution as was the Church In the Middle Ages. 
 In so eminently sane a social worker as Jane Addams 
 he has won support for his belief that the theatre 
 of to-day exercises a greater influence in forming ac- 
 cepted codes of morals than does the Church, be- 
 cause, as Miss Addams puts it, the Church is so 
 " reluctant to admit conduct to be the supreme and 
 efficient test of religious validity." The theatre is 
 
 I 
 
BERNARD SHAW 343 
 
 a school of manners, of morals, both Individual and 
 social, exercising an influence that is none the less 
 powerful in that it is indirect. Indeed, the subtle 
 force of the comedies of Shaw is heightened 
 through the enjoyment which they give. The bitter 
 pill of the moralist is coated with the sugar 
 of the artist. Shaw does actually continue the 
 classic tradition of Moliere who said that a comedy 
 is nothing less than an ingenious poem which, in 
 agreeable lessons, portrays human weaknesses. 
 There is the deeper note In Shaw. He surpasses 
 Moliere as a moralist, because Moliere was a censor 
 of Individual vices whilst Shaw Is a censor of the 
 sociological evils arising from the structural defects 
 of modern society and modern civilization. 
 
 *' The apostolic succession from Eschylus to my- 
 self," Shaw has irreverently said, " Is as serious and 
 as continuously Inspired as that younger institution, 
 the apostolic succession of the Christian Church. 
 Unfortunately this Christian Church, founded gaily 
 with a pun, has been so largely corrupted by rank 
 satanIsm that It has become the Church where you 
 must not laugh; and so It Is giving away to that 
 older and greater Church to which I belong: the 
 Church where the oftener you laugh the better, be- 
 cause by laughter only can you destroy evil without 
 malice, and affirm good-fellowship without mawk- 
 ishness." The remarkable popular attention which 
 Shaw won as a dramatic critic was due in great 
 
344 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 measure not only to his trenchant satire but also to 
 the sincerity of his faith in the mission of the 
 theatre. He not only took the theatre seriously; he 
 actually preached about it as a " factory of thought, 
 a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of social 
 conduct, an armoury against despair and dullness, 
 and a temple of the Ascent of Man." 
 
 The Shaw who speaks of the " apostolic succes- 
 sion from Eschylus to myself " is giving expression 
 to the second fundamental conviction of his nature. 
 With the intimate knowledge of his character de- 
 rived during the years devoted to the infinitely com- 
 plex task of writing his biography, I am convinced 
 Shaw firmly believes in " inspiration " — in artistic 
 inspiration no less than In spiritual inspiration. 
 This view, which I have often heard him express 
 privately, he has recently expounded at length, in 
 answer to the request of the Modern Historic 
 Record Association to " define the principles that 
 govern the dramatist in his selection of themes and 
 methods of treatment." So illuminating is that 
 reply, so characteristic at once of the man, the 
 dramatist, and the economist, that I quote it here In 
 full: 
 
 " I am not governed by principles; I am inspired; 
 how or why I cannot explain because I do not know. 
 But inspiration it must be ; for It comes to me with- 
 out any reference to my own ends or Interests. 
 
 " I find myself possessed of a theme In the fol- 
 
BERNARD SHAW 345 / 
 
 lowing manner. I am pushed by a natural need to I 
 set to work to write down conversations that come i 
 into my head unaccountably. At first I hardly know I 
 the speakers, and cannot find names for them. Then j 
 they become more and more familiar; and I learn | 
 their names. Finally I come to know them very \ 
 well, and discover what it is they are driving at and 
 why they have said and done the things I have been 
 moved to set down. 
 
 ** This is not being * guided by principles'; it is 
 hallucination; and sane hallucination is what we call 
 play or drama. ... I do not select my methods: 
 they are imposed on me by a hundred considera- 
 tions: by the physical conditions of theatric repre- 
 sentation, by the laws devised by the municipality 
 to guard against fires and other accidents to which 
 theatres are liable, by the economic conditions of 
 theatrical commerce, by the nature and limits of the 
 art of acting, by the capacity of the spectators for 
 understanding what they see and hear, and by the 
 accidental circumstances of the particular production 
 in hand. 
 
 " I have to think of my pocket, of the manager's 
 pocket, of the actors' pockets, of the spectators' 
 pockets, of how long people can be kept sitting in 
 a theatre without relief or refreshments, of the 
 range of the performer's voice and of the hearing 
 and vision of the boy at the back of the gallery, 
 whose right to be put In full possession of the play 
 
346 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 is as sacred as that of the millionaire in the stalls 
 or boxes. ^ 
 
 " I have to consider theatre rents, the rate of in- 
 terest needed to tempt capitalists to face the risks 
 of financing theatres, the extent to which the magic 
 of art can break through commercial prudence, the 
 limits set by honor and humanity to the tasks I may 
 set to my fellow-artist the actor: in short, all the 
 factors that must be allowed for before the repre- 
 sentation of a play on the stage becomes practicable 
 or justifiable; factors which some never compre- 
 hend, and which others integrate almost as uncon- 
 sciously as they breathe or digest their food. 
 
 " It is these factors that dictate the playwright's 
 methods, leaving him so little room for selection 
 that there is not a pennyworth o' difference between 
 the methods of Sophocles or Shakspere and those 
 of the maker of the most ephemeral farce. 
 
 " And withal, when the play is made, the writer 
 must feed himself and his family by it. Indeed, 
 there are men and woman who are forced by this 
 necessity to simulate inspiration, repeating its ges- 
 tures and copying its tricks so as to produce arti- 
 ficial plays: constructed things with no true life in 
 them, yet sometimes more amusing than real plays, 
 just as a clockwork mouse is more amusing than a 
 real mouse, though it will kill the cat who swallows 
 it in good faith . . ." 
 
BERNARD SHAW 347 
 
 III 
 
 One of the most oddly significant commentaries 
 upon the Anglo-Saxon indifference to the great ideas 
 of the century whenever they are concretized into 
 the form of actable drama, is furnished by the amaz- 
 ing unanimity, on the part of dramatic critics in 
 both England and America, in denying the actual 
 existence of such an entity as the Shavian philosophy. 
 So irreparably is the average theatrical newsman, 
 by courtesy dubbed Dramatic Critic, divorced from 
 the real life of philosophy, ethics, politics, and soci- 
 ology ; so hopelessly is his critical perception warped 
 by the romantic conventions, senescent models, and 
 classic traditions of the stage, so entirely does he 
 breathe the air of box-office receipts, shine in the 
 reflected halo of " stars," or dwell in the unreal at- 
 mosphere of stage human nature, that when the new 
 truths of a new philosophy present themselves to 
 his judgment, his power to recognize them as valu- 
 able or even as truths, is irretrievably lost. And if 
 perchance the dramatist, accepting as a mere rhe- 
 torical question Horace's " Quamquam ridentem di- 
 cere verum quid vetat?", possesses the genius and 
 the hardihood to embody his profoundly serious 
 views of life in brilliantly witty and epigrammatic 
 expression, let him beware of the penalty of being 
 regarded as a frivolous and light-headed near-philos- 
 opher I 
 
348 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Stranger still, one might even venture to say al- 
 most remarkable, is the attitude of some of the 
 leading English and American dramatic critics, who 
 happen to be men of the world in the large sense, 
 thoroughly cosmopolitan in spirit. Mr. Walkley is 
 quite willing to admit that Bernard Shaw has let in 
 a fresh current of ideas upon the English drama; 
 and yet, in that airy manner of his with which he 
 brushes aside, but does not dispose of, real prob- 
 lems, he nonchalantly dubs those ideas the loose 
 ends of rather questionable German philosophy. 
 There seems little reason to doubt that Mr. Archer 
 was quite sincere in his expressed belief that Ber- 
 nard Shaw's philosophy may be picked up at any 
 second-hand bookstall. Mr. Huneker is by no 
 means unique in the opinion that Shaw's dramatic 
 characters are mere mouthpieces for the ideas o 
 Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Ibsen. 
 
