IBSEN'S PLAYS 737 



tinct relation to Ibsen's maturer representations of love and mar- 

 riage, yet it does not embody them. 



Guldstad's sober but earnest conception of marriage as a deliber- 

 ately considered choice, involving manifold relations not to be en- 

 tered into lightly, and affecting every branch of practical life, remains 

 the keynote of Ibsen's treatment of the subject. And observe that, in 

 all this, marriage is a type of human relationships in general. There 

 is nothing specific or unique in it. Now, the love that 'draws the op- 

 posite sexes one to the other is something quite unique, but not speci- 

 fically human. It pierces right through the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms. It is organic and pre-human in its origin. 



Eemember that profoundly suggestive saying of Peer Gynt's. He 

 had descerated his relationship to Solvejg, and he says it cannot 

 be patched up again. A fiddle can be mended, but a bell cannot. A 

 fiddle, with its delicate mechanism, is constructed, and when con- 

 structed it can be tuned, patched, replaced in pieces, broken and 

 mended. A bell is cast whole in the one molten rush that creates it. 

 It has one note, a note that appeals to something in us deeper than all 

 art, not to be analyzed, in one sense not to be developed, to live un- 

 changed till the bell cracks, and then to be gone forever. 



What we call " falling in love " rings the bell-note in our lives. In 

 its nvysterious infra-and-supra-human simplicity it thrills down to the 

 very roots of our organic nature, and yet fills us with the sense of 

 a more than human life. Where it is absent the union of the sexes 

 is unhallowed, and becomes what Ellida calls it, a bargain and a 

 sale; and for men and women who buy and sell in this matter there 

 should be but one name. But marriage is a great deal more besides 

 this " bell-ringing."' It is a many-sided and complicated human 

 relationship, and the bell-note, however clear and true it may ring, 

 does not suffice for married life. Details which you may call prosaic 

 if you will enter into the duties of husband and wife. They must be 

 to each other much that partners in business must be, much that 

 servants or other employes must be, much that friends and advisers 

 must be. In a word, their life together must be built up and con- 

 structed out of many parts and pieces, to the harmonious fitting of 

 which friendship, good-will, kindly forbearance, and consideration are 

 essential, but which are not secured by " love " in the narrower sense, 

 and may exist without it. And if a man and woman who are " in 

 love," but are not suited to enter into the complicated relations of 

 husband and wife with each other, none the less marry, there is indeed 

 nothing unhallowed in the fact of their union ; but the bell is pretty 

 sure to crack ere long. And what is there left then ? 



Off they go pell-mell to* the altar, set up a home in the very shrine 

 of happiness, pass a season in an orgy of triumph and faith; and 

 then comes the day of reckoning, and lo, and behold ! the whole con- 



