" It was a proof of the immense growth
of Ibsen's celebrity that editions of _Hedda Gabler_ were called for
almost simultaneously, in the winter of 1890, in London, New York, St.
Petersburg, Leipzig, Berlin and Moscow, as well as in Copenhagen,
Stockholm and Christiania. There was no other living author in the world
at that moment who excited so much curiosity among the intellectual
classes, and none who exercised so much influence on the younger
generation of authors and thinkers.
In _Hedda Gabler_ Ibsen returned, for the last time, but with
concentrated vigor, to the prosaic ideal of his central period. He never
succeeded in being more objective in drama, he never kept more closely
to the bare facts of nature nor rejected more vigorously the ornaments
of romance and rhetoric than in this amazing play. There is no poetic
suggestion here, no species of symbol, white horse, or gnawing thing, or
monster from the sea. I am wholly in agreement with Mr. Archer when he
says that he finds it impossible to extract any sort of general idea
from _Hedda Gabler_, or to accept it as a satire of any condition of
society.
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