Art and Structure in Rosmersholm

ART AND STRUCTURE IN ROSMERSHOLM IBSEN'S LATER PROSE DRAMA is commonly distinguished from the earlier "problem" plays by its "poetic heights,"l by the way in which the prosaic material "has been subdued to the purposes of poetry."2 Although prose continues to be the medium, the poetic quality of Ibsen's last plays is evident in their evocative and "elliptic"! dialogue; their symbolic overtones of character and action; their thematic manipulation of visual and verbal symbols; and their range of vision, which, as in the final act of John Gabriel Barkman, transcends the restricting confines of the picture stage. One of the most significant aspects of this more poetic mode is Ibsen's attainment of the ambiguity which frees the great poet from "taking sides," from employing his art merely to instruct, to indoctrinate, to convince. The simply defined characters of the problem plays become the "bundles of opposite qualities" which John Northam saw as Ibsen's basic conception of his characters.4 "Inner complexity" of character extends, as in Rosmersholm, to a greater complexity of meaning in the whole action, and Ibsen focuses upon "the multiplicity of forces and demands to which all individuals are subject."5 Ibsen achieves this poetic ambiguity of character and action through the organization of his material into a structural pattern that is a potent image of the resultant complexity of meaning. Muriel C. Bradbrook 's discussion of Hedda Gabler suggests the nature of that pattern. For her, the "variety of attack, the differing angles of approach," and "the way in which one position after another is successively reversed or rejected" produce a final richness of complexity that makes Hedda Gabler "Ibsen's great triumph in the ironic style...."6 The features which she isolates stem directly from Ibsen's employment of the retrospective method, a technique that effects in the spectators a 1 Konstantin Reichardt, "Tragedy of Idealism," in Tragic Themes in Western Literature, ed. Cleanth Brooks (Yale University Press, 1960), p. 131. 2 Una Ellis·Fermor, Shakespeare the Dramatist, ed. Kenneth Muir (London, 1961), p. 157· 3 The term is Miss Ellis-Fermor's, Shakespeare the Dramatist, p. 156. 4 Ibsen's Dramatic Method (London, 1953), p. 12. 5 Cleanth Brooks and Robert B. Heilman, Understanding Drama (New York, 1948), p. 3". 6 Ibsen the Norwegian (London, 1946), pp. 87-88. 150 1%3 AIlT AND STRUCTUIlE IN Rosmerskolm 151 continually shifting point of view. The continued revelation of exposition throughout the entire play gives the spectators a constantly increasing knowledge with which to understand the characters and events, and each increase of knowledge brings about a slight change in their intellectual and emotional participation, brings about, in fact, the reversal and rejection of previously held positions. Ibsen depends upon this technique as a standard practice in his prose drama, and thus Miss Bradbrook's comment upon Hedda Gabler is equally applicable to Rosmersholm. But in Rosmersholm, Ibsen consciously seeks and achieves a shifting dramatic point of view by supplementing the natural tendency of the retrospective method with further shifts in perspective. As a result, Rosmersholm is at the same time one of the most successful dramatizations of his characteristic structural pattern and one of the most complex of all his plays. Rosmersholm has two separable although intricately related strands of exposition, one defining the immediate situation to be enacted within the play, the other lying behind but intimately affecting the present action. Act One clarifies the immediate situation as the prompting of Rebecca and the example of Ulric Brendel finally compel the reluctant Rosmer to admit to Kroll that he has rejected the traditional conservatism of his ancestors for an idealistic liberalism designed to equalize all men by ennobling them. The second strand of exposition reveals the truth about the death of Beata and enters this first act only as hints and guesses which slightly qualify the nature of the immediate situation and foreshadow the later, fuller revelations that will largely bring about the shift in point of view. Act One also establishes a deeper layer of action which infuses the immediate situation with a more universal significance. The deeper layer is suggested at once by the opening picture...