- duced in Brussels in March 1889, but attracted little
attention. Not until 1894 was the play introduced to the Parisian public, at the Gymnase, with Madame Réjane as Nora. This actress has since played the part frequently, not only in Paris but in London and in America. In Italian the play was first produced in 1889, and soon passed into the repertory of Eleonora Duse, who appeared as Nora in London in 1893. Few heroines in modern drama have been played by so many actresses of the first rank. To those already enumerated must be added Hedwig Niemann-Raabe and Agnes Sorma in Germany, and Minnie Maddern-Fiske in America; and, even so, the list is far from complete. There is probably no country in the world, possessing a theatre on the European model, in which A Doll's House has not been more or less frequently acted.
Undoubtedly the great attraction of the part of Nora to the average actress was the tarantella scene. This was a theatrical effect, of an obvious, unmistakable kind. It might have been—though I am not aware that it ever actually was—made the subject of a picture-poster. But this, as it seems to me, was Ibsen's last concession to the ideal of technique which he had acquired, in the old Bergen days, from his French masters. I have elsewhere[A] analysed A Doll's House at some length, from the technical point of view, suggesting that it marks a distinct, and one might almost say a sudden, revolution in the poet's understanding of the methods and aims of his art. There is pretty good reason to suppose, as it seems to me, that he altered the plan of the play while it was actually in process of composition. He seems
A Fortnightly Review, July 1906.
