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Dear EDITOR,--Noticing that the author of _The Doll's House_ was to
have another morning, or, to use an equally suitable epithet, mourning
performance devoted to his works, I made up my mind, after bracing
up my nerves, to attend it. The 23rd of February (the date of the
proposed function) as the second Monday in Lent, seemed to me, too,
distinctly appropriate. By attending the performance--IBSEN recommends
self-execution--I sentenced myself to three hours and a half of
boredom, tempered with disgust. I cannot help feeling that whatever
my past may have been, the penance paid to wipe it out was excessive,
and therefore rendered it unnecessary that I should attend a second
performance announced for last week.
_Rosmershölm_ is in four Acts and one Scene--a room in _Rosmer's_
House. Act I. _Rector Kroll_, who is the brother-in-law of _Pastor
Rosmer_, calls upon the latter, to ask him to edit a paper in the
Conservative interest. _Kroll_ (who, by the way, is a married man)
before seeing the widower of his dead sister, has a mild flirtation
with _Rebecca West_, a female of a certain age, who has taken up her
abode for some years in the Rector's house. And here I may observe
that the Rector's housekeeper, _Madame Helseth_, presumably a highly
respectable person, although she has excellent reasons, from the
first, for believing that the relations between her Master and
_Rebecca_ are scarcely platonic, accepts the domestic arrangements of
the Rosmer _ménage_ with hearty acquiescence, not to say enthusiasm.
_Rosmer_ interrupts the Rector's _tête-à-tête_ with the fascinating
_Rebecca_, and declines the proffered editorship, because he is a
Radical, and an atheist. End of Act I.,--no action to speak of, but
a good deal of wordy twaddle. In Act II. we learn that the late _Mrs.
Rosmer_ has committed suicide, because she was informed that the
apostate Pastor could only save his villainy from exposure by giving
immediately the position of wife to her friend _Rebecca_. She has had
this tip on the most reliable authority,--it has been furnished by
_Rebecca_ herself. Then the Pastor asks _Rebecca_ to marry him, but
is refused, for no apparent reason, unless it be that she has tired
of her guilty passion. In Act III. _Rebecca_ admits to the widower and
his brother-in-law that she has deceived the deceased, and prepares
to decamp. In the final Act the apostate Pastor declares that he has
been in love with _Rebecca_ from the first, loves her now, but is not
sure that she loves him. To set his mind at rest on this point, will
she do him a small favour? Will she be so good as to jump into the
mill-stream, and drown herself? With pleasure--and she takes a header!
He explains that courtesy forbids him to keep a lady waiting, and
follows her example! So both are drowned, and all ends happily!
And this is the plot! And what about the characters? _Rebecca_ is
merely a hysterical old maid, who would have been set right, in
the time of the Tudors, with a sound ducking; and nowadays, had
she consulted a fashionable physician, she would have been probably
ordered a sea-voyage, and a diet free from stimulants. The Pastor is
a feeble, fickle fool, who seemingly has had but one sensible idea in
his life. He has believed his wife to be mad, and, considering that
she married him, his faith in the matter rested upon evidence of an
entirely convincing nature. The _Rector Kroll_ is a prig and a bore
of the first water. When he discovers _Rebecca's_ perfidy, he suggests
that she may have inherited her proneness for treachery from her
father--and, to her distressed astonishment, he gives the name of a
gentleman, not hitherto recognised by her as a parent! The best line
in the piece, to my mind--and it certainly "went with a roar"--is a
question of the housekeeper--answered in the negative--"Have you ever
seen the Pastor laugh?" Laugh! with such surroundings! Pretentious
twaddle, that would be repulsively immoral were it less idiotic. And
_so_ dull!
As a theatre-goer for more than a quarter of a century, I dislike
undue severity, and am consequently glad to find my opinion is
shared by others. "SCRUTATOR," the Dramatic Critic of _Truth_, wrote
last week--"The few independent persons who have sat out a play by
IBSEN, be it _The Doll's House_, or _The Pillars of Society_, or
_Rosmershölm_, have said to themselves. 'Put this stuff before the
playgoing public, risk it at an evening theatre, remove your _claque_,
exhaust your attendance of the socialist and the sexless, and then see
where your IBSEN will be.' I have never known an audience that cared
to pay to be bored, and the over-vaunted _Rosmershölm_ bored even the
Ibsenites." I only hope it did, for they deserve their martyrdom!
I believe that you personally, my dear Editor, have never seen a
dramatic performance of the "Master's" work. I wish I could say as
much, and I shall be surprised if you do not appreciate the feeling,
after you too have partaken of this truly Lenten fare. Yours
sincerely,