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Paradise Lost would make a far better film than Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, though Borkman is a dramatic masterpiece, and Milton could not write an effective play." He has in mind, no doubt, the pouring hosts of demons and angels. This is one kind of a Crowd Picture.
There are points of obscurity, and one or two of positive and even regrettable whimsicality, about John Gabriel Borkman, but on the whole it is a work of lofty originality and of poignant human interest. The veteran was now beginning to be conscious of the approaches of old age, but they were made agreeable to him by many tokens of national homage.
This eminent authority gave it as his unhesitating opinion that the Wenuses were not fit persons to associate with actors, actresses, or dramatic critics, and that if, as was announced, they had been engaged at Covent Garden to lend realistic verisimilitude to the Venusberg scene in Tannhäuser, it was his firm resolve to give up his long crusade against Ibsen, emigrate to Norway, and change his name to that of John Gabriel Borkman.
Ten minutes later the raising of the curtain discloses John Gabriel Borkman standing with his hands behind his back, looking at the girl who has been playing for him. The moment is trebly emphatic, by position at the opening of an act, by surprise, and most of all by suspense. When the hero is at last discovered, the audience looks at him.
Borkman believing that by a brilliant career of commercial rectitude her son will wipe out the memory of his father's crime; Borkman, who has never given up the ambition of returning to business, reposing his own hopes on the co-operation of his son. But Erhart Borkman disappoints them all.
Ibsen may seem to have little relation with the drama of the world, but in reality he is linked with it at every step. There is something of Shakespeare in John Gabriel Borkman, something Molière in Ghosts, something of Goethe in Peer Gynt. We may go further and say, though it would have made Ibsen wince, that there is something of Scribe in An Enemy of the People.
That Borkman embezzled money, and reduced hundreds of innocent people to beggary, might be condoned; but there is no pardon for his cruel bargaining for wealth with the soul of Ella Rentheim, since that is the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit.
The figure of Erhart Borkman is a very interesting one to the theatrical student. In the ruin of the family, all hopes concentre in him. Every one claims him, and in the bosoms of each of his shattered parents a secret hope is born, Mrs.
There is more talk about him on the stage; the act is far advanced, and soon it seems that he must show himself. From the upper room is heard the music of the Dance of Death that his young girl friend is playing for him. Now to the dismal measures of the dance the dialogue on the stage swells to a climax. Borkman is still heard pacing in the gallery. And the curtain falls.
Deserted thus by the ignis fatuus of youth, the collapse of the three old people is complete. Under the shock the brain of Borkman gives way, and he wanders out into the winter's night, full of vague dreams of what he can still do in the world, if he can only break from his bondage and shatter his dream.
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