Ibsen wrote few letters while the play was in process of preparation, and none of them contains any noteworthy reference to it. On the other hand, we possess a very curious first draft of the story[1] (dated March 5, 1880), which shows in a most interesting fashion how an idea grew in his mind. Abbreviating freely, I will try to indicate the main points of difference between the sketch and the finished play.
The scene of the action was originally conceived as a much smaller town than it ultimately became, shut in and overshadowed by high, abrupt rocks. (Note that when he wrote the sketch Ibsen had not yet visited Molde.) There was to be an hotel and a sanatorium, and a good deal of summer gaiety in the place; but the people were to long in an impotent, will-less fashion for release from their imprisonment in the "shadow-life" of this remote corner of the world. Through the short summer, they were always to have the long winter impending over them; and this was to be a type of life: "A bright summer day with the great darkness behind it—that is all." This motive, though traces of it remain, is much less emphasized than was at first intended.
The characters were to fall into three groups: inhabitants of the town, summer visitors, and passing tourists. The tourists were simply to "come and go, and enter episodically into the action"; but the other two groups are more or less individualised.
The first group is thus described: "The lawyer married a second time, to the woman from the open sea outside. Has two young but grown-up daughters by his first marriage. Elegant, distinguished, bitter. His
1 Published in Die neue Rundschau, December 1906. The same magazine contains a first draft of A Doll's House. It appeared too late to be noticed in the Introduction to that play.
