eer Gynt_,
we can scarcely call _Ghosts_ Ibsen's richest or most human play, and
certainly not his profoundest or most poetical. If some omnipotent
Censorship decreed the annihilation of all his works save one, few
people, I imagine, would vote that that one should be _Ghosts_. Even if
half a dozen works were to be saved from the wreck, I doubt whether I,
for my part, would include _Ghosts_ in the list. It is, in my judgment,
a little bare, hard, austere. It is the first work in which Ibsen
applies his new technical method--evolved, as I have suggested, during
the composition of _A Doll's House_--and he applies it with something
of fanaticism. He is under the sway of a prosaic ideal--confessed in the
phrase, "My object was to make the reader feel that he was going through
a piece of real experience"--and he is putting some constraint upon
the poet within him. The action moves a little stiffly, and all in one
rhythm. It lacks variety and suppleness. Moreover, the play affords some
slight excuse for the criticism which persists in regarding Ibsen as a
preacher rather than as a creator--an author who cares more for ideas
and doctrines than for human beings. Though Mrs. Alving, Engstrand and
Regina are rounded and breathing characters, it cannot be denied that
Manders strikes one as a clerical type rather than an individual, while
even Oswald might not quite unfairly be described as simply and solely
his father's son, an object-lesson in heredity. We cannot be said to
know him, individually and intimately, as we know Helmer or Stockmann,
Hialmar Ekdal or Gregors Werle. Then, again, there are one or two
curious flaws in the play. The question whether Oswald's "case" is one
which actually presents itself in the medical books seems to me of very
trifling moment. It is typically true, even if it be not true in detail.
The suddenness of the catastrophe may possibly be exaggerated, its
premonitions and even its essential nature may be misdescribed. On the
other hand, I conceive it, probable that the poet had documents to found
upon, which may be unknown to his critics. I have never taken any pains
to satisfy myself upon the point, which seems to me quite immaterial.
There is not the slightest doubt that the life-history of a Captain
Alving may, and often does, entail upon posterity consequences quite
as tragic as those which ensue in Oswald's case, and far more
wide-spreading. That being so, the artistic justification of the poet's