rature; the second
act, with the exquisite humour of the Foldal scene, and the dramatic
intensity of the encounter between Borkman and Ella, is perhaps the
finest single act Ibsen ever wrote, in prose at all events; and the
last scene is a thing of rare and exalted beauty. One could wish
that the poet's last words to us had been those haunting lines with
which Gunhild and Ella join hands over Borkman's body:

We twin sisters--over him we both have loved.
We two shadows--over the dead man.

Among many verbal difficulties which this play presents, the greatest,
perhaps, has been to find an equivalent for the word "opreisning,"
which occurs again and again in the first and second acts. No one
English word that I could discover would fit in all the different
contexts; so I have had to employ three: "redemption," "restoration,"
and in one place "rehabilitation." The reader may bear in mind that
these three terms represent one idea in the original.

Borkman in Act II. uses a very odd expression--"overskurkens moral,"
which I have rendered "the morals of the higher rascality." I cannot
but suspect (though for this I have no authority) that in the word
"overskurk," which might be represented in German by "Ueberschurke,"
Borkman is parodying the expression "Uebermensch," of which so much
has been heard of late. When I once suggested this to Ibsen, he
neither affirmed nor denied it. I understood him to say, however,
that in speaking of "overskurken" he had a particular man in view.
Somewhat pusillanimously, perhaps, I pursued my inquiries no further.

*Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN (1896)

PERSONS.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN, formerly Managing Director of a Bank.
MRS. GUNHILD BORKMAN, his wife.
ERHART BORKMAN, their son, a student.
MISS ELLA RENTHEIM, Mrs. Borkman's twin sister.
MRS. FANNY WILTON.
VILHELM FOLDAL, subordinate clerk in a Government office.
FRIDA FOLDAL, his daughter.
MRS. BORKMAN'S MAID.

The action passes one winter evening, at the Manorhouse of
the Rentheim family, in the neighbourhood of Christiania.

JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN

PLAY IN FOUR ACTS

ACT FIRST

MRS. BORKMAN's drawing-room, furnished with old-fashioned, faded
splendour. At the back, an open sliding-door leads into a
garden-room, with windows and a glass door. Through it a view
over the garden; twilight with driving snow. On the right,
a do