Even when he has done this, when he has put himself into “the skin of the personage” (to borrow the illuminating French phrase), the actor cannot be certain that his personation is finally right.  No one of Ibsen’s characters is presented in profile only, imposing its sole interpretation on the baffled performer.  Every one of them is rounded and various, like a man in real life, to be seen from contradictory angles and to be approached from all sides.  No one is a silhouette; and every one is a chameleon, changing color even while we are looking at it.  Every part is a problem to the actors who undertake it, a problem with many a solution, no one of which can be proved, however assured the performer may be that he has hit on the right one.  To the actor the privilege of an artistic adventure like this comes but rarely; and it is prized accordingly.  Not often does he find under his hand material at once fresh and solid.  He feels the fascination of this chance and he lays hold of it firmly, even tho he has a haunting fear of failure, absent from the easy, daily exercise of his professional skill.  He relishes the opportunity to speak Ibsen’s wonderful prose, that dialog which seems to the mere reader direct and nervous, and which impresses the actual auditor in the theater as incomparable in its veracity, its vivacity, its flexibility, its subtlety, and its certainty; but which only the actor who delivers it on the stage can praise adequately, since he alone is aware of its full force, of its surcharged meaning, and of its carrying power.

To act Ibsen is worth while, so the actors themselves think; and it is significant that it is to the actors, rather than to the regular managers, that we owe the most of our chances for seeing his plays presented on the stage.  That Ibsen offers opportunities not provided in the pieces of any other modern dramatist is the belief of many an actor and of many an actress longing for a chance to rival the great performers who have gone before, leaving only their fame behind them.  So it is that the ‘Pillars of Society’ is set up in our theaters now and again, and that ‘Ghosts’ may revisit our stage from time to time.  So it is that the ambitious leading lady, abandoning the Camille and the Pauline of a generation or two ago, yearns now to show what she can do as Nora and as Hedda Gabler, unable to resist the temptation to try her luck also in impersonating these women of the North, essentially feminine even when they are fatally enigmatic.

VIII