Los Angeles herald., 1907-11-16
Friday Morning Club

"A ARR MESTAYER of the Burbank
III stock company, whose appreciation
- and understanding of Henrik Ibsen
gives him authority, speaking before the
Friday Morning club yesterday of that
much discussed dramatist said in part:
Time will not permit me to dwell upon
or discuss Henrik Ibsen as a moralist,
psychologist socialist, anarchist, polemic-
women's suffragist, or any of the other
lists or isms' of which he has been un-
justly accused; 1t is with Ibsen, the artist,
Ibsen, the dramatist, that will deal.
Henrik Ibsen has been acknowledged
by the greatest minds of our age to be
cne of the foremost dramatists of the
world. Many have placed him before
Shakespeare, others will admit that his
plays have genius but will not listen to
even a comparison with Shakespeare,
while no less eminent litterateur than
William Dean Howells compares one of
lbsen's greatest plays, If not indeed his
masterpiece. Ghosts to Macbeth and
Hamlet with no detriment to the genius
of Ibsen. However, in whatever cata-
CORY We place him the fact remains tina Z
with the single exception of Shakespeare
no writer has exercised so wide an in.
fiuence on the drama of the civilized
world, and in most of the civilized coun-
tries of the globe, especially in England
and Germany, he is more honored than in
his own country. Yet no man in the
whole history of literature has been more
misunderstood. more cruelty criticised or
more unjustly abused and condemned.
The reason for this is principally because
in dealing with the social questions of che
day. In the laying bare the sores of
modern social life for which his genius is
eminently fitted, his chief aim is the re-
form of abuses, and as we all know from
experience or observation, the path of the
reformer is a hard and stony one to tread
But the time is unquestionably coming
when Ibsen's plays will be presented with
more frequency than those of any other
modern author. The signs of the time
point Enthusiastically to a revulsion from
the mawkish unreal, the inane, insipid
sentimental and the vapid impossible ro
mantle in the drama and to a desire for
the real, the genuine, the plain unvar-
nished problems of life and the age In
which we live.
"They will perhaps not take Ibsen at
one bound. but they will eventually take
him. and the best evidence of this Is that
at the present time they are working
gradually up to him. the master realist,
through the plays of his literary satel-
lites, Sudermann, Hauptmann and
Maeterlinaek in Germany, D'Annunzio OF
Italy, Arthur Wing Pinero, Henry Arthur
Jones and Bernard Shaw of England
and many others of lesser note.
People will want to see his plays not
alone because they are as dramas of
degree of technical perfection, in treat
ment and construction, practically un-
equaled in the history of dramatic litera-
ture, but because he has had the courage
TO look life squarely boldly in the face,
and with his genius has presented that
which must always be to intellectual hui
inanity the most profoundly interesting
thing in the world-truth unvarnished,
incorporating truth. pitiless at times.
morbid perhaps, but always truth. You
may not like 1t; few people do. You may
think that the pill should be sugar.
coated, or you may say that there are
some things that he should leave alone
or smooth over-or touch lightly upon.
but that is not Ibsen's purpose or his life
work as he sees 1t. You may scoff, try to
evade or applaud, but one thing you can
not do, remain Indifferent In laying
absolutely bare the souls of his charao-