But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent in the style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no less clearly that influence of the French plot-manipulators which we found so unmistakably at work in _Lady Inger_. Despite its lyrical dialogue, _The Feast at Solhoug_ has that crispness of dramatic action which marks the French plays of the period. It may indeed be called Scribe’s _Bataille de Dames_ writ tragic. Here, as in the _Bataille de Dames_ (one of the earliest plays produced under Ibsen’s supervision), we have the rivalry of an older and a younger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on an unjust accusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power. One might even, though this would be forcing the point, find an analogy in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and determined character) has in Scribe’s comedy a cowardly suitor, while in Ibsen’s tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband. In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet it seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence of the _Bataille de Dames_ may have contributed to the shaping of _The Feast at Solhoug_ in Ibsen’s mind. But more significant than any resemblance of theme is the similarity of Ibsen’s whole method to that of the French school—the way, for instance, in which misunderstandings are kept up through a careful avoidance of the use of proper names, and the way in which a cup of poison, prepared for one person, comes into the hands of another person, is, as a matter of fact, drunk by no one, but occasions the acutest agony to the would-be poisoner. All this ingenious dovetailing of incidents and working-up of misunderstandings, Ibsen unquestionably learned from the French. The French language, indeed, is the only one which has a word—_quiproquo_—to indicate the class of misunderstanding which, from _Lady Inger_ down to _The League of Youth_, Ibsen employed without scruple. Ibsen’s first visit to the home of his future wife took place five days after the production of _The Feast at Solhoug_. It seems doubtful whether this was actually his first meeting with her;[11] but at any rate we can scarcely suppose that he knew her during the previous summer, when he was writing his play. It is a curious coincidence, then, that he should have found in Susanna Thoresen and her sister Marie very much the same contrast of characters which had occupied him in his first dramatic effort, _Catilina_, and which had formed the main subject of the play he had just produced. It is less wonderful that the same contrast should so often recur in his later works, even down to _John Gabriel Borkman_. Ibsen was greatly attached to his gentle and retiring sister-in-law, who died unmarried in 1874.