and know that Bernick has had an intrigue with her mother, we are apt to fall into the error of supposing her to be Bernick’s daughter.  There is only one line which proves that this is not so—­a remark to the effect that, when Madam Dorf came to the town.  Dina was already old enough to run about and play angels in the theatre.  Any one who does not happen to hear or notice this remark, is almost certain to misapprehend Dina’s parentage.  Taking one thing with another, then, the Bernick family group is rather more complex than is strictly desirable.  Ibsen’s reasons for making Lona Hessel a half-sister instead of a full sister of Mrs. Bernick are evident enough.  He wanted her to be a considerably older woman, of a very different type of character; and it was necessary, in order to explain Karsten’s desertion of Lona for Betty, that the latter should be an heiress, while the former was penniless.  These reasons are clear and apparently adequate; yet it may be doubted whether the dramatist did not lose more than he gained by introducing even this small degree of complexity.  It was certainly not necessary to explain the difference of age and character between Lona and Betty; while as for the money, there would have been nothing improbable in supposing that a wealthy uncle had marked his disapproval of Lona’s strong-mindedness by bequeathing all his property to her younger sister.  Again, there is no reason why Hilmar should not have been a brother of Johan and Betty;[5] in which case we should have had the simple family group of two brothers and two sisters, instead of the comparatively complex relationship of a brother and sister, a half-sister and a cousin.

These may seem very trivial considerations:  but nothing is really trivial when it comes to be placed under the powerful lens of theatrical presentation.  Any given audience has only a certain measure of attention at command, and to claim attention for inessentials is to diminish the stock available for essentials.  In only one other play does Ibsen introduce any complexity of relationship, and in that case it does not appear in the exposition, but is revealed at a critical moment towards the close.  In Little Eyolf, Asta and Allmers are introduced to us at first as half-sister and half-brother; and only at the end of the second act does it appear that Asta’s mother (Allmers’ stepmother) was unfaithful to her husband, and that, Asta being the fruit of this infidelity, there is no blood kinship between her and Allmers.  The danger of relying upon such complexities is shown by the fact that so acute a critic as M. Jules Lemaitre, in writing of Little Eyolf, mistook the situation, and thought that Asta fled from Allmers because he was her brother, whereas in fact she fled because he was not.  I had the honour of calling M. Lemaitre’s attention to this error, which he handsomely acknowledged.