Welsh Journals

facts in life, nor from the situations which he himself portrayed. Facts, it is said, are stubborn things; but their stubborness is nothing to the obstinacy with which the average man(and the average play- wright) persists in scampering away from them. The customary procedure being to get over a difficulty by pretending that it does not exist, Ibsen, not only proves that it does exist, but also-a vital point- that it is only by ignoring it that we give it full power over us. Nor does he shrink from the consequences of his own imagination. Nothing is dearer to the third-rate dramatist than to attempt to make the best, so to speak, of both worlds-to win approbation from the stalls by a daring scene, and then run away from it, to snatch the cheers of the gallery. So, in The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Sir Arthur Pinero depicts a spirited, hard-driven woman who, at a crisis in her downward path, is offered a Bible. She flings it into the fire. "Here! "says the culture-hunter," is courage of one's convictions. Here is an advanced playwright! And how advanced of me to be here Pinero and I are making history." But Mrs. Ebbsmith utters a scream. It cannot be She rushes to the stove and drags forth the volume, brandishing it aloft amid the ecstasies of the gods. Here is something for everyone in truth Artistic cowardice is well enough for authors whose only oracle is the box-office. Ibsen, of course, like every other dramatist worth his salt, never dreams of thus running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Compromise may be the life of politics, but it is the death of art. Ibsen's own uncompromising honesty has led to queer results, not the least odd being the history of A Doll's House. In that celebrated conversation between Nora and Torvald Helmer, with which the play ends, it is of course essential that the wife should stick to her guns, quietly but with complete assurance. When the play reached Ger- many, theatrical managers actually provided it with a happy ending," in which Nora did not leave her husband after all, and the famous slam of the door, the neatest and most legitimate coup de theatre in the history of the stage was left out! At that time his works had no protection in Germany, and the master himself was driven to devise, for the moment, another finale in which Nora, for her children's sake, remained at home. He explained that he preferred to commit the outrage himself." His revenge was signal and laughably appropriate. The very next work he wrote was Ghosts, in which the wife did not leave her husband. The results of that wifely compliance were so horrible that to this day Ghosts lies under the veto of the English censor. I allude merely in passing to the splendid reality of his character-drawing and the pungency of his situations, so terrifying in their earnestness and sincerity, so purifying and regenerating in proportion to their ruthlessness. Another side of his genius is the architectonic skill in which he rivals the Athenian masters. He knows hardly anything of underplots there is not a scene or a character, hardly a word, which is not a stone in a simple edifice-always necessary, always adequate for the advancement of the one purpose. As to his subject- matter, he is (so far as England at any rate is con- cerned) the father of the so-called drama of ideas but he himself belongs to that school only in the most general sense. Ibsen has no social theory or political propaganda or religious or ethical dogma, of any very specialized sort, to advance. No specific abuses or temporary causes claim him as their opponent or champion. He is too fundamental for that; what he writes is written sub specie aeternitatis. He wishes us to voice our attitude towards life, to change our notion of values. By him we are taught, as by all great teachers, not so much what to think, as how to think, not action but the reasoned basis of action. An ingenuous tiro, who should study these dramas in order to cleanse his way, would be per- plexed to find that in An Enemy of the People truth- speaking at all costs is Stockmann's duty, whereas in The Wild Duck it wrecks a home and kills an innocent affectionate child that in Hedda Gabler a wife shoots herself in order-as it appears-to avoid the importunites of a lover, while in Ghosts a woman who has been saved from infidelity traces all the misfortunes of her family to her own lack of initiative. But the secret is that, for Ibsen and his followers, the spring of action is not conventional morals, but a far-seeing economy of happiness it has been admirably expressed by Mr. Shaw the real slavery of to-day is slavery to ideals of goodness." Dogmatic morality is an idol, prompting mere waste of character and energy, as well as virtue. The only criterion of goodness in an act is its effect on happi- ness. If morality demands that one should sacrifice one's happiness and ability to help the real work of the world, so much the worse for morality. It follows that many of the furious cavalry charges, which have flung themselves upon his lines, are justified. Those who say he is immoral are right, but it does not follow that they are right in objecting to his immorality. Morals are the codified expression of the current behaviour of the day. A man who breaks the code may be wicked he may equally well be the apostle of a new morality, whose first duty is to challenge the old. The whole mistake of the early attacks upon Ibsen