In the ‘League of Youth,’ the earliest of his social dramas, Ibsen follows in Scribe’s footsteps; and the first act is little more than a preparatory prolog.  In this play the whole story is set forth in action in the play itself; but in the following dramas, ‘Pillars of Society’ and ‘A Doll’s House’ Ibsen reveals his tendency to deal with the results of deeds which took place before he begins the play itself.  In other words, he suppresses his prolog, preferring to plunge at once into his action; and this forces him to modify Scribe’s leisurely method.  He does not mass his explanations all in the earlier scenes; he scatters them thruout the first act, and sometimes he even postpones them to the later acts.  But he is careful to supply information before it is needed, adroitly letting out in the first scene what is required for the understanding of the second scene, and artfully revealing in the second scene what must be known before the third scene can be appreciated.

This method is less simple than Scribe’s; it is not only more difficult, it may be dangerous; but when it is managed successfully it lends to the drama a swift directness delightful to all who relish a mastery of form.  In ‘Ghosts,’ for example, the play which is acted before us is little more than a long fifth act, in three tense scenes; and the knowledge of what had happened in the past is ingeniously communicated to the audience at the very moment when the information is felt to be most significant.  But in ‘Rosmersholm,’ strong as the drama is and fine as its technic is, Ibsen’s method seems to be at fault in that we learn too late what it would have interested us greatly to know earlier.  It is only at the end almost that we are allowed to perceive what were Rebecca West’s real intentions in coming to Rosmersholm and how the influence of the house itself has transformed her.  When the curtain rises she is presented to us already a changed woman; and we are at a loss to understand her motives for the evil deeds she has wrought, until we are told at last that she once was far different from what she now is.  Here Ibsen loses more than he gains by abandoning the simpler method of massing his exposition in the earlier scenes of the play.  Anything which confuses the spectator, which leaves him in doubt, which keeps him guessing, is contrary to Spencer’s principle of “economy of attention,” as important in the other arts as it is in rhetoric.

Altho he is ever seeking to awaken curiosity, to arouse the interest of expectancy, and to excite in the spectators a desire to see the thing through, Ibsen refrains from any mere mystery-mongering for its own sake.  He wishes his audience to give attention not so much to the bare happenings of his story, however startling they may be in themselves, as to the effect which these happenings are certain to have on the characters.  He is abundant in inventive ingenuity and in devising effective situations; and the complications of the