Borkman, Gunhild, and Ella were played by Garmann, Fru Gundersen,
and Froken Reimers respectively; in Copenhagen, by Emil Pousen, Fru
Eckhardt, and Fru Hennings. In the course of 1897 it spread all over
Germany, beginning with Frankfort on Main, where, oddly enough,
it was somewhat maltreated by the Censorship. In London, an
organization calling itself the New Century Theatre presented _John
Gabriel Borkman_ at the Strand Theatre on the afternoon of May 3,
1897, with Mr. W. H. Vernon as Borkman, Miss Genevieve Ward as
Gunhild, Miss Elizabeth Robins as Ella Rentheim, Mr. Martin Harvey
as Erhart, Mr. James Welch as Foldal, and Mrs. Beerbohm Tree as Mrs.
Wilton. The first performance in America was given by the Criterion
Independent Theatre of New York on November 18, 1897, Mr. E. J. Henley
playing Borkman, Mr. John Blair Erhart, Miss Maude Banks Gunhild,
and Miss Ann Warrington Ella. For some reason, which I can only
conjecture to be the weakness of the the third act, the play seems
nowhere to have taken a very firm hold on the stage.

Dr. Brahm has drawn attention to the great similarity between the
theme of _John Gabriel Borkman_ and that of _Pillars of Society_.
"In both," he says, "we have a business man of great ability who is
guilty of a crime; in both this man is placed between two sisters;
and in both he renounces a marriage of inclination for the sake of
a marriage that shall further his business interests." The likeness
is undeniable; and yet how utterly unlike are the two plays! and how
immeasurably superior the later one! It may seem, on a superficial
view, that in _John Gabriel Borkman_ Ibsen has returned to prose and
the common earth after his excursion into poetry and the possibly
supernatural, if I may so call it, in _The Master Builder_ and
_Little Eyolf_. But this is a very superficial view indeed. We
have only to compare the whole invention of _John Gabriel Borkman_