Except for some pot-boilers written in his youth, all the works of Ibsen have one theme, the problem of ideals in relation to reality. Men and women form a conception of right conduct, and they try to apply it, and it doesn’t work out as it is supposed to; in most of Ibsen’s plays it works out exactly the opposite way. His thesis is that life cannot be guided by formulas; those of democracy are just as dangerous as those of authority; either will destroy you if you apply them blindly. Ibsen is in revolt against religious creeds and social conventions which repress the individual and thwart his full development. But you must not assume that he is willing to make a formula out of self-realization; straightway he will turn about and show you some selfish egotist engaged in realizing himself and wrecking everyone else. Ibsen wrote two long poems, “Brand” and “Peer Gynt,” into which he put ideas resembling those of “Don Quixote.” Brand is a Norwegian preacher, who has his formula of perfect righteousness, the sacrifice of the individual to God. He acts as blindly as Don Quixote tilting at wind-mills, and destroys a number of people, himself included. “Peer Gynt,” on the other hand, is a scamp who, like Sancho Panza, fools himself by those very qualities of which he is most proud, his ability to take care of himself, his unwillingness to consider anything but his own interest. Ibsen also fell under the spell of gloomy materialistic science. Like Maupassant, he sees men as the sport of circumstances. The difference is that he believes, in spite of his theories, in fighting against circumstance, and his whole being is absorbed in the task of helping men and women to fight wisely and effectively. He took the French device of the “well-made play,” a simple, unadorned picture of reality, compressing a great mass of character and incident into a small space. He used this art form to deal, not with the great world of fashion, but with the middle-class people he knew in small Norwegian towns: doctors and lawyers and clergymen and merchants, with their wives and sons and daughters. They are wretchedly unhappy people, and Ibsen shows how they make their own unhappiness, because their ideas are false, because they are slaves of traditions which have no relation to present-day reality. “The Pillars of Society” tells about a business man who makes his life a string of lies in order to hide an offense he has committed; he is helping to preserve civilization, by not letting anybody know that a business man can do wrong. “A Doll’s House” tells about a woman who discovers that she is a pet and an ornament in her household, and leaves her husband and children and goes out into the world to become an individual.