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Another consummate example of the dramatic handling of detail may be found in the first act of Ibsen's Little Eyolf. The lame boy, Eyolf, has followed the Rat-wife down to the wharf, has fallen into the water, and been drowned. This is the bare fact: how is it to be conveyed to the child's parents and to the audience?
So great, however, had the public interest in Ibsen become in 1894 that the edition of 10,000 copies of Little Eyolf was found quite inadequate to meet the first order, and it was enlarged to 15,000, all of which were gone in a fortnight.
The danger of relying upon such complexities is shown by the fact that so acute a critic as M. Jules Lemaître, in writing of Little Eyolf, mistook the situation, and thought that Asta fled from Allmers because he was her brother, whereas in fact she fled because he was not. I had the honour of calling M. Lemaître's attention to this error, which he handsomely acknowledged.
A small but instructive example of a difficult effect, such as the prudent playwright will do well to avoid, occurs in the third act of Ibsen's Little Eyolf. During the greater part of the act, the flag in Allmers's garden is hoisted to half-mast in token of mourning; until at the end, when he and Rita attain a serener frame of mind, he runs it up to the truck.
As a matter of fact, many of the best modern plays in all languages fall into three acts; one has only to note Monsieur Alphonse, Françillon, La Parisienne, Amoureuse, A Doll's House, Ghosts, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, Johannisfeuer, Caste, Candida, The Benefit of the Doubt, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Silver Box; and, furthermore, many old plays which are nominally in five acts really fall into a triple rhythm, and might better have been divided into three.
Thorleik Bollison turned against Eyolf, who was a strong man. Thorleik struck him with his sword, and it caught him on the leg above the knee and cut off his leg, and he fell to earth dead. Hunbogi the Strong went to meet Thorgils, and dealt a blow at him with an axe, and it struck the back of him, and cut him asunder in the middle.
Those who prefer to absolute success in the creation of a work of art the personal flavor or perfume of the artist himself were predisposed to place Little Eyolf very high among his writings. Nowhere is he more independent of all other influences, nowhere more intensely, it may even be said more distressingly, himself.
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