736 THE DRAMA 



and friendly affection and respect, a sense of the happiness of duty, 

 the peace of home, and mutual bending of will to will, a tender care 

 to smooth the path of life for her, a gentle hand to heal her wounds, 

 strong shoulders to bear, and a strong arm to support and lift. Can 

 Talk offer her as much ? If so let her take him, and he, Guldstad, 

 who has no belongings and no claims upon his wealth, will deal with 

 them as his son and daughter. 



Then Guldstad leaves them together. Their love cannot bear the 

 test he has applied to it. Would it last in all its triumphant glory, 

 they ask, right on till death ? It is so much more than Guldstad has 

 to offer now, but if it should fade and pine, and die down into mere 

 friendship, what a fall were there ! 



" It will last long," says Falk. But Svanhild answers, " ' Long ! y , 

 ' Long ! ' Oh wretched word of beggary ! How will * long ' serve 

 love's turn ? It is death's sentence ; mildew on the seed. ' I hold that 

 love has life eterna,! ' shall no more be sung ; and the cry shall be, 

 'A year agone I loved thee ! ' : 



Will it really be more than this ? Who shall dare to say ? Who 

 shall dare to risk it ? Not Svanhild. No ! Their love shall know 

 no autumn. It shall remain forever with its beauty undimmed. Their 

 mid-day sun shall know no setting ! And Falk accepts her decision. 

 She is his love but must never be his wife. Only by leaving and by 

 loosing her can he win her truly. 



So he goes his way. The bevies of ladies eagerly repeat the news, 

 " She's rejected him ! she's rejected him ! " Her mother presses 

 Guldstad's eligible offer upon her. She asks for a respite "till the 

 leaves are falling ; " and as all the " pairs " exult over the discom- 

 fiture of the arch-enemy, Falk, who has met his deserts at last from 

 Svanhild, Guldstad offers her his hand, which after an involuntary 

 start, almost a shuddei, she meekly accepts, and the curtain falls 

 upon " the triumph of love." 



What did Ibsen mean by it all ? Was the creed of Falk and 

 Svanhild his own ? If so he here fairly succumbed to the danger 

 indicated in some of his poems, and fell into the twin vices of senti- 

 mentality and cynicism. For I take it that a man who regards the 

 passion of love as the richest and most beautiful thing in life, and 

 who also holds that familiar human intercourse is essentially and 

 necessarily destructive of it, is at once a cynic and a sentimentalist. 

 The real is incapable of being idealized to him, and therefore he 

 is a cynic ; and his emotional life is essentially unreal, therefore he is 

 a sentimentalist. 



But was this Ibsen's creed ? I cannot tell. In any case "Love's 

 Comedy " was a comparatively early work, and though it bears a dis- 



