This being so, it is evident that the effect of pre-arrangement produced by Hilda’s appearing exactly on the given cue was deliberately aimed at. Like so many other details in the play, it might be a mere coincidence, or it might be a result of inscrutable design—we were purposely left in doubt. But the suggestion of pre-arrangement which helped to create the atmosphere of the _The Master Builder_ was wholly out of place in _A Doll’s House_. In the later play it was a subtle stroke of art; in the earlier it was the effect of imperfectly dissembled artifice. My conjecture of an actual modification of Ibsen’s design during the progress of the play may possibly be mistaken. There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that Ibsen’s full originality first reveals itself in the latter half of the third act. This is proved by the very protests, nay, the actual rebellion, which the last scene called forth. Up to that point he had been doing, approximately, what theatrical orthodoxy demanded of him. But when Nora, having put off her masquerade dress, returned to make up her account with Helmer, and with marriage as Helmer understood it, the poet flew in the face of orthodoxy, and its professors cried out in bewilderment and wrath. But it was just at this point that, in practice, the real grip and thrill of the drama were found to come in. The tarantella scene never, in my experience—and I have seen five or six great actresses in the part—produced an effect in any degree commensurate with the effort involved. But when Nora and Helmer faced each other, one on each side of the table, and set to work to ravel out the skein of their illusions, then one felt oneself face to face with a new thing in drama—an order of experience, at once intellectual and emotional, not hitherto attained in the theatre. This every one felt, I think, who was in any way accessible to that order of experience. For my own part, I shall never forget how surprised I was on first seeing the play, to find this scene, in its naked simplicity, far more exciting and moving than all the artfully-arranged situations of the earlier acts. To the same effect, from another point of view, we have the testimony of Fru Hennings, the first actress who ever played the part of Nora. In an interview published soon after Ibsen’s death, she spoke of the delight it was to her, in her youth, to embody the Nora of the first and second acts, the “lark,” the “squirrel,” the irresponsible, butterfly Nora. “When I now play the part,” she went on, “the first acts leave me indifferent. Not until the third act am I really interested—but then, intensely.” To call the first and second acts positively uninteresting would of course be a gross exaggeration. What one really means is that their workmanship is still a little derivative and immature, and that not until the third act does the poet reveal the full originality and individuality of his genius. GHOSTS.