to keep permanently away from the old battlefields. However, if I
were to make my appearance again, it would be with new weapons and
in new armour." Was he hinting at the desire, which he had long ago
confessed to Professor Herford, that his last work should be a drama in
verse? Whatever his dream, it was not to be realised. His last letter
(defending his attitude of philosophic impartiality with regard to the
South African war) is dated December 9, 1900. With the dawn of the new
century, the curtain descended upon the mind of the great dramatic poet
of the age which had passed away.

_When We Dead Awaken_ was acted during 1900 at most of the leading
theatres in Scandinavia and Germany. In some German cities (notably
in Frankfort on Main) it even attained a considerable number of
representatives. I cannot learn, however, that it has anywhere held the
stage. It was produced in London, by the State Society, at the Imperial
Theatre, on January 25 and 26, 1903. Mr. G. S. Titheradge played Rubek,
Miss Henrietta Watson Irene, Miss Mabel Hackney Maia, and Mr. Laurence
Irving Ulfheim. I find no record of any American performance.

In the above-mentioned letter to Count Prozor, Ibsen confirmed that
critic's conjecture that "the series which ends with the Epilogue really
began with _The Master Builder_." As the last confession, so to speak,
of a great artist, the Epilogue will always be read with interest. It
contains, moreover, many flashes of the old genius, many strokes of the
old incommunicable magic. One may say with perfect sincerity that there
is more fascination in the dregs of Ibsen's mind than in the "first
sprightly running" of more common-place talents. But to his sane
admirers the interest of the play must always be melancholy, because it
is purely pathological. To deny this is, in my opinion, to cast a slur
over all the poet's previous work, and in great measure to justify the
criticisms of his most violent detractors. For _When We Dead Awaken_ is
very like the sort of play that haunted the "anti-Ibsenite" imagination
in the year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of self-caricature, a
series of echoes from all the earlier plays, an exaggeration of manner
to the pitch of mannerism. Moreover, in his treatment of his symbolic
motives, Ibsen did exactly what he had hitherto, with perfect justice,
plumed himself upon never doing: he sacrificed the surface reality
to the underlying meaning. Take, for instance, the histor