 It might be imagined that the verdict of Conti 
 nental Europe, where so many of the most modern 
 conceptions, most vitally fecund ideas, originate and 
 flourish, would carry with it some weight of au- 
 thority. America inaugurated Shaw's world-renown 
 by recognizing in him a brilliant and witty person- 
 age who succeeded in entertaining the public through 
 the adventitious medium of the stage. It was not 
 until Shaw's plays swept from one end of Europe to 
 the other that Shaw came to be recognized abroad 
 as a man of ideas rather than a mere " theatre* 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
BERNARD SHAW 349 
 
 poet " ; indeed, as a genius of penetrative insight 
 and philosophic depth. Forced by the example of 
 America and Europe to recognize in Shaw a dra- 
 matist of Continental calibre and range, England at 
 last accorded to Shaw, the dramatist, the acknowledg- 
 ment so long and so discreditably overdue. Never- 
 theless, the English dramatic critics still continued to 
 refer Shaw's philosophy to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, 
 Ibsen, and Strindberg, " knowing nothing about 
 them," as Mr. Shaw once remarked to me, ^' except 
 that their opinions, like mine, are not those of The 
 Times or The Spectator.*^ 
 
 It is no less diverting to discover in European 
 critics an equal crassness of imagination in their 
 judgments of Shaw's temperament, his donnee, and 
 his ausschauung. AVhat a chimerical picture is this 
 painted by Regis MIchaud: "Feet on the earth 
 and head in the clouds, surrendering himself to the 
 pleasure of discussing the most poignant problems, 
 turning them, n9W this way, now that, to his gaze; 
 confounding on every hand, to render them the 
 more interesting, the social question and the woman 
 question; then, suddenly, as if so much reality bore 
 heavily upon him, after having given in his revolu- 
 tionary catechism the quintessence of his paradoxes, 
 free of all system, vanishing into Utopia — such is 
 Bernard Shaw, the philosopher." Whilst acknowl- 
 edging Shaw's precious gifts — his facile, natural and 
 brilliant dialogue, his faculty of painting human fig- 
 
350 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 ures in which observation and invention collaborate 
 in equal measure — Augustin Filon lamely con- 
 cludes : " Bernard Shaw would be a great dra- 
 matic author, perhaps, if only his plays were — 
 plays! " lt-M2sAsitJoz^Mmxi^P^^MM^tA9 find in 
 Shaw^a thoughtful conservator of social and religious 
 customV and to pronounce Candida a. ta.TdY, but bril- 
 liant, revenge of the traditional ideal on the new 
 ideal — " the victory of la femme. selon Titien over 
 the Scandinavian virago, this triumph of Candida 
 over Nora " ! Gaston Rageot makes the brilliant 
 discovery that Shaw functions under the influence of 
 Tolstoi — Tolstoi whose pet objurgation is the 
 Superman and the Gospel of Power ! The German, 
 Heinrich Stiimcke, declares that nil admirari is the 
 quintessence of Shaw — Shaw, whose life is spent in 
 ironic laughter of colossal wonderment at this entire 
 demented, moonstTuclc' world ! Tke Dane, Georg 
 Brandes, made the curiously provincial mistake of 
 attributing to the influence of Ibsen the social discon- 
 tent of Bernard Shaw who had been a vigorous So- 
 cialist propagandist for five years before he ever 
 heard pi Ibsen I Whilst the Italian, Mario Borsa, 
 at tTie topmost pitch of fatuity finds a rationalist pur 
 et simple ill Shaw — this Shaw who persists in re- 
 garding the reign of reason as vieux jeu, and has 
 declared again and again that man will always re- 
 main enslaved so long as he listens to the voice of 
 reason I 
 
BERNARD SHAW 351 
 
 While critics here and critics there have busied 
 themselves, either in discovering in Shaw qualities 
 he scorns to possess or else in indulging in elaborate 
 analyses of his incidental traits, the two or three 
 signal features which in themselves tend to explain 
 his temperament, and in a word to define his art, re- 
 main utterly disengaged and obscure. The pri mp 
 fjjct jyhichstamp s Shaw^s ^^rtinto close correspond- 
 ence wit ^llfe^ is the fundamental note oi^dmUur 
 sionment which iT^stTnckr-fear^assly and unf^^^^ 1 
 
 throughout the entire range of his' wdi'Tc. Just as all f 
 lifeTs an evolutionary process, and all progress fol- 
 lows vision clarified through the falling of the scales 
 from the eyes of the brain, so Shaw's drama is an 
 ordered sequence of pictured incidents in which pit- 
 falls are uncovered, illusions unmasked, and vital 
 secrets displayed. A profound student of human 
 existence through actual contact with many diverse 
 forms of life as it is actually lived to-day, and a 
 philosopher as well, with a powerful imaginative 
 grasp of social and sociological forms, Shaw sees 
 that progress is possible only through the persistent 
 discovery of mistaken conceptions of life and of so- 
 ciety. If, as philosophers affirm, error is only im- 
 perfect knowledge, then the discovery of vital truth 
 eventuates through that disillusioning process by 
 which, in some psychologically crucial instance or 
 dramatically potent conjuncture, we discover that 
 our ideals, our conventions, our social laws and our 
 
352 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 religious conceptions are inadequate either to meet 
 the facts or to solve the problems of life. Shaw is 
 so deeply impressed with the predominance of hu- 
 man activity which consists in the pursuits of illu- 
 sions that he does not hesitate to denominate it the 
 greatest force in the world. All the more reason, 
 then — since the majority of men are so constituted 
 that reality repels, while illusions attract them — 
 that the most succinct, most crystalline, most ener- 
 getic art be employed in combating this predominant 
 and pervasive force. It is not against the optimistic 
 and progressive illusions, those indispensable modes 
 of cloaking reality which possess the power to awake 
 man's helpful interest and to inspire his best efforts, 
 that Shaw directs his batteries of irony, of satire 
 and of wit. Dedicated to Socialism, he freely ad- 
 mits to be indispensable the transparent illusion of 
 the Socialist, who always sees Labor as a martyr 
 crucified between the two thieves of Capital, and 
 who maintains his enthusiasm at fever-heat by the 
 consciousness that the laborer is always a model of 
 thrift and sobriety, while the capitalist is a tyrant, 
 an assassin, and a scoundrel I Were Sociali& na-^em- 
 pelled to stand or fall upon the strejagtK.ajid sta- 
 bility of its economic structure alone, instead ^T 
 up^nTts illusive appeal to the passion of humanity 
 for, a cause, with the concomitant allurement of 
 impending revolution, its fate would Indubitably be 
 sealed! 
 
BERNARD SHAW 353 
 
 i It IS against those Individual and social IllusIonsA 
 treacherous, ensnaring, destructive — prejudices, 
 conventions, traditions, theological Incrustations, so- 
 cial petrifactions — that Shaw brings to bear all the 
 force of his trenchant and sagacious Intellect. 
 He sees the Individual involved In the social com- 
 plex, and powerless, as an Individual, to remedy his 
 lot. He sees In money the basis of modern society, 
 and attributes the slavery of the workers and of the 
 women to the omnipotence of capitalized wealth. 
 Modern society represents that phase in social evo- 
 lution which history will classify as the age of the 
 exploitation of man by man. Social determinism 
 Is the most tragic fact of contemporary life; and In- 
 dividual liberty. In most cases, amounts to little more 
 than a political fiction. Woman, In marriage. Is still 
 the slave of man; and romance Is only the pleasing 
 illusion which masks the relentless functioning of 
 the Life Force. Laugh as sardonically as we may, 
 we cannot blink the fact that Trench Is powerless to 
 resist the Sartorlus Idea, that Mrs. Warren Is the 
 victim of social extremity rather than the Instrument 
 of sexual passion, that Julia Is the slave of a social 
 convention. Barbara refuses longer to be the dupe ^ 
 of subsidized religion; Tanner Is strong-minded 
 enough for self-contempt In the disillusioning dis- 
 covery of that "vital lie,*' romance; and Candida 
 clarifies the preference of " natural Instinct " to 
 " duty " as a guide to conduct. Shaw's characters, 
 
354 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 /whether Involved in social labyrinths or confused by 
 conventional dogmas, break through to the light by 
 discovering their false allegiance to some stupid cur- 
 rent fiction or some baseless fabric of cheap ro- 
 mance. Gloria's armor of " Twentieth Century 
 Education " crumples up before the simple attacks 
 of natural impulse; Judith Anderson's la rmoya. nt 
 sentiment is dashed by the Nietzschean frankness of 
 Dick Dudgeon; and Brassbound recoils from him- 
 self in disgust in the realization of the romantic 
 puerility of his twopence colored ideas of revenge. 
 Shaw has freed himself from the illusions of pa- 
 triotism and fidelity to English social forms; and 
 he boasts that he is a ** good European " in the 
 Nietzschean sense — the true cosmopolitan in ideas. 
 Like Maurice Barres and Max Stirner, he is a fear- 
 less champion of the Ego; and hi^s. realism^ that 
 of Ibsen and of Stendhal, is the realism of the disil- 
 
 4usionist. 
 
