The Temptation of Eve
alone, with its handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see."
If we compare this "quiet felicity" of the artist with the absurd travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas? No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect, to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are wholly unfamiliar. The accessories are few, but of supreme importance; and it is inconceivable that a keenly intelligent actress like Mrs. Fiske should sacrifice vraisemblance to a meaningless refinement. In the second act of "Rosmersholm," to take a single instance, the text calls for a morning wrapper, a thing so manifestly careless and informal
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