hout some practical experience of English and French
drama, I venture to call in question not only the dramatic ability of
the dramatist himself, but also, after perhaps allowing him some merit
as a type-writer or character-sketcher, to assert that the style and
matter of most of his work is always tiresome, frequently childish,
and the subject often morbid and unhealthy; and, further, that his
method is tedious to the last degree of boredom; for, as a writer, if
I may judge him fairly by his translators, he is didactic and prosy,
and never more tedious than when his dialogue is intended to be at its
very crispest. As a playwright his construction is faulty. Here and
there he gives expression to pretty ideas, reminding me (still judging
by the translation) of TOM ROBERTSON, not when the latter was in his
happiest vein, but when laboriously striving to make his puppets talk
in a sweetly ingenuous manner.

I have never seen any play of IBSEN's on the stage, but I have read
several of them--indeed, as I believe, all that have hitherto been
translated and published in this country. I was prepared to be
charmed, expecting much. I was soon disillusioned, and great was my
disappointment. Then I re-read them, to judge of them not merely as
dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be
acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public
were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. As
acting dramas, it is difficult to conceive anything less practically
dramatic. I do not know what the pecuniary result of his theatrical
productions may be in his own country--where, I believe, he doesn't
reside--but, out of his own country (say, here in London), I should
say that a one-night's performance, with a house half full, would
exhaust IBSEN's English public, and quite exhaust the patience of
those who know not IBSEN.

Years ago we had the Chatterton-Boucicault dictum that "SHAKSPEARE
spelt failure." Now, for SHAKSPEARE read "IBSEN," and insert the words
"swift and utter" before "failure," and you have my opinion as to how
the formula would stand with regard to IBSEN. I should be sorry to
see any professional Manager making himself pecuniarily responsible
for the success of such an undertaking, a word which, in its funereal
sense, is of ill omen to the attempt. Let the Ibsenites club
together, lease a theatre, and see how the public likes their show.
There's nothing doing at the Roya