threatened to wreck her whole
life--the secret that she had actually run into debt to the amount of
L30. Her situation was dramatic in the ordinary sense of the word, very
much as Nora's situation is dramatic when she knows that Krogstad's
letter is in Helmer's hands. But in _Chains_ there is not even this
simple form of excitement and suspense. A city clerk, oppressed by the
deadly monotony and narrowness of his life, thinks of going to
Australia--and doesn't go: that is the sum and substance of the action.
Also, by way of underplot, a shopgirl, oppressed by the deadly monotony
and narrowness of her life, thinks of escaping from it by marrying a
middle-aged widower--and doesn't do it. If any one had told the late
Francisque Sarcey, or the late Clement Scott, that a play could be made
out of this slender material, which should hold an audience absorbed
through four acts, and stir them to real enthusiasm, these eminent
critics would have thought him a madman. Yet Miss Baker has achieved
this feat, by the simple process of supplementing competent observation
with a fair share of dramatic instinct.]

[Footnote 8: If the essence of drama is crisis, it follows that nothing
can be more dramatic than a momentous choice which may make or mar both
the character and the fortune of the chooser and of others. There is an
element of choice in all action which is, or seems to be, the product of
free will; but there is a peculiar crispness of effect when two
alternatives are clearly formulated, and the choice is made after a
mental struggle, accentuated, perhaps, by impassioned advocacy of the
conflicting interests. Such scenes are _Coriolanus_, v. 3, the scene
between Ellida, Wangel, and the Stranger in the last act of _The Lady
from the Sea_, and the concluding scene of _Candida_.]

_CHAPTER IV_

THE ROUTINE OF COMPOSITION

As no two people, probably, ever did, or ever will, pursue the same
routine in play-making, it is manifestly impossible to lay down any
general rules on the subject. There are one or two considerations,
however, which it may not be wholly superfluous to suggest to beginners.

An invaluable insight into the methods of a master is provided by the
scenarios and drafts of plays published in Henrik Ibsen's _Efterladte
Skrifter_. The most important of these "fore-works," as he used to call
them, have now been translated under the title of _From Ibsen's
Workshop_ (Scribner), and may be studied with the grea