W. A.
[1]. See Introduction to The Wild Duck, p. xxiii.
[2]. He continued to dabble in painting until he was thirty, or thereabouts.
[3]. Preface to the second edition of Catilina, 1875.
[4]. This is his own statement of the order of events. According to Halvdan Koht (Samlede Værker, vol. x. p. i) he arrived in Christiania in March 1850, and Catilina did not appear until April.
[5]. The history of Ibsen’s connection with the Bergen Theatre is written at some length in an article by me, entitled “Ibsen’s Apprenticeship,” published in the Fortnightly Review for January 1904. From that article I quote freely in the following pages.
[6]. Provost (“Provst”) is an ecclesiastical title, roughly equivalent to Dean.
[7]. See article by Dr. Julius Elias in Die neue Rundschau, December 1906, p. 1463. Dr. Brahm, in the same magazine (p. 1414), writes as though this were Ibsen’s first meeting with his wife; and a note by Halvdan Koht, in the Norwegian edition of Ibsen’s Letters, seems to bear out this view. But it would appear that what Fru Ibsen told Dr. Elias was that on the date mentioned Ibsen for “the first time visited at her father’s house.” The terms of the anecdote almost compel us to assume that he had previously met her elsewhere. It seems almost inconceivable that Ibsen, of all people, should have made such a speech to a lady on their very first meeting.
[8]. Stage Society performances, January 28 and 29, 1906. Lady Inger was played by Miss Edyth Olive, Elina by Miss Alice Crawford, Nils Lykke by Mr. Henry Ainley, Olaf Skaktavl by Mr. Alfred Brydone, and Nils Stenssön by Mr. Harcourt Williams.