 It is the custom of those who disagree with Shaw 
 to point out that his brilliant and logical demonstra- 
 tions of abuses and Illusions, if traced back step by 
 step to their origin, will bring us merely to some 
 perverse Idiosyncrasy of this wayward Irishman. 
 In short, as Mr. Walkley Is only too ready to indi- 
 cate, Shaw is a pure naif, falling into line with the 
 more engaging naifs of imaginative literature. " He 
 is as naturally benevolent as Mr. Pickwick, and as 
 explosively Indignant in what he considers a just 
 
BERNARD SHAW 355 
 
 cause as Colonel Newcome. With Uncle Toby he 
 conducts a whole plan of campaign on a quiet 
 bowling green, and with Don Quixote tilts at wind- 
 mills. He is as disputatious (though not so learned) 
 as the Abbe Colgnard, and when in the vein can 
 borrow the philosophic at arax y of Professor Ber- 
 geret" This method of disposing of Shaw on the 
 ground that he is a thoroughly good fellow, pas- 
 sionately but perversely championing futile causes 
 which he mistakenly regards as just and right, has 
 all the virtue of cleverness without the necessary 
 modicum of accuracy. The solid achievements of 
 Shaw's own career are the silent refutation of the 
 hons mots of the dilettante; and his international 
 fame rests. In chief measure, upon his generally rec- 
 ognized power to exhibit facts in all their stark 
 reality. The remarkable unity of his ideas despite 
 their superficial aspect of contrariety, his Inevitable 
 trait of applying the standard of his well-defined 
 philosophy to all facts, stamp him as a genuine phil- 
 osopher, concerned with the unities of the world 
 rather than with its diversities. Our greatest 
 i\merlcan philosopher, William James, once said to 
 me: "To me, Shaw's great service is the way he 
 brings home to the eyes, as It were, the difference^ 
 l^etween ' convention ' and * conscience,' and the way 
 he shows that you can tell the truth successfully if 
 you will only keep benignant enough while doing it." 
 If it be true that Shaw appears essentially simple and 
 
 N 
 
3S6 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 serious In mind and character, it is because, as Jean 
 Blum has acutely pointed out, he has succeeded in 
 freeing his mind from all contemporary prejudice, 
 has acquired the illimitable receptivity of the child, 
 and has effected the transition to that second state 
 of innocence out of which proceed real art and sim- 
 ple truth. It is in this sense, Indeed, that Shaw Is a 
 genuine naif. Just as disillusionment is the defining 
 quality of his art, naivete is the defining quality of 
 his fiemperament. Far be it from me, who have 
 revelled In many a quaint recital from his lips, to 
 deny his oddity, his idiosyncrasy, his naive charm. 
 Nor would I even balk at the statement that he loves, 
 for the sake of staggering his auditor, to proceed 
 logically to a conclusion from a highly questionable 
 premise. This is a quality of all highly imaginative 
 temperaments; and In Shaw's case, is thrown Into 
 high relief by the brilliance and facility of his logical 
 process. It Is a casual fault, not a defining quality, 
 of his art; and at the same time constitutes one of 
 the very real charms of his personality. Someone 
 has denominated Shaw a literary Peter Ban — a boy 
 who has never grown up In literature. This Is a 
 peculiarly pertinent characterization of one who finds 
 an " indescribable levity — something sprltelike — ■ 
 about the final truth of the matter "; and who once 
 said: "It Is the half-truth which Is congruous, 
 heavy, serious, and suggestive of a middle-aged or 
 elderly philosopher. The whole truth Is often the 
 
BERNARD SHAW 357 
 
 first thing that comes into the head of a fool or a 
 child; and when a wise man forces his way to it 
 through the many strata of his sophistications, its 
 wanton, perverse air reassures Instead of frighten- 
 ing him." Shaw is a literary Peter Pan; and he 
 takes the characterization as a very great compli- 
 ment. ** There was a time," Shaw once said, 
 " when I was a grown-up man — more grown-up 
 than anybody else. I was about eighteen at the 
 time." But he added : " It was not until I be- 
 came like Peter Pan that I was really worth any- 
 thing." 
 
 Bernard Shaw is primarily, as I have pointed • 
 out, a disillusionizing force, achieving his purpose 
 in great measure through the re-discovery of that 
 state of incarnate innocence from which stem great 
 works of art. Moreover, he frankly claims the 
 theatre, as Zola claimed the novel, for didactic pur- 
 poses; and makes so bold as to declare that the 
 man who believes in art for art's sake is " a fool, a 
 hopeless fool, and In a state of damnation." In his 
 conception, ajt should be employed for social, po- 
 litical^fnoral and religious ends. Art is one of the 
 greatest instrumentalities in the world for teaching 
 people to see and hear properly. " When I write 
 dramas," Shaw recently confessed, " what I really 
 do is to take the events of life out of the Irrelevant, \ 
 and show them In their spiritual and actual relation 
 to each other. I have to connect them by chains of 
 
358 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 reasoning, and to make bridges of feeling." When 
 M. Charles Chasse complained that Shaw's ideas 
 were so contradictory that he could construct no sat- 
 isfactory synthesis of his philosophy, Shaw replied: 
 " How French to wish to stick everything into 
 pigeonholes ! You find contradictions in my philos- 
 ophy? Very well — are there not contradictions in 
 life? I have expressed my ideas in groups on cer- 
 tain subjects in my different works. Ask no more 
 of me." M. Firmin Roz recently declared that 
 Shaw has ideas, but that he does not let them harden 
 and crystallize into a system: '* II les jette dans la 
 vie ou elles doivent vivre elles-memes comme des 
 ferments actifs." The apparent contrariety of ideas 
 in Shaw's works is one of the elements that tend, 
 not only to prevent comprehension of his purpose, 
 but even to prompt suspicion of the seriousness _af 
 his purpose. The other element springs from the 
 popular notion that wit and seriousness are two mu- 
 tually contradictory entities. The really inspired 
 man, in Shaw's opinion, is the man who brings you 
 to see that there are certain delusions you must sur- 
 render; that there are certain steps forward that 
 must be taken. Progress involves not only the sac- 
 rifice of certain obligations, but also the assumption 
 of other obligations. But let the serious reformer 
 dare to express his ideas in witty and paradoxical 
 form, and he must answer the charge, not simply of 
 being disagreeable, but also of being frivolous. The 
 
BERNARD SHAW 359 
 
 Anglo-Saxon, as M. Auguste Hamon maintains, is 
 racially incapable of intellectual virtuosity; and so 
 is " unable to understand the finesse and the height 
 of view of an ironical tale of Voltaire, a philosophic 
 drama by Rena.i, or a novel by Anatole France." 
 Had Shaw not given the pill of the " paper-apostle '* 
 in the jam of the " artist-magician," perhaps the 
 public would not have endorsed his message. Shaw 
 has always maintained that if he had told the Eng- 
 lish people the plain truth, unvarnished and un- / 
 adorned, he would have been burned at the stake! • 
 All the more reason, then, for prizing the witj^thie 
 humoTiJJie fancy, the epigram, the paradox, of this 
 intellectual virtuoso. Stevenson says somewhere: 
 " No art, it may be said, was ever perfect and not 
 many noble, that has not been mirthfully conceived.'l 
 Bernard Shaw is the most versatile and cosmopol- 
 itan genius in the drama of ideas that Great Britain 
 has yet produced. No juster or more significant 
 characterization can be made of this man than that 
 he is a penetrating and astute critic of contemporary 
 civilization. He is typical of this disquieting cen- 
 tury — with its intellectual brilliancy, its staggering 
 naTvete, its ironic nonsense, its devouring scepticism, 
 its profound social and religious unrest. The re- 
 lentless thinking, the large perception of the comic 
 which stamp this man, are interpenetrated with the 
 ironic consciousness of the twentieth century. The 
 note of his art is capitally moralistic; and he tern- 
 
A 
 
 360 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 pers the bitterness of _the disillusionl dose with the 
 effervescent appetizer of his brilliant wit. His phi- 
 losophy is the consistent integration of his empirical 
 criticisms of modern society and its present or- 
 ganization, founded on authority and based upon 
 capitalism. A true mystic, he sees in life, not the 
 fulfilment of moral laws, or the verification of the 
 deductions of reason, but the satisfaction of a pas- 
 felon In us of which we can give no account. 
 
