Gina. Well, well.... (Sets a tray with coffee, etc., on the table.) Here’s a drop of something warm, if you’d like it. And there’s some bread and butter and a snack of salt meat.
Hjalmar (glancing at the tray). Salt meat! Never under this roof! It’s true I haven’t had a mouthful of solid food for nearly twenty-four hours; but no matter.... Oh no, I must go out into the storm and the snow-blast—go from house to house and seek shelter for my father and myself.
Gina. But you’ve got no hat, Ekdal. You’ve lost your hat, you know, etc.—The Wild Duck, Act V.
[323] Auguste Ehrhard, Professor à la Faculté des Lettres de Clermont-Ferrand, Henrik Ibsen et le Théâtre contemporain, Paris, 1892, p. 233: ‘Ibsen’s characters may in general be divided into two categories—those in which the moral element, the life of the soul, dominates, and those in which the animal prevails. The first are, for the most part, mouthpieces of the theories dear to the poet.... They have their primary origin in the brain of the poet.... It is he who gives them life.’
[324] Right out here so early—eh?... Well, did you get safe home from the quay—eh? Look here. Let me untie the bow—eh? etc.—Hedda Gabler. London, W. Heinemann, pp. 7-9.
[325] Nora. Yes, I really am now in a state of extraordinary happiness. There is only one thing in the world that I should really like.
Rank. Well, and what’s that?
Nora. There’s something that I should so like to say—but for Torvald to hear it.
Rank. Then, why don’t you say it to him?
Nora. Because I daren’t, for it sounds so ugly....