to 'Ghosts,' to 'Rosmersholm' (or taking also Ibsen's 'subtler period')
to 'John Gabriel Borkmann,' to 'The Master-Builder'? Ibsen is in fact
wonderfully a case in point, since from the moment he's clear, from the
moment he's 'amusing,' it's on the footing of a thesis as simple and
superficial as that of 'A Doll's House'--while from the moment he's by
apparent intention comprehensive and searching it's on the footing of an
effect as confused and obscure as 'The Wild Duck.' From which you easily
see ALL the conditions can't be met. The dramatist has to choose but
those he's most capable of, and by that choice he's known."

So the objector concludes, and never surely without great profit
from his having been "drawn." His apparent triumph--if it be even
apparent--still leaves, it will be noted, convenient cover for retort
in the riddled face of the opposite stronghold. The last word in these
cases is for nobody who can't pretend to an ABSOLUTE test. The terms
here used, obviously, are matters of appreciation, and there is no short
cut to proof (luckily for us all round) either that "Monsieur Alphonse"
develops itself on the highest plane of irony or that "Ghosts"
simplifies almost to excruciation. If "John Gabriel Borkmann" is but a
pennyworth of effect as to a character we can imagine much more amply
presented, and if "Hedda Gabler" makes an appeal enfeebled by remarkable
vagueness, there is by the nature of the case no catching the convinced,
or call him the deluded, spectator or reader in the act of a mistake.
He is to be caught at the worst in the act of attention, of the very
greatest attention, and that is all, as a precious preliminary at least,
that the playwright asks of him, besides being all the very divinest
poet can get. I remember rejoicing as much to remark this, after getting
launched in "The Awkward Age," as if I were in fact constructing a
play--just as I may doubtless appear now not less anxious to keep the
philosophy of the dramatist's course before me than if I belonged to his
order. I felt, certainly, the support he feels, I participated in his
technical amusement, I tasted to the full the bitter-sweetness of his
draught--the beauty and the difficulty (to harp again on that string) of
escaping poverty EVEN THOUGH the references in one's action can only be,
with intensity, to each other, to things exactly on the same plane of
exhibition with themselves. Exhibition may mean in a "story" twenty
different