 Evolution, In Shaw's view, is not a materialistic, 
 ut a mystical theory; and, after Lamarck and 
 Samuel Butler, he understands evolution, not as the 
 senseless raging of blind mechanical forces with an 
 amazing simulation of design, but as the struggle 
 of a creative Will or Purpose, which he calls the 
 Life Force, towards higher forms of life. Social- 
 ism is the alpha and omega of his life. He believes 
 in will, engineered by reason, because he sees in it 
 the only real instrument for the achievement of So- 
 cialism. Like all pioneers in search of an El 
 Dorado, he has found something quite different from 
 the original object in mind. Indeed, in his search 
 for freedom of will, he has really succeeded In dis- 
 covering three checks and limitations to Its opera- 
 tion; and he has long since abandoned the paradox 
 of free will. For he has discovered, as first limi- 
 tation, the iron law of personal responsibility to be 
 the alternative to the golden rule of personal con- 
 duct. Second, the desirability of the sacrifice of the 
 
BERNARD SHAW 361 
 
 individual will to the realization of the general 
 good of society through the progressive evolution 
 of the race. And third, the personal, tempera- 
 mental restriction which forbids him to accept any- 
 thing as true, to take any action, to allow any free 
 play to his will which would seriously militate 
 against the progressive advance of collectivism. He 
 has achieved the remarkable distinction of embrac- 
 ing collectivism without sacrificing individualism, of 
 preaching Intellectual anarchy without Ignoring the 
 claims of the Collective Ego. f 
 
 In Bernard Shaw rages the daemonic, half-insen- 
 sate intuition of a Blake, with his seer's faculty for 
 Inverted truism ; while the close, detective cleverness 
 of his Ironic paradoxes demonstrates him to be a 
 Becque upon whom has fallen the mantle of a Gil- 
 bert. In the limning of character, the mordantly 
 revelative ^-strokes of a Hogarth prove him to be a 
 realist of satiric portraiture. The enticingly auda- 
 cious Insouciance of a Wilde, with his nonchalant 
 wit and easy epigram, is united with the exquisite 
 effrontery of a Whistler, with his devastating jeux 
 d'esprit and the ridentem dicere verum. If Shaw 
 is a Celtic Moliere de nos jours, it Is a Mollere in 
 whom comedy stems from the individual and tragedy 
 from society. If Shaw is the Irish Ibsen, It is a 
 laughing Ibsen — looking out upon a half-mad 
 world with the riant eyes of a Heine, a Chamfort, 
 or a Sheridan. 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
I 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 Many years ago, Matthew Arnold pleaded for 
 the organization of the theatre in England — the 
 irresistible theatre, as he so optimistically called 
 it. For the past twenty years, tentative and grop- 
 ing steps, now this way, now that, have been di- 
 rected towards this visionary goal. England may 
 be the most conservative country in the world. 
 Englishmen may be proud of their ability to " mud- 
 dle through somehow.'' Once let a great creative 
 and basically fruitful conception take shape in their 
 minds, and then their perseverance and dogged de- 
 termination brook no obstacle until their object is 
 fully attained. By the year 191 6 we may expect the 
 beginning, at least, of the consummation of that 
 great project for a national theatre, in commemora- 
 tion of William Shakspere, which will place Great 
 Britain abreast of the great nations of the world in 
 the domain of the theatre. If the patient, arduous 
 and unremitting efforts of the adherents and sup- 
 porters of the drama, in its highest and most original 
 forms, are taken as criteria, we may confidently look 
 forward to a not distant future when the repertory 
 idea shall have found realization in stable practice, 
 
 36s 
 
366 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 when the brilliant and original efforts of the drama- 
 tists of the new school shall have won the permanent 
 support of the British public. 
 
 Whenever a creative movement, In no matter what 
 field of human activity, is forward, and is tri- 
 umphantly hailed as '' new," the public is inclined 
 to regard It with a certain amount of reserve, if 
 not with suspicion and distrust. And when, besides, 
 this " new " movement comes into existence as a 
 form of revolt against existent conditions, the public 
 is all the more inclined to say : *' All right. Go 
 ahead. But you must meet the tests of the com- 
 mercial theatre. You must create your public, or at 
 least show that there is a submerged public ready 
 to support you. Make good If you can. But don't 
 expect to achieve permanent results by counting 
 solely on popular sympathy." 
 
 The New Drama In England to-day, with Ber- 
 nard Shaw and Granville Barker as Its leading ex- 
 ponents. Is essentially an experimental school. 
 From the beginning, every effort has pointed toward 
 fresh extensions of sense in the field of the drama. 
 Freedom for the exercise of dramatic talents is 
 posited as the fundamental pre-requisite for the 
 healthy development of the drama. The exponents 
 of the new school have sought above all things to 
 free themselves from the confining restrictions of the 
 drama, and to express themselves unreservedly — in 
 idea. In form — regardless of whether the result 
 
 ^ 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 367 
 
 seemed " dramatic " or not. These ideals brought 
 them into conflict — an irrepressible conflict — with 
 two established traditions — the commercial theatre, 
 and the censorship. From the first, it was apparent 
 that the long-run system of the commercial theatre 
 was fatal to the chances of the new dramatist. His 
 public was destined to be, not the ** great public,'* 
 but a '' lesser public,'* in part composed of intelli- 
 gent theatre-goers, in part of people who have ceased 
 to encourage the banalities and falsities of the 
 theatre of commerce, in part of a new quota of the 
 human throng. Moreover, it soon became appar- 
 ent that if the drama was to flourish, if new talent 
 was to burgeon and blossom, if the path was to be 
 made clear for the experimentalist, the first and 
 most imperative necessity was the abolition, or at 
 least radical modification, of the censorship. Not 
 less essential — for it had nothing to do with mere 
 institutional bars — was the desire to create, not 
 simply strikingly new modes of stage entertainment, 
 but works of art that would bear the test of publica- 
 tion. There was the thrust toward utter realism 
 — the ambition to create a drama that would wear 
 the drab, as well as the brilliant garments of life 
 itself. 
 
 It was Bernard Shaw who initiated the New 
 Drama twenty years ago with Widowers^ Houses. 
 The Independent Theatre, inaugurated by Mr. J. T. 
 Grcin, failed in its effort, as did the New Century 
 
368 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Theatre, to bring to the fore a group of budding 
 dramatists. But it was the immediate cause of en- 
 ticing Bernard Shaw into the field of dramatic au- 
 thorship. Mr. Grein demanded evidence of the 
 latent dramatic talent in England which only needed 
 the offer of a field for its display. Shaw claimed to 
 have manufactured the evidence; and that claim 
 has been made good in the great capitals, and on 
 the great stages, of the world. In The Author's 
 Apology, prefixed to the Dramatic Opinions and Es- 
 says (English Edition), Shaw especially insists that 
 those dramatic criticisms were " not a series of 
 judgments aiming at impartiality, but a siege laid 
 to the theatre of the Nineteenth Century by an au- 
 thor who had to make his own way into it at the 
 point of the pen, and throw some of its defenders 
 into the moat." Shaw was accused of unfairness 
 and Intolerance as a critic of the drama, of the intent 
 to stifle native dramatic talent with forcible con- 
 demnation. When Shaw vigorously charged PInero, 
 Jones and others with failure, he was simply charg- 
 ing them with failure to come his way and do what 
 he wanted. " I postulated as desirable a certain 
 kind of play In which I was destined ten years later 
 to make my mark as a playwright (as I very well 
 foreknew In the depth of my own unconsciousness) ; 
 and I brought everybody, authors, actors, managers, 
 to the one test: were they coming my own way or 
 staying in the old grooves? '' He baldly attempted 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 369 
 
 " the institution of a new art," in which the dra- 
 matist could give the freest play to his own original- 
 ity; and foresaw as result a new and hybrid drama 
 — part narrative, part homily, part description, 
 part dialogue, and part drama (in the conventional 
 sense). In the days that have followed such pro- 
 nouncement the English stage has been enriched by 
 such original, such powerful, such unique plays as 
 Major Barbara, Getting Married, The Foysey In- 
 heritance, and The Madras House — hybrids all 
 perhaps, analytical and dialectical, strained and in 
 some cases repellant — but marked by a mysterious 
 novelty, the sign manual of genius. 
 
 The next significant step In the slow glacier-like 
 movement toward the creation of a native drama of 
 spontaneous art and the establishment of a national 
 theatre that would worthily represent the national 
 genius, is found in the establishment of the Stage 
 Society, of London. At first its ambition was the 
 very modest one of giving private performances, 
 on Sunday afternoons, in studios and such other 
 places as might prove available. The scheme found 
 enthusiastic supported among people of rather aim- 
 less intellectual tastes, who eagerly sought in the 
 performace of the Stage Society a " refuge from the 
 dulness of the English Sunday.'' As the society 
 grew in strength and numbers, the performances 
 came to be given in theatres — permissible when no 
 admission fee was charged. After a time, the 
 
370 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Sunday performance was generally followed by an- 
 other performance on Monday afternoon. The 
 Stage Society thus became the logical successor of 
 the Independent Theatre, founded some ten years 
 before; and while it has always remained a theatre 
 a cote, the importance of Its work In fostering latent 
 dramatic genius cannot be too strongly emphasized. 
 It was founded In 1899, and during thirteen 
 seasons (to 191 1) produced forty-six English 
 plays, and twenty-odd plays by continental dram- 
 atists. With seven exceptions, these plays were 
 produced by the society for the first time on the 
 English stage. In its very first season It produced 
 Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell and Candida, 
 Maeterlinck's Interieiir and La Mort de Tintagiles, 
 Hauptmann's Das Friedensfest and Henrik Ibsen's 
 The League of Youth, In Its second season It pro- 
 duced Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion, 
 Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen, and Ibsen's The 
 Pillars of Society. In its third season were pro- 
 duced The Lady from the Sea, and The Marrying 
 of Anne Leete, the latter a remarkable play by a new 
 dramatic author, H. Granville Barker. It Is need- 
 less to enumerate the great modern dramas, chiefly 
 drama.S-u£jiifiiight and of purpo ^se, which have been 
 produced by the Stage Society during the remaining 
 years up to to-day. Suffice It to say that the Stage 
 Society has played in England, though In a somewhat 
 less conspicuous way, the role which has been played 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 371 
 
 on the continent by the Theatr^Libre, L'CJjgrc, 
 and the Frele Biihne. From it came Bern^rcf^*"^'' 
 Shaw — and Granville Barker — soon to be united 
 in an enterprise at the Court Theatre which is with- 
 out a parallel In the history of the Engllshjtage^ 
 From that fecuiidTschool of drama came also the late. 
 StJbha_Jiay[ikIn, a dramatist of rare promise, and 
 Mr. John Galsworthy, the author of the original 
 and powerful dramas, Strife and Justice, 
 
