from a work which has occupied one's time and thoughts for several
months, to the exclusion of all else. But it is a good thing, too,
to have done with it. The constant intercourse with the fictitious
personages was beginning to make me quite nervous." To the same
correspondent he wrote on December 4: "The title of the play is
_Hedda Gabler_. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate
that Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father's
daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not my desire to deal in
this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do
was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon
a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of
the present day."

So far we read the history of the play in the official
"Correspondence."(1) Some interesting glimpses into the poet's moods
during the period between the completion of _The Lady from the Sea_
and the publication of _Hedda Gabler_ are to be found in the series
of letters to Fraulein Emilie Bardach, of Vienna, published by Dr.
George Brandes.(2) This young lady Ibsen met at Gossensass in the
Tyrol in the autumn of 1889. The record of their brief friendship
belongs to the history of _The Master Builder_ rather than to that of
_Hedda Gabler_, but the allusions to his work in his letters to her
during the winter of 1889 demand some examination.

So early as October 7, 1889, he writes to her: "A new poem begins to
dawn in me. I will execute it this winter, and try to transfer to it
the bright atmosphere of the summer. But I feel that it will end in
sadness--such is my nature." Was this "dawning" poem _Hedda Gabler_?
Or was it rather _The Master Builder_ that was germinating in his
mind? Who shall say? The latter hypothesis seems the more probable,