doned, what afterwards became The Lady from the Sea. In the autumn of that year, indulging once more his curious restlessness, he took all his household gods and goods again to Rome. His thoughts turned away from dramatic art for a moment, and he planned an autobiography, which was to deal with the gradual development of his mind, and to be called From Skien to Rome. Whether he actually wrote any of this seems uncertain; that he should have planned it shows a certain sense of maturity, a suspicion that, now in his fifty-third year, he might be nearly at the end of his resources. As a matter of fact, he was just entering upon a new inheritance. In the summer of 1881 he went, as usual now, to Sorrento, and there[1] the plot of Ghosts revealed itself to him. This work was composed with more than Ibsen’s customary care, and was published at the beginning of December, in an edition of ten thousand copies.
Before the end of 1881 Ibsen was aware of the terrific turmoil which Ghosts had begun to occasion. He wrote to Passarge: “My new play
- ↑ Note.—So the authorities state: but in an unpublished letter to myself, dated Rome, November 26, 1880, I find Ibsen saying, “Just now I am beginning to exercise my thoughts over a new drama! I hope I shall finish it in the course of next summer.” It seems to have been already his habit to meditate long about a subject before it took any definite literary form in his mind.