 The Repertory Theatre idea has gained a firm 
 footing in England; and to-day bids fair to go for- . 
 ward slowly to a more permanent and enduring 
 establishment. In 1898 was founded the Irish 
 Literary Theatre, under the auspices of the Na- 
 tional Literary Society, founded by Mr. W. B. 
 Yeats seven years before. That energetic woman 
 who played the mysterious ** angel " to the Avenue 
 Theatre production of Shaw's Arms and the Man 
 in 1894, Miss A. E. F. Horniman, may fitly be 
 described as the mother of repertory in England. 
 Largely through her efforts has come into being the 
 Abbey Theatre, the repertory theatre of Ireland — 
 the only theatre in an English-speaking country, said 
 Mr. W. B. Yeats in 1908, '* that is free for a cer- 
 tain number of years to play what it thfnks worth 
 playing, and to whistle at the timid." The experi- f 
 ment of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Barker at the Court/ 
 Theatre, of which I shall speak later, showed the/ 
 way to the true repertory, of which it was, techJ 
 
372 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 nically, not a perfect example. At Manchester in 
 1907, the first true repertory theatre In Great 
 Britain was established by Miss Hornlman. The 
 experimental theatres at Stockport, Glasgow, Edin- 
 burgh and Liverpool are all healthy manifestations 
 of the new movement towards Citizens' Theatres on 
 repertory lines In modified forms. Mr. Charles 
 Frohman's season of repertory at the Duke of 
 York's Theatre (1909-19 10), London, is the first 
 sign, though of doubtful success, of the effort to 
 plumb the commercial possibilities of the repertory 
 system. In his recent book on the Repertory The- 
 atre, Mr. P. P. Howe says of Mr. Frohman's some- 
 what Inconclusive experiment: 
 
 " It Is a step on the road. The seemly and re- 
 quisite thing for the State to do Is to elevate the 
 drama above the chances of commerce, as Smollett 
 in common with most thinking persons saw a cen- 
 tury and a half ago, as nearly every European coun- 
 try has already done, and as this country will 
 do in something much less than a century and 
 a half. But the business of a National Theatre 
 is primarily with the classical repertory of plays. 
 Mr. Frohman's theatre, pointing as it does to en- 
 dowment, points equally clearly along the line of 
 individual experiment, which will always be the path 
 of the advancing drama. The next step on this 
 road is clear. A theatre combining convenience of 
 site with a rent only moderately extortionate, fore- 
 
 4 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 373 
 
 going the unnecessary complication of expensive 
 stars, and keeping a clear eye on the public it would 
 serve may be set going In London to-morrow with 
 satisfactory pecuniary profit. A certain definite 
 public Is now made familiar with the repertory idea, 
 and to convert this public Into a large, convinced, and 
 permanent public for good drama Is a mere matter 
 of persistence. . .'. The good play-goer will be 
 created by good drama, but It Is not to be forgotten 
 that the good play-goer also exists and Is awaiting a 
 theatre worth his while." — \ 
 
 The crown of the Stage SocIety^s achle vement^^s t-Jwu 
 Mr. William Archer once expressed it, was the ' 
 presentation of Mr. H. Granville Barker to the 
 world of dramatic art in England. Much has been 
 written about Mr. Shaw, his genius, career, and in- 
 fluence upon contemporary drama. Little enough, 
 strange to say, has been written about Mr. Barker, 
 with his strange, austere talent, his anti-sentimental 
 and chiselled art, his complicated simplicity in tech.- 
 nlque, his almost fierce contempt for the normal 
 relations of average, everyday life. A few people 
 nowadays are beginning eagerly to claim him as 
 the one true dramatist — and English withal — of 
 the movement. Though born (1877) In Kensing- 
 ton, the curiously complex strains in his ancestry are 
 almost everything racial but English: Scotch, Welsh, 
 Italian, Portuguese, and even a trace, perhaps, of the 
 Jew. 
 
374 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 /Almost from birth he seemed destined for the 
 theatre. As Shaw learned from his mother, a well- 
 known singer, the secrets of enunciation which so 
 greatly aided him later as a platform speaker, so 
 Barker learned from his mother, a well-known re- ■[ 
 . citer, the art of speaking and reciting. At seven, 
 he was already proficient In expression; and at the 
 age of thirteen, though callow In the extreme, he 
 was shot Into the theatre — to hit or miss as fate, 
 or his own genius, might decree. His education, in 
 the conventional sense, then abruptly ceased and to 
 this circumstance perhaps Is due his Intolerance of 
 , the academic, and his conviction that the only great 
 -^school of art Is life. He served a rather severe ap- 
 prenticeship to the stage between his thirteenth and 
 his seventeenth years ; but he was not to attract public 
 notice until several years later. Then he came Into 
 prominence in connection with the Stage Society — 
 as actor, as producer, and as author. His own play. 
 The Marrying of Ann Leete, which he produced, 
 awoke the thoughtful attention and appreciative 
 criticism of such men as Mr. Shaw, Mr. William 
 Archer, and Mr. Arthur Symons. In Shawns Can- 
 dida he achieved a memorable effect In the part of 
 Marchbanks; his Impersonation of Richard II at 
 an Elizabethan Stage Society performance helped 
 also to mark him out as a brilliant actor. Much 
 might be written about his art as an actor; for It 
 is Impossible to say how much his art as a dramatist 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 375 
 
 owes to his skill as a player. It was In 1904 that 
 Mr. Barker first came Into association with the Court 
 Theatre. Mr. J. H. Leigh, with Mr. J. E. 
 Vedrenne as manager, was giving a series of credita- 
 ble Shaksperean revivals at the Court Theatre 
 and he Invited Mr. Barker to produce The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, This production, in which 
 Mr. Barker played the part of Launce, was a 
 marked success ; and the first result of his association 
 with Mr. Vedrenne was a series of six matinee per- 
 formances of Candida, The final outcome was the 
 Vedrenne-Barker management of the Court Theatre 
 from 1904 to 1907. 
 
 Throughout this time, Mr. Barker took a leading 
 part In a number of the plays which he produced; 
 and this he continued to do in the subsequent pro- 
 ductions at the Savoy Theatre. In 1904, Mr. 
 Barker had produced for the New Century Theatre, 
 under Mr. Vedrenne's management. Professor Gil- 
 bert Murray's ^' spiritual " translation of the Hip- 
 poly tus of Euripides; and it was partly their asso- 
 ciation In this successful experiment that led to the 
 Court Theatre enterprise. Had it not been for 
 the " new " drama, Mr. Barker would probably, as 
 he once told me, have left the stage entirely — 
 though he felt a strong sense of mastery in Shak- 
 sperean parts. His performances in his own and 
 Shaw's plays, notably In Waste, Man and Superman, 
 and The DeviVs Disciple, were regarded as triumphs 
 
376 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 in the new style of acting. Had there been reper- 
 tory in England, he would doubtless have remained 
 on the stage. Despite the fact that he is ac- 
 casionally seen on the boards, he has definitely 
 abandoned the actor's career. His talent finds 
 scope for display in two directions, stage-manage- 
 ment and dramatic authorship. The close of the 
 Vedrenne-Barker season at the Savoy marked his 
 definite severance from the stage as an actor, al- 
 though he has often won success on the boards since 
 that time. During recent years he has devoted his 
 best talents to theatre-management. 
 
 To show the regard in which his work as an 
 actor was held, I need only cite the words of the 
 Spectator which appeared at the time of his " retire- 
 ment " from the stage. The writer recognized Mr. 
 Barker not alone as an alert and subtle interpreter of 
 character, a master in the art of suggestion, an in- 
 tellectual actor dominating his audience by skill 
 rather than by force. " One of the principal 
 causes of his artistic success is that he can mingle 
 intellect with fancy, and his acting is often at its 
 sprightliest when it is most significant. He pos- 
 sesses in a high degree the indefinable quality of 
 charm — a quality which he displays at its fullest 
 perhaps in his rendering of Valentine in You Never 
 Can Tell, and in the delightful third act of The 
 Doctor^s Dilemma. More than any other English 
 actor, he can * put the spirit of youth into every- 
 
 1 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 377 
 
 thing,' so that the whole scene becomes charged with 
 high spirits — with Mr. Barker the art and in- 
 genuity are there, but they are softened and ethereal- 
 ized by a perpetual flow of English humour and 
 English imagination." 
 
