absolute scientific accuracy. The flaws above alluded to are of
another nature. One of them is the prominence given to the fact
that the Asylum is uninsured. No doubt there is some symbolical
purport in the circumstance; but I cannot think that it is either
sufficiently clear or sufficiently important to justify the
emphasis thrown upon it at the end of the second act. Another
dubious point is Oswald's argument in the first act as to the
expensiveness of marriage as compared with free union. Since the
parties to free union, as he describes it, accept all the
responsibilities of marriage, and only pretermit the ceremony, the
difference of expense, one would suppose, must be neither more nor
less than the actual marriage fee. I have never seen this remark of
Oswald's adequately explained, either as a matter of economic fact,
or as a trait of character. Another blemish, of somewhat greater
moment, is the inconceivable facility with which, in the third act,
Manders suffers himself to be victimised by Engstrand. All these
little things, taken together, detract, as it seems to me, from the
artistic completeness of the play, and impair its claim to rank as
the poet's masterpiece. Even in prose drama, his greatest and most
consummate achievements were yet to come.

Must we, then, wholly dissent from Bjornson's judgment? I think
not. In a historical, if not in an aesthetic, sense, _Ghosts_ may
well rank as Ibsen's greatest work. It was the play which first
gave the full measure of his technical and spiritual originality
and daring. It has done far more than any other of his plays to
"move boundary-posts." It has advanced the frontiers of dramatic
art and implanted new ideals, both technical and intellectual, in
the minds of a whole generation of playwrights. It ranks with
_Hernani_ and _La Dame aux Camelias_ among the epoch-making plays