In consistency of style, and in architectural symmetry of construction, the play marks a great advance upon _The League of Youth_. From the end of the first act to the middle of the last, it is a model of skilful plot-development. The exposition, which occupies so much of the first act, is carried out by means of a somewhat cumbrous mechanism. No doubt the “Kaffee-Klatsch” is in great measure justified as a picture of the tattling society of the little town. It does not altogether ignore the principle of economy. But it is curious to note the rapid shrinkage in the poet’s expositions. Here we have the necessary information conveyed by a whole party of subsidiary characters. In the next play, _A Doll’s House_,—we have still a set exposition, but two characters suffice for it, and one the heroine. In the next play again—that is to say, in _Ghosts_—the poet has arrived at his own peculiar formula, and the exposition is indistinguishably merged in the action. Still greater is the contrast between the conclusion of _Pillars of Society_ and that of _A Doll’s House_. It would be too much to call Bernick’s conversion and promise to turn over a new leaf as conventional as the Chamberlain’s right-about-face in _The League of Youth_. Bernick has passed through a terrible period of mental agony which may well have brought home to him a conviction of sin. Still, the way in which everything suddenly comes right, Olaf is recovered, the _Indian Girl_ is stopped, Aune is reconciled to the use of the new machines, and even the weather improves, so as to promise Johan and Dina a prosperous voyage to America—all this is a manifest concession to popular optimism. We are not to conceive, of course, that the poet deliberately compromised with an artistic ideal for the sake of popularity, but rather that he had not yet arrived at the ideal of logical and moral consistency which he was soon afterwards to attain. To use his own metaphor, the ghost of the excellent Eugène Scribe still walked in him. He still instinctively thought of a play as a storm in a tea-cup, which must naturally blow over in the allotted two hours and a half. Even in his next play—so gradual is the process of evolution—he still makes the external storm, so to speak, blow over at the appointed time. But, instead of the general reconciliation and serenity upon which the curtain falls in _The League of Youth_ and _Pillars of Society_—instead of the “happy ending” which Helmer so confidently expects—he gives us that famous scene of Nora’s revolt and departure, in which he himself may be said to have made his exit from the school of Scribe, banging the door behind him.