 Of that remarkable experiment at the Court Thea- 
 tre, I would refer the reader in especial to its re- 
 corded history written by Mr. Desmond MacCarthy. 
 The companies trained by Mr. Barker, both at 
 the Court Theatre and, subsequently, at the Savoy 
 (September, 1907-March 14, 1908) wrought some- 
 thing very like a revolution in the art of dramatic 
 production in England. The unity of tone, the sub- 
 ordination of the individual, the genuine striving 
 for totality of effect, the constant changes of bill, 
 the abolition of the **Star " system — all were note- 
 worthy features of these undertakings. There were 
 given 985 performances of thirty-two plays by 
 seventeen actors; 701 of these performances were 
 of eleven plays by one author, Mr. Shaw. Plays 
 of other authors were produced — and often with 
 striking success ; but in the main the whole undertak- 
 ing may be regarded as a Shaw Festspiel, prolonged 
 over three years. Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Hankin, 
 Mr. Masefield, Miss Elizabeth Robins, and Mr. 
 Barker — all came strongly into public notice. The 
 Court was not in the strict sense a repertory theatre ; 
 rather It furnished a tentative compromise between 
 the theatre a cote and the actor-managed theatre^ 
 
378 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 backed by a syndicate of capitalists. As Mr. Barker 
 ^sald: "The first thing we did was to struggle 
 against the long-run system, partly because we 
 wanted to produce a lot of plays, and partly be- 
 cause we disagreed with It. It is bad for plays and 
 bad for acting." In March, 1909, Mr. Barker pro- 
 duced a series of matinees of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 Strife at the Duke of York's Theatre; and during 
 the season of 1909-19 10 we find him actively en- 
 , gaged for the repertory season of Mr. Charles Froh- 
 ' man at the same theatre — producing his own plays 
 The Madras House and Prunella, among others. 
 Mr. Barker was offered in 1907 the post of director 
 of the New Theatre in New York — a convincing 
 proof that he had made a great reputation as a 
 producer; but his conception of the theatre int'tme 
 as the Indispensable setting for the modern drama 
 precluded his acceptance of the proffered director- 
 ship of the New Theatre, because of its grandiose 
 proportions. After his return from an Inspection 
 of the New Theatre, he freely predicted its fail- 
 ure. The admirable book he wrote in collab- 
 oration with Mr. Archer, Plans and Estimates 
 for a National Theatre, points forward to a future 
 National Memorial to Shakspere in the shape of 
 a great theatre, supported by private endow- 
 ment, and comprehensively representative in char- 
 acter. 
 
 In the face of these multifarious activities, and 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 379 
 
 many that I have omitted to mention — as actor, 
 as producer, as author, as builder and Inspirer — 
 Mr. Barker all the while was persisting In a strenu- 
 ous course of straightforward drudgery in the effort 
 to educate himself as a dramatist. In 1893, he be- 
 gan regularly to write plays; and In that year was 
 produced his first drama — a play in which Mr. 
 Barker and some amateur actors appeared before 
 a '' most select audience." Though the plays of 
 this early period were amateurish and Inexpert, they 
 exhibited the instinct of the born craftsman. They 
 were, as Mr. Barker expressed It, " stage-tight " — 
 much as one would describe a box as water-tight: 
 they played themselves, on the stage, before an 
 audience. Shortly after turning dramatist, Mr. 
 Barker began to write plays regularly In collabora- 
 tion with Mr. Berte Thomas; and during the next 
 six years these two wrote. In conjunction, some five 
 or six plays. Only one of these plays, The 
 Weather-Hen, actually saw the light. The moder- 
 ate success it enjoyed was well deserved. By this 
 time Mr. Barker had worked free of derivative In- 
 fluences; and this play showed Itself spontaneous in 
 treatment, genuine In expression. 
 
 All these efforts can only be called promising 
 tentatlves. They have no significance for the pub- 
 lic; and are merely Important as successive links in 
 the evolution of Mr. Barker's genius as a crafts- 
 man. In The Marrying of Ann Leete, produced by 
 
38o EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 the Stage Society at the Royalty Theatre, January 
 26, 1902, Mr. Barker made his first serious bid for 
 wide recognition. It registers, on his part, a serious 
 and sincere effort to *' find himself" — to discover 
 an inevitable medium In dramatic expression which 
 
 ! would remain permanently associated with his name. 
 
 ; With all Its peculiar originality, its almost unpre- 
 
 j cedented novelty of technique. It failed of its pur- 
 
 I pose, not for lack of meaning, but for excess of 
 
 ^ffieanlngs. 
 
 r If there is one outstanding feature of Mr. Barker's 
 talent, which grows more evident with each new 
 play, It is the scope, the social perspective, of his 
 
 I anecdote. This play, laid at the end of the eight- 
 eenth century. Is not concerned merely with the fate 
 and destiny of particular individuals : Its theme is the 
 moral, and physical, degeneration of a family. An 
 air of languorous corruption, of polite blackguardism 
 hangs, like a miasma, over the scene. Mr. Carnaby 
 Leete, a brilliant, but utterly unscrupulous politician, 
 dexterously " stacking the cards '' for his own ad- 
 vancement without regard to party fealty, personal 
 loyalty or honor. Is a remarkable figure — one of 
 the most remarkable figures Mr. Barker has ever 
 projected. There Is one other remarkable feature 
 of this play — the technique. Indeed It may be re- 
 garded as an unsuccessful experiment In technique. 
 The action — If the static picture of a family In the 
 final stages of polite corruption can be called " ac- 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 381 
 
 tion " — IS conveyed by a species of Incoherent 
 volubility, a sort of brilliant Indirection that is all 
 but illuminating. The disjecta membra of vaguely 
 significant conversations fall about us like hail-stones; 
 we experience a sense of suppressed excitement in 
 tracking down some elusive secret to its hidden lair. 
 But that is as far as Mr. Barker got — the sugges- 
 tively cryptic. Already we see him employing 
 woman as the embodiment of an abstract Idea — the ; 
 woman boldly entangling the good-natured but dense 
 philanderer in her carefully devised snare. The 
 sense of grossness comes strongly upon one In the 
 finale — this eugenic, but unnatural, solution of mat- 
 ing the over-civilized and devitalized woman with 
 the coarse but pure-blooded man. It is that same 
 oppressive and heavy atmosphere of sex communi- 
 cated to us by James Lane Allen's Butterflies — A 
 Tale of Nature, And we realize in the ending, not 
 a natural nor even a morbid impulse — but a strictly 
 sociologic motive which might have occurred to 
 Westermarck, but never to Ann Leete ! " Mr. 
 Barker can write," says Mr. Arthur Symons in a 
 contemporary account of the play. ... " He| 
 brings his people on and off with an unconventionallty 
 which comes of knowing the resources of the thea- 
 tre, and of being unfettered by the traditions of its 
 technique. . . . Mr. Barker, In doing the right or 
 the clever thing, does it just not quite strongly enough I 
 to carry it against opposition. . . . The artist, who 
 
382 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Is yet an imperfect artist, bewilders the world with 
 what Is novel In his art; the great artist convinces 
 the world. Mr. Barker . . . will come to think 
 with more depth and less tumult; he will come to 
 work with less prodigality and more mastery of 
 means. But he has energy already, and a sense of 
 what is absurd and honest In the spectacle of this 
 game, in which the pawns seem to move them- 
 selves." 
 
 Mr. Barker has recently said that, in his opinion, 
 " the Theatre — with music — Is marked out as the 
 art of the immediate future, of the next hundred 
 years." The prophecy called up to my mind an 
 endless series of plays with Prunella as forerunner. 
 That beautiful hybrid — in which collaborated a 
 skilled technician and keen thinker, a poet, and a 
 musician — Is one of the most tender and gracefully 
 conceived plays I can recall. With all Its airy fancy, 
 It contrives to embody a wealth of real meaning that 
 creeps close to the heart of everyone. It is cut from 
 the same pattern, and was doubtless Influenced by, 
 Rostand's Les Romanesques — that fanciful Wat- 
 teau picture of love, life, disillusion and reconcile- 
 ment, which takes place " anywhere so the scenery 
 is attractive," In which the people dress as they 
 please " provided the costumes are pretty." 
 This Pierrot, with his rollicking, rackety band 
 of gay mummers, is French In conception, 
 but English In execution — lacking In the Gallic 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 383 
 
 subtlety but instinct with an insouciance, a playful 
 naivete, that is quaintly English. Through the eyes 
 of his familiar, Scaramel, the blase and the unllluded 
 we see Pierrot as the world's mad truant — lyrically 
 in pursuit of a bright happiness that is all self-grati- 
 fication. He is a graceful tyro in the poetic art of 
 living — with no regret for the past, no thought for 
 the morrow. Into Prunella's garden he trips with 
 many a dextrous and insinuating pose, awakes love 
 in her heart, and, as by a miracle of hallucination, 
 transforms her into — Pierrette. The statue speaks 
 to these twain its oracle of " Love whose feet shall 
 outrun time " — and the lovers rapturously flee from 
 this prim garden of the rectangular virtues into a 
 wide world of blue moonlight and many stars. A 
 little space — and the once gay Pierrot, now in fu- 
 nereal black, returns to the garden, overgrown and 
 choked with autumn leaves, to mourn for the lost 
 Pierrette. Life has caught him In Its snare; he for- 
 got the little Pierrette when he was upon his travels, 
 and when he returned he found her no more. In 
 agonized accents, he calls despairingly beneath her 
 window: "Are you there, little bird, are you there? ", 
 while Scaramel ever stands at his elbow like a symbol 
 of world-weariness, of disillusion, of despair. In an- 
 swer to his passionate petition. Love speaks, to show 
 him his folly; and he drinks the bitter cup. But 
 Pierrette, In tatters, yet still tender and true, has 
 found her way, also, back to the garden of true love. 
 
