The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-10-06
MRS, FISKEM" HEDDAGABLER"
PRESENTATION OF A PART WHICH
DISE STUDIED TEN YEARS.

PRESENTATION OF A PART WHICH
DUSE STUDIED TEN YEARS.
Tho Woman OF Stageland Who Had Net
Courage for . Splendid Sin-A Won
derful Role for an Actress, In Which,
All the Depths Were Not Fully Sounded.
At the Manhattan Theatre last night Mrs.
Fiske played the unlovable yet strangely
attractive heroine In Henrik Ibsen's drama
-Hedda Gabler." Seldom enacted In Ameri-
ca this play has been interpreted abroad
by such great artists as Duse, Agnes Sorma
Frau Frenkel, Marthe Brandes and In Lon
don by Elizabeth Robins. The latter actress
appeared here in the role some time during
1903.
That the part would make an appeal
to a woman Of Mrs. Fske's oalibre may
be taken for granted. Hedda Gabler Ia
cerebral. Is perverse. is beautiful, and
though without charm. yet she binds us
with her SPELL In word, Ibsen. az in the
wild Duck Is showing US tho reverse
Of his medal-that feminine medal dis
played by his semancipated" women. his
Moro, Rebecca, Ellido and Nrs. Alvino
Tho result is strangely disquieting
The play Of irony which Eliminates
internationally this tragedy Of sordid souls,
barren idealisms and dull lives ia the sole
and remote approach to sesthetio beauty;
seldom has the grim old Norseman been 90
unrelenting in his pursuit Of human soul,
seldom so seemingly cruel In his analytic
exposure Of womans nature.
We hear the final pistol shot almost With
a sense Of relief: the suspense has been
intolerable. From the first entrance Of
the selfish heroine-who Is without herolsm
until her final exit we are made 10 feel
the chill Of impending tragedy sinister.
mean tragedy.
The story related is slight, the clash Of
character all; therein lies the power and
significance Of Ibsen's work, therein it's
attraction for dramatic artists Of excep-
tional gifts. Evil predominates in Hedda,
skeins that we admire her or tho image Of
her as set up by the author, despite the
ugliness Of her soul.
She Is no ordinary adventures, no dash
ing stage queen who enthralls and ruins
men. AL the glitter and tinsel Of romance
Is absent in this Emma Bouary Of tho North:
even the. romantic excuse for Emma's
downfall is missing.
Heddd Is cold, Is depraved, yet Is sinless;
she Is the prototype Of that modern creature
run TO earth by Marcel Provost in -Demi-
Vlerges.' She has abandoned the old
conventions. yet is too cowardly to cross
the borderland of the new. Curious she
Is to morbidity; but she never ceases to
fear the petty criticisms Of Christiania
society.
Marrying Tesman for homo and position,
she Is 50 bored that she is quite willing to
betray hm-only her will is not vigorous
enough to take the ultimate step. So
she remains shuffler on the threshold,
evading both the great remuneration and
the splendid crime.
II there is any lesson in her evasive e1-
the test, and for her spiritual cowardice
she lost all. Browning enforces the same
moral in his Statue and the Bust
But Hedda fascinates. She Is beautiful
as a diamond, as cold and as hard. She
irradiates her commonplace surroundings.
Her selfshness is murderous. Even the
pathoogic excuse, because Of her physical
condition. Is not forthcoming In her case.
We are made to realize in few mastery
strokes that her foreground" has been
long career Of consuming egotism, that
antecedent events push her to the COM
mission Of petty villainies.
Never have Ibsens logic and scenic
sense worked in such harmony or with
such appalling results.
As reasoning animals we rejoice In the
subtle dramatic characterization, as men
and brethren we sympathize with the help
lessness Of this unhappy creature imprisoned
in the web Of her temperament.
Heddd's temperament is her destiny.
She is snob, inasmuch as she meanly
admires mean things, and her suicide-like
L6yborg's--is shorn OF all moral grandeur,
because it is not the act of a pure woman
hunted down by an implacable sensualist.
but merely an escape from position which
q stronger woman would have faced and
conquered.
Yet with all her weakness Heddd Gabler
IA woman of destructive character, i'm
potent as are the terms in which it is ex-
pressed. An exasperated soul as Henry
James has it, a soul full of chagrin, enn ui
fretttne, caprice, a soul DESTROYS OF putting
her finger in the pie of destiny, this figure
NAV never win the SURFACES Of the average
theatregoer. She is too complete, too
morbid, too disagreeable, too true and too
human.
latter day plays unpleasant and the
piece is also magnificent picture Of a
soul signalling in distress-this latter clause
ia the saving one. Not to have seen and
studied the drama is to have missed the
tragic irony of a life laid waste by the raw
aging canker of supreme egotism
Mrs. Fiske's version of Hedda is not a
neurotic one. Rather is she like unto a
sleepy tiger cat which slowly puts out a
destroying paw, a paw sheathed in velvet,
and laziy brushes its prey. For at least
two acts the actress left us in mist as to
Ibsens possible meanings.
HeddG did not seem quite clear to her
as possibly HeddG was never quite clear
10 herself until she realized the futility
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