For the first twelve months Ibsen enjoyed the pleasures of the prodigal
returned, and fed with gusto on the fatted calf. Then, when three years
separated him from the illuminating soul-adventures of Gossensass, he
began to turn them into a play. It proved to be _The Master-Builder_,
and was published before the close of December, 1892, with the date 1893
on the title-page. This play was running for some time in Germany and
England before it was played in Scandinavia. But on the evening of March
8, 1893, it was simultaneously given at the National Theatre in
Christiania and at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. It was a work which
greatly puzzled the critics, and its meaning was scarcely apparent until
it had been seen on the stage, for which the oddity of its arrangements
are singularly well adapted. It was, however, almost immediately noticed
that it marked a new departure in Ibsen's writings. Here was an end of
the purely realistic and prosaic social dramas, which had reigned from
_The League of Youth_ to _Hedda Gabler_, and here was a return to the
strange and haunting beauty of the old imaginative pieces.
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