142 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



our present day slang, we term "high brow." Ibsen was supposed to 

 be super-intellectual. People who read him were suspected of posing. 

 The Ibsenites were the legitimate successors of the Browningites as 

 the butt of the jokes of the funny man. But Ibsen survived the 

 scoffer. His plays have an ethical and didactic tendency, it is true. 

 They are written with a purpose — in the ponderous sense of that 

 word — but in such a masterly style as to hold the interest of whoever 

 witnesses them, be he closet scholar or plain ordinary theater-goer. 

 Ibsen is not beyond the comprehension of the average person of 

 intelligence. He shows us people of the middle class confronted by 

 problems which any person may some day be called upon to meet. In 

 A Doll's House (1879) we see an ill-assorted marriage, the serious, 

 self-centered husband and the doll wife; in Hedda Gabler (1890) we 

 find another unhappy marriage between a brilliant but heartless and 

 morbid woman and a well-meaning but uncongenial, scholarly hus- 

 band; in Ghosts (1881) we have an enthralling study of heredity. 

 These plays are frankly pessimistic, but are to the point. They are 

 the best known and the most popular of Ibsen's plays on the American 

 stage. They have enlisted and will continue to enlist the talents of 

 our leading actresses. Among the best-known interpreters of the role 

 of Nora in A Dolls House are Mrs. Fiske, Mme Alia Nazimova, and 

 Miss Ethel Barrymore. In the role of Hedda Gabler there have 

 appeared Mrs. Fiske, Mme Nazimova, Miss Blanche Bates, Miss 

 Nance O'Neil, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. In Ghosts Miss Mary 

 Shaw has been the finest impersonator in English of the grief-stricken 

 mother. 



The plays of Ibsen were produced in London in the following order: 

 A Doll's House and The Pillars of Society in 1889; Hedda Gabler, The 

 Lady from the Sea, Ghosts, and Rosmersholm in 1891; The Master 

 Builder and An Enemy of the People in 1893 ; Little Eyolf in 1896. In 

 the spring of 1913 The Pretenders, one of Ibsen's historical dramas, 

 quite different from those above mentioned, was produced in London 

 by Sir Beerbohm Tree, but soon withdrawn. It was in the repertory 

 of the Burgtheater of Vienna as far back as 189 1. In London the 

 chief producer of Ibsen has been an American, Miss Elizabeth Robins, 



