t how utterly unlike are the two plays! and how
immeasurably superior the later one! It may seem, on a superficial
view, that in _John Gabriel Borkman_ Ibsen has returned to prose and
the common earth after his excursion into poetry and the possibly
supernatural, if I may so call it, in _The Master Builder_ and
_Little Eyolf_. But this is a very superficial view indeed. We
have only to compare the whole invention of _John Gabriel Borkman_
with the invention of _Pillars of Society_, to realise the difference
between the poetry and the prose of drama. The quality of imagination
which conceived the story of the House of Bernick is utterly unlike
that which conceived the tragedy of the House of Borkman. The
difference is not greater between (say) _The Merchant of Venice_
and _King Lear_.

The technical feat which Ibsen here achieves of carrying through
without a single break the whole action of a four-act play has been
much commented on and admired. The imaginary time of the drama is
actually shorter than the real time of representation, since the poet
does not even leave intervals for the changing of the scenes. This
feat, however, is more curious than important. Nothing particular
is gained by such a literal observance of the unity of time. For
the rest, we feel definitely in _John Gabriel Borkman_ what we
already felt vaguely in _Little Eyolf_--that the poet's technical
staying-power is beginning to fail him. We feel that the initial
design was larger and more detailed than the finished work. If the
last acts of _The Wild Duck_ and _Hedda Gabler_ be compared with the
last acts of _Little Eyolf_ and _Borkman_, it will be seen that in
the earlier plays it relaxes towards the close, to make room for pure
imagination and lyric beauty. The actual drama is over long before
the curtain falls on either play, and in the one case we have Rita
and Allmers, in the other Ella and Borkman, looking back over their
shattered lives and playing chorus to their own tragedy. For my
part, I set the highest value on these choral odes, these mournful
antiphones, in which the poet definitely triumphs over the mere
playwright. They seem to me noble and beautiful in themselves, and
as truly artistic, if not as theatrical, as any abrupter catastrophe
could be. But I am not quite sure that they are exactly the
conclusions the poet originally projected, and still less am I
satisfied that they are reached by precisely the paths which