and America, Hedda has frequently been acted by Miss Nance O'Neill
and other actresses--quite recently by a Russian actress, Madame Alla
Nazimova, who (playing in English) seems to have made a notable
success both in this part and in Nora. The first French Hedda Gabler
was Mlle. Marthe Brandes, who played the part at the Vaudeville
Theatre, Paris, on December 17, 1891, the performance being introduced
by a lecture by M. Jules Lemaitre. In Holland, in Italy, in Russia,
the play has been acted times without number. In short (as might
easily have been foretold) it has rivalled _A Doll's House_ in world-
wide popularity.

It has been suggested,(4) I think without sufficient ground, that Ibsen
deliberately conceived _Hedda Gabler_ as an "international" play, and
that the scene is really the "west end" of any European city. To me
it seems quite clear that Ibsen had Christiania in mind, and the
Christiania of a somewhat earlier period than the 'nineties. The
electric cars, telephones, and other conspicuous factors in the life
of a modern capital are notably absent from the play. There is no
electric light in Secretary Falk's villa. It is still the habit for
ladies to return on foot from evening parties, with gallant swains
escorting them. This "suburbanism," which so distressed the London
critics of 1891, was characteristic of the Christiania Ibsen himself
had known in the 'sixties--the Christiania of _Love's Comedy_--rather
than of the greatly extended and modernised city of the end of the
century. Moreover Lovborg's allusions to the fiord, and the suggested
picture of Sheriff Elvsted, his family and his avocations are all
distinctively Norwegian. The truth seems to be very simple--the
environment and the subsidiary personages are all thoroughly national,
but Hedda herself is an "international" type, a product of civilisation
by no means peculiar to Norway.