The truth is that, notwithstanding its mastery of character, Rosmersholm must not be viewed as a drama following any previous model. Emile Faguet declines to consider any longer the northern dramatist as a realist. In his early prose dramas, when he filled in his canvas with jostling throngs, Ibsen was a painter of manners; but as he grew, as his method became less that of his predecessors and more of his own, the action became more intense. The modern psychologic drama was born, the drama in which wills collide, but not the will for trivial things. It is the eternal duel of the sexes, the duel of the old and the new. In this sombre atmosphere, subjected to many pressures by the black and alembicated art of the dramatic wizard, the circumstances that occur externally are of little significance, the dialogue spoken not to be accepted unless for its "secondary intention." Bald on its surface, its cumulative effect discloses the souls of his people. Commonplace, even provincial as are their gestures, their surroundings, we presently see the envelope of humanity melt away, and soon exposed are the real creatures, the real men and women, exposed as in a dream. It is a cruel art this that unwraps leaf by leaf the coverings of the human soul. With the average dramatist, clever though he may be, his inspiration compared to Ibsen's is like fire in a sheaf of straw--the spark glows for an instant and then there is a vivid crackling of shallow flame. We witness the illuminated edge of an idea, and then it fades into the blackness. Ibsen's flame is more murky than brilliant; but it makes light the swamps he traverses on his irresistible progress to the mountains beyond. Isolated then as is the _milieu_ of Rosmersholm, its real territory is spiritual and not Rosmer's gloomy manor-house. The real and the ideal are indescribably blended. Only after much study does the character of Rebekka Gamvik, called West, yield its secrets. She was born in Finmark. Her mother, possibly of Lapp origin, had carried on an intrigue with Dr. West. Rebekka was its fruit. This she did not know until too late to avert a hideous catastrophe; it was not alone her illegitimacy that so horrified her when Rector Kroll informed her of it--there were depths which she did not care to explore farther, though she made the offer to Rosmer. Dr. West at his death bequeathed a small library to his adopted daughter, and this proved a Pandora box both to her and to Rosmersholm. Books of a "liberal" character filled the mind of the young woman with dangerous ideas; for like the disciple in Paul Bourget's novel, she speedily translated these ideas into action. As cunning as Becky Sharp, as amorous as Emma Bovary, as ambitious as Lady Macbeth, Rebekka West is the most complete portrait of a designing woman that we know of; she is more trouble-breeding than Hedda Gabler.