IBSEN'S PLAYS 739 



and in " The Lady from the Sea/' that he knows all this as well as 

 any of us. But at any rate he does not choose to dwell upon it. 

 He chooses to dwell upon marriage under its other aspects. And can 

 we afford to be ungrateful to him ? How many marriages are there 

 that, tried by the ideal standard, will not be found wanting? They 

 may be few or many, but at least they are something less than all. 

 And what of the others ? The bell is cracked. Are husband and wife 

 simply to sit down and say that life is a failure, or at least that they 

 can be nothing to each other now ? Surely they may be much. The 

 tenderness of considerate friendship, and the mutual helpfulness of 

 loyal partnership are not love, but in their measure they are beautiful 

 and life-giving; neither is love a substitute for them, even where love 

 is. That the bell is sound, or that the bell is cracked, is an equally 

 foolish reason for not mending the broken riddle, or tuning its neg- 

 lected strings. 



With respect to marriage, then, I do not find in Ibsen the highest 

 truth insisted on with any distinctness or directness. He even leavea 

 me in doubt whether he is not profoundly mistaken in his teaching; 

 but he works out some aspects of the problem with a piercing insight 

 and a relentless truth, for which I have no words but those of grateful 

 admiration. If I can find the husband and wife who show me that 

 they have read and understood " The Doll's House," " Rosmersholm," 

 and " The Lady from the Sea," but that they had nothing to learn 

 from them, then I will lay down Ibsen, and ask leave to sit at their 

 feet. But I do not expect that this will be either to-day or to-morrow. 



The strength and the weakness of Ibsen's much discussed treatment 

 of marriage lies in the fact that he does not deal with it as marriage 

 at all, but as the most striking instance of the ever recurrent problem 

 of social life, the problem that we may hide in other cases, but must 

 face here, the problem of combining freedom with permanence and 

 loyalty, of combining self-surrender with self-realization. 



WHEN Ibsen turned his back upon "the dear North," and tried to 

 forget the life that lay behind him, lie bathed his soul for a time in 

 the warmth and beauty of Italy. 



His thoughts and studies turned to the ancient world, and he 

 planned and partly executed the work that afterwards grew into the 

 two plays, of which Julian the Apostate is the hero. 



But the spell of the North was still upon him. It forced his mind 

 back to the bleak and chill home of his childhood with all its freezing 

 memories. The unfinished work was set aside, and before it was taken 

 up again and completed, "Brand," "Peer Gynt," and "The Youthful 

 League" had flowed in rapid succession from Ibsen's pen. 



In "Brand" the poet turns fiercely upon his native land, but amid 

 all his passion and contempt learns and tells the truth that there is 

 no redeeming power save in love. 