384 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Life takes them by the hand, and re-unltes them in 
 the new bond of a perfected love. 
 
 From this time forward, Mr. Barker begins to 
 " take his stride." The Voysey Inheritance marks 
 a new departure. We now recognize in him a 
 " new " dramatist in a very real sense — a dramatist 
 with original and clear-cut ideas, unconfined by the 
 ** restrictions " of. dramatic art, and firm-poised in 
 his conception of the limitless possibilities of drama. 
 He protests creatively against the professor of 
 criticism and the sophisticated playgoer, who are only 
 too ready with the unthinking and prejudiced: 
 " Oh, yes, clever enough in its way — but not a play." 
 He deliberately sets himself the arduous task of 
 creating a drama of " normal human interest " — not 
 to capture the fancy of the hardened playgoer or to 
 tickle the palate of the professional critic, but to win 
 
 t the intelligent interest of the normal man and woman. 
 
 V " The English theatre, for heaven knows how 
 rnany years,'* he said in 1908, " has diligently driven 
 out everybody over the age of twenty-five — I speak, 
 at any rate, mentally, for there are plenty of people 
 with grey hairs who will never be more than twenty- 
 five. And you have got to give what you can call, in 
 the strict sense of the word, an Intelligent and amus- 
 ing entertainment, before you can get these people 
 back. When youVe done that you've done all that 
 you can do for the English theatre." The profes- 
 sional playgoer wants "the same old game" year 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 
 
 38S 
 
 after year — romantic love, thrills, scenes a faire, 
 " curtains,'* dramatic tangles dextrously unwound, 
 handsome men and beautiful women, exquisite scen- 
 ery, magnificent costumes. Mr. Barker posits a 
 drama of large humane concern, dealing sincerely 
 and naturally with normal human life, which shall 
 possess the Indispensable qualification of Interesting 
 an audience. It Is this which he has given us In the 
 remarkable play, The Voysey Inheritance, 
 
 Here again, as in the case of The Marrying of 
 Ann Leete, Mr. Barker reveals a mastery in scope 
 and perspective. It presents analogies to a novel of 
 Balzac, rather than to a drama of Ibsen — is rather 
 more like a section of the Comedie Humaine laid on 
 English soil, than like a representation of such a 
 bourgeois family episode as that of the house of 
 Bernick, or of Borkman. It goes to the root of a 
 problem which seems, somehow, peculiar to English 
 life — the utter dependence of a family upon a set- 
 tled source of income from cons»ervatIve investment. 
 After the manner of his kind, Mr. Voysey has jug- 
 gled with the funds entrusted to his care in the 
 conduct of a great business; has robbed Peter to pay 
 Paul; continues to do It, not simply to retrieve the 
 losses, but latterly almost as a matter of course — his 
 " right " as a shrewd financier. When he dies sud- 
 denly, his son Edward, upon whom the revelation of 
 his father's and perhaps grandfather's, peccadilloes 
 has come with a devastating shock, finds that he 
 
386 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 must take up this loathly burden — the Voysey In- 
 heritance. With an acute sense of honor, a set of ■ 
 high (as well as hard and fast) principles, he shrinks 
 back in horror from the prospect of all the lying and 
 shuffling, the trickery and deception that will be re- 
 quired of him. In solemn conclave the entire fam- 
 ily is informed of the situation; and in one of the 
 most remarkably natural scenes on the modern stage, 
 each character and personality standing out with 
 cameo-like distinctness, the sensitive Edward finds 
 that all, even Alice, the woman he loves, are against 
 him. Character, individual temperament and preju- 
 dice speak with entire clearness in the decision of 
 each. And when Alice, with well-aimed words, 
 brings his high-flown principles wounded and crip- 
 pled to the ground, Edward begins to feel at last 
 that fate has marked him out — for better or for 
 worse, he must rid himself of " morality," " prin- 
 ciple," and " duty," and sacrifice personal niceties 
 of feeling in the sincere if Jesuitical effort to help to 
 right, by questionable means, a great wrong. In 
 the event, the grasping old Booth, a lifelong friend 
 of the family, demands his money from the firm, 
 for re-Investment elsewhere, and — the secret Is out I 
 We are left in fine doubt as to the outcome — we 
 only know that old Booth has revealed the secret, 
 and suspect that the crash is Inevitable. Edward, 
 fortified at last by the consciousness that he has done 
 all that was possible to set matters straight and to 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 387 
 
 undo the things which his father did, faces the future 
 with brave heart. The solution of a great ethical 
 problem in terms that contravene conventional con- 
 ceptions of morality, and the support of Alice, have 
 made a man out of a coward. If he must go to 
 prison, he will go proud and strong — in the con- 
 sciousness that he has done the right, and that Alice 
 will be proud of him. 
 
 . The Voysey Inheritance is a work of genius — 
 priginal, deeply conceived. It is a fine type of the 
 bourgeois drama — what George Eliot called a 
 scene from private life " — which Ibsen, in play 
 after play, brought to such a high pitch of technical 
 perfection. Its most remarkable feature, as Mr. 
 Desmond MacCarthy has pointed out, " is the skill 
 [with which the interest in a single situation is main- 
 itained through four acts; that this is a sign of fer- 
 tility and not poverty of imagination all who have 
 ever tried to write know well.'* With such a situa- 
 tion, the successful playwright — who writes what 
 the professional critic calls " plays " — in nine cases 
 out of ten would have made an utter failure. Even 
 Ibsen makes " heroes " out of Bernick and Borkman 
 — throws about them a halo of daring chicanery or 
 Napoleonic hazard. Mr. Barker delineates a fi- 
 nancier without exaggeration or distortion, without 
 even a trace of histrionism; and resolutely holds his 
 protagonist down to the unherolc level of plain soul- 
 testing actuality. With his thesis I cannot agree; 
 
388 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 for his treatment I have the sincerest admiration. 
 In many respects it is his most satisfying play — for 
 its dynamic quality; the characters grow, enlarge, 
 crystallize or develop, narrow, harden : we mark the 
 crucial changes wrought by circumstance on char- 
 acter. It ends, with artistic finesse, upon an unre- 
 solved cadence — imparting to the spectators, in the 
 spectacle, a sense of " the strange irregular rhythm 
 of life." It possesses a rare and memorable qual- 
 ity: we are left in the end with a haunting sense 
 of actuality, the impression of life — of life still 
 going on after the curtain falls. 
 
 In 1 90 1, Mr. Barker was converted to Socialism. 
 Socialism proved the most transforming influence of 
 his life. His whole attitude toward the theatre un- 
 derwent a change that can be described as nothing 
 less than revolutionary. For the first time he be- 
 came profundly imbued with a sense of the necessity 
 of organizing the theatre, of making it a great In- 
 strumentality in the social life of our time. He came 
 to see in the repertory theatre the hope of the con- 
 temporary drama ; and his notable undertaking at the 
 Court Theatre, and afterwards at the Savoy, may be 
 regarded as a direct outcome of Socialist conviction. 
 The National Theatre, in the shape of a Shakspere 
 Memorial, became. In his eyes, the Inevitable In- 
 strumentality for the establishment of the English 
 drama upon a great and permanent basis. His work 
 In collaboration with Mr. William Archer is the 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 389 
 
 fruit of his studies in that intricate problem. His 
 association with Mr. Shaw, Mr. Sidney Webb, and 
 their confreres upon committees of the Fabian So- 
 ciety wrought a tremendous change in his methods 
 of thought, teaching him to co-ordinate, to concen- 
 trate, to think in terms of reality and realizable 
 fact. In Waste f his next drama, we observe the un- 
 mistakable signs of that influence. 
 
