y of Rubek's
statue and its development into a group. In actual sculpture this
development is a grotesque impossibility. In conceiving it we are
deserting the domain of reality, and plunging into some fourth dimension
where the properties of matter are other than those we know. This is an
abandonment of the fundamental principle which Ibsen over and over again
emphatically expressed--namely, that any symbolism his work might be
found to contain was entirely incidental, and subordinate to the truth
and consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied with the
supernatural, as in _The Master Builder_ and _Little Eyolf_, he was
always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep decisively
the boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand, without any
suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with the wholly
impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike from his
principles of art and from the consistent, unvarying practice of his
better years! So great is the chasm between _John Gabriel Borkman_ and
_When We Dead Awaken_ that one could almost suppose his mental breakdown
to have preceded instead of followed the writing of the latter play.
Certainly it is one of the premonitions of the coming end. It is Ibsen's
_Count Robert of Paris_. To pretend to rank it with his masterpieces is
to show a very imperfect sense of the nature of their mastery.

WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN.

A DRAMATIC EPILOGUE.

CHARACTERS.

PROFESSOR ARNOLD RUBEK, a sculptor.
MRS. MAIA RUBEK, his wife.
THE INSPECTOR at the Baths.
ULFHEIM, a landed proprietor.
A STRANGER LADY.
A SISTER OF MERCY.

Servants, Visitors to the Baths, and Children.

The First Act passes at a bathing establishment on the coast; the Second
and Third Acts in the neighbourhood of a health resort, high in the
mountains.

ACT FIRST.

[Outside the Bath Hotel. A portion of the main building can be seen
to the right.

An open, park-like place with a fountain, groups
of fine old trees, and shrubbery. To the left, a little pavilion
almost covered with ivy and Virginia creeper. A table and chair
outside it. At the back a view over the fjord, right out to sea,
with headlands and small islands in the distance. It is a calm,
warm and sunny summer morning.

[PROFESSOR RUBEK and MRS. MAIA RUBEK are sitting in basket chairs
beside a covered table on the law