brilliant and successful of English Ibsen productions. Miss Robins
was almost an ideal Hilda, and Mr. Waring's Solness was exceedingly
able. Some thirty performances were give in all, and the play was
reproduced at the Opera Comique later in the season, with Mr. Lewis
Waller as Solness. In the following year Miss Robins acted Hilda in
Manchester. In Christiania and Copenhagen the play was produced on
the same evening, March 8, 1893; the Copenhagen Solness and Hilda
were Emil Poulsen and Fru Hennings. A Swedish production, by
Lindberg, soon followed, both in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In Paris
_Solness le constructeur_ was not seen until April 3, 1894, when it
was produced by "L'OEuvre" with M. Lugne-Poe as Solness. The company,
sometimes with Mme. Suzanne Despres and sometimes with Mme. Berthe
Bady as Hilda, in 1894 and 1895 presented the play in London,
Brussels, Amsterdam, Milan, and other cities. In October 1894
they visited Christiania, where Ibsen was present at one of their
performances, and is reported by Herman Bang to have been so
enraptured with it that he exclaimed, "This is the resurrection of
my play!" On this occasion Mme. Bady was the Hilda. The first
performance of the play in America took place at the Carnegie Lyceum,
New York, on January 16, 1900, with Mr. William H. Pascoe as Solness
and Miss Florence Kahn as Hilda. The performance was repeated in the
course of the same month, both at Washington and Boston.

In England, and probably elsewhere as well, _The Master Builder_
produced a curious double effect. It alienated many of the poet's
staunchest admirers, and it powerfully attracted many people who had
hitherto been hostile to him. Looking back, it is easy to see why
this should have been so; for here was certainly a new thing in drama,
which could not but set up many novel reactions. A greater contrast
could scarcely be imagined than that between the hard, cold, precise