 The banning of Waste by the King's Reader 
 of Plays created a tremendous sensation; the inci- 
 dent was a vitally contributory cause to the investi- 
 gation of the censorship by a joint committee of the 
 two Houses of Parliament in 1909. In many respects 
 it was a fortunate thing for Mr. Barker and for the 
 future of the English drama. It focused public at- 
 tention upon Mr. Barker and thrust him forward 
 decisively as a most conspicuous exemplar of the 
 ** new " school of dramatists In England — a posi- 
 tion which he might not have attained solely upon 
 the stage success of Waste. Moreover it tended to 
 unite solidly the almost universal objection to the 
 censorship — an opposition that finally burst forth 
 when Shaw's Press Cuttings and The Showing up of 
 Blanco Posnet were banned in close succession. 
 The report of the committee on the censorship * 
 finally brought the Issues clearly before the English 
 
 1 Report of the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords 
 and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays {Censorship), etc. 
 Eyre and Spottiswoode. 
 
390 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS _ 
 
 public and resulted in the present far-from-satisfac- 
 tory compromise. 
 
 It is quite impossible to convey any adequate idea 
 of Waste without narrating its story; and for that 
 the reader is referred to the published play. I have 
 never read any play which evoked so many jarring 
 and contradictory sensations. The theme — adul- 
 tery, a consequent illegal medical operation, the death 
 of the patient, the effect of her death upon the co- 
 respondent, a brilliant politician, whose future is 
 thereby ruined — is a theme from the mere mention 
 of which one instinctively recoils. Once grant that 
 the subject is a legitimate one for stage treatment, 
 and the opposition of the censorship disappears. 
 The topic is treated with earnestness and sincerity 
 by Mr. Barker; but with an apparently needless In- 
 sistence upon a certain phase. The ultimate mean- 
 ing of the play would have remained unchanged 
 had Mr. Barker treated this phase of the play 
 with more delicacy and reserve. The treat- 
 ment of great political, social and religious 
 questions in the play is the most powerful, most 
 vitally interesting, and withal the most entirely true 
 to life that I have ever encountered in any contem- 
 porary drama, with the single exception of Joht 
 BulVs Other Island; of the two, Mr. Barker's play 
 is superior to Shaw's in realistic detail and fidelity to 
 actual life. From his contact with Mr. Webb and 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 391 
 
 Mr. Shaw, Mr. Barker achieved a mastery of the 
 political issues involved, and presented them in 
 impressive and convincing truthfulness. Trebell, the 
 brilliant politician, is at once repellent and abnormal 
 in temperament; a megalomaniac of the most virulent 
 type. In his nature there is no spark of altruism; 
 he has unbounded contempt for other people, sublime 
 confidence In himself and his powers. His temper- 
 amental coldness — an Inhuman coldness — takes 
 the form, sincere though It be, of a sort of sensational 
 cynicism. For the weak and vacuous victim of his 
 passion he has not a spark of pity; he coldly argues 
 with her at a moment when she needs and deserves 
 sympathy and pity. There is nothing more grue- 
 some and horrible In the whole play than the bond of 
 union cemented between the adulterer and the be- 
 trayed husband — a fellow-feeling of sympathy in 
 condemnation of the luckless woman. Trebell hates 
 women; he hates with icy hatred this wretched vic- 
 tim because she will not abide the consequences — 
 for the child's sake. He has always felt contempt 
 for men and women because of his power over them; 
 and he hates this woman all the more because he 
 has given her the power to ruin him. The cabinet 
 will be formed without him — people cannot work, 
 even in politics, with a monster. 
 
 Trebell kills himself — not because he has lost 
 his chance for a place in the cabinet, but because by 
 
392 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 a strange twist of a kind of mystic psychology, he 
 realizes his spiritual failure. This woman, to whom 
 he has never given a passing thought, has shrunk 
 instinctively from an ordeal, to endure which woman 
 needs all the love and help which man can give. A 
 dream-child of his morbid fancy has been slain — 
 this spells his failure, his consciousness of his inabil- 
 ity to cope with the vast human issues of creation 
 and life. 
 
 Mr. Barker has publicly expressed his gratitude 
 to Mr. Charles Frohman for proving the practicality 
 of modern repertory. He has brought " Repertory 
 from the regions of talk and agitation to be an ac- 
 complished fact." It was during the season of 1910 
 that Mr. Barker's play The Madras House was pro- 
 duced by Mr. Frohman at the Duke of York's The- 
 atre. Neither Mr. Barker's The Madras House 
 nor Mr. Shaw's Misalliance with ten and eleven 
 performances respectively, proved to be " winning 
 cards " ; the audiences were small, and their size did 
 not warrant the continuance of the performances. 
 After reading The Madras House I was impressed [ 
 anew with Mr. Barker's originality as a technician 
 and the scope of his vision as an interpreter of life. 
 Woman — her present status, her relation to mar- 
 riage, her future — is the theme of the play; and this 
 problem is viewed from a different angle in each suc- 
 cessive act. Various types, all sharply delineated in 
 personality, are brought upon the stage, not for their 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 393 
 
 own sake, but solely for the light they may throw, 
 by reason of their individual opinions atid prejudices, 
 upon the question of sex. In spite of the several in- 
 cidents of the play, which vitally concern the char- 
 acters, there is no real plot — the protagonist is 
 Woman, and the play concerns itself with her destiny. 
 We have, in succession, the attitude of the father of 
 six marriageable, but unmarried, daughters; the 
 oriental view-point of a man who has set up a harem 
 in the East, after being separated from his English 
 wife; a cheap American " hustler " with subtly gross 
 ideas about the utility of sex in business, a rather 
 heavy caricature of the P. T. Barnum type; a woman 
 who has been " wronged " ; a woman whose husband 
 IS charged with infidelity; the shrill conventionalized 
 figure of duty; and so on. And then there is the in- 
 timate trio — Philip Madras, his wife, and his 
 friend Major Thomas, the " mean, sensual man," 
 who is always obsessed with the strange idea that 
 if a woman evinces any Interest in him, she must 
 be secretly wanting him to kiss her I 
 
 As long as Mr. Barker is focussing a rapid fire 
 from all corners of the stage upon the subject of 
 woman, he holds our undivided interest. In this 
 play I observe for the first time the clear Influence 
 of Mr. Shaw. For this Is Mr. Shaw's method par 
 excellence — to consider some theme of large humaii 
 or social Interest, and have everybody tell what they 
 think about it. This is the technical basis of Mr. 
 
394 EUROPEAN DRAMATISTS 
 
 Barker's last play — save for this striking difference. 
 Shaw's characters talk about countless things not 
 strictly germane to the theme; Barker's characters 
 focus on the theme — as George Meredith would 
 say, they " ramble concentrically.'* The last act, 
 though still concerned with the theme, is in the nature 
 of anti-climax. Woman has a hard innings; and 
 never Is she thought of as anything but a shavian 
 " mythological monster," unscrupulously using her 
 personal charms for selfish gratification. Philip 
 Madras, who seems to direct the entire play, rather 
 inconsequentially comes to the conclusion — a 
 conclusion inartistically unmotlved — that the only 
 career for a self-respecting man nowadays who 
 wishes to help his fellow-men and fellow-women, 
 is to join the County Council and become a social 
 reformer. As he says, " That's Public Life. 
 That's Democracy. That's the Future." He is the 
 self-satisfied young man who is coolly superior and 
 always sure of himself — vastly irritating despite 
 his large social views. 
 
 " In The Madras House'* says Mr. Max Beer- 
 bohm, " there is only one character that does not 
 stand forth vital and salient; and this is the char- 
 acter of Philip Madras, the wise and gooS young 
 man who is always ia the right - — always perspica- 
 cious, unselfish and charitable by virtue of being 
 himself so shadowy and cold. It is a note that per- 
 vades modern drama, this doctrine that human be- 
 
 4 
 
GRANVILLE BARKER 395 
 
 Ings are always hopelessly In the wrong, and that 
 only the Inhuman ones can hope to be in the right. 
 I don't say it Is a false doctrine ; but It certainly Is a 
 lugubrious one. And we must be pardoned for a 
 certain measure of Impatience with Philip Madras. 
 Repressing our impulse to call him an Impostor, and 
 hailing him reverently as pope, we can't even so, 
 stand him — whether we feel we are In the right \ 
 with him or In the wrong with the others." -- — l 
 
 Mr. Barker is a dramatist of marked power and 
 strong originality, a master of the tools of his craft. 
 He has freed himself from the restrictions of his 
 art: instead of obeying its "laws," he experiments 
 freely and successfully with any materials he chooses. 
 He has taken the bold course of " leaving Aristotle 
 out." His definition of a play is a declaration of 
 independence : " A play Is anything that can be made 
 effective upon the stage of a theatre by human 
 agency." Perhaps his own words are prophetic — 
 for he has done great things and will surely do 
 greater: " We must go on breaking new ground, en- 
 larging the boundaries of the new drama, fitting It 
 for every sort of expression. When we deserve It a 
 new dramatic genius will arise. He will neither 
 break laws nor obey them. He will make laws and 
 there will happily be no questioning." 
 
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