IBSEN'S PLAYS 735 



reats his fiancee with an almost more than marital indifference ; upon 

 his friend Lind who was intoxicated with love till his engagement was 

 announced, and now forlornly seeks a moment's esacpe from Anna and 

 her friends and aunts, he looks upon all these as corpses. Only he 

 and Svanhild who do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves, who 

 so far from parading their love have never uttered it even to one 

 another, and like a modern Benedick and Beatrice are at perpetual 

 war with each other, only they are alive ! 



But of course this cannot last. A misunderstanding forces Falk 

 into a passionate declaration lest he should lose Svanhild too soon; 

 but his declaration has in it the sublimity of masculine selfishness and 

 arrogance which Ibsen knows so well how to paint. He is a Falcon, 

 and he must fly against the wind ! He needs Svanhild's support and 

 inspiration to achieve the height of his poetic calling. It is her glo- 

 rious mission to protect his belief in beauty and love from " falling " 

 like Adam, during all the spring of her life and his; and when she has 

 performed this noble mission and the leaves begin to fall in autumn, 

 then the world may claim her, and their ways will part. The whole 

 relation of course is to be a purely spiritual one, the idealism of 

 which will not be soiled by the vulgar cares that make courtship and 

 matrimony the grave of love ! 



Svanhild, in answer, reads Falk a lesson under which he writhes. 

 But the result of it is to make him resolve with such intensity as he 

 never put into anything in life before, to win her as his wife, and 

 prove, up to the hilt, the falsity of the creed which he himself held 

 but now. For true love need not shrink from any test and strain of 

 practical life; and the vital breath has deserted all these spouses and 

 betrotheds, not because they have left the ideal for the real, but 

 because they themselves are of the earth, earthy. He and Svanhild 

 will prove that is so. 



His satire becomes fiercer than ever now, but there is a ringing 

 tone of triumph in it, and when he gives as his toast amongst all the 

 pairs, married and to be married, " the late lamented love," he knows 

 that his own love is victorious. 



And so it is. Svanhild is won. She and Falk, side by side, will 

 wage war against the miserable conventions and pretences of love, 

 and will live the reality. 



Then comes Guldstad, the rich middle-aged merchant, and explains 

 to Falk and Svanhild that marriage is after all a very practical busi- 

 ness, involving many considerations that have not the least connection 

 with love. You are in love with a woman, you marry a wife; and a 

 wife has to do and be many things that a lover, blinded by his love, 

 does not consider. Guldstad himself does not profess to be in love 

 with Svanhild, but he is convinced that she would make him an 

 excellent wife, and he can offer her the quiet stream of a warm 



