Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man, he
thinks, must not behave like a blackguard. "He must not so act that
he would spit in his own face." For only cowards permit
"considerations" of pretended general welfare or of party to override
truth and ideals. "Party programmes wring the necks of all young,
living truths; and considerations of expediency turn morality and
righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous."
These plays of Ibsen—The Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People—constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground called civilization. Nay, more; Ibsen's destructive effects are at the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines existing pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the foundation of a healthier, ideal future, based on the sovereignty of the individual within a sympathetic social environment.
England with her great pioneers of radical thought, the intellectual pilgrims like Godwin, Robert Owen, Darwin, Spencer, William Morris, and scores of others; with her wonderful larks of liberty—Shelley, Byron, Keats—is another example of the influence of dramatic art. Within comparatively a few years, the dramatic works of Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Rann Kennedy, have carried radical thought to the ears formerly deaf even to Great Britain's wondrous poets. Thus a public which will remain indifferent reading an essay by Robert Owen, on Poverty, or ignore Bernard Shaw's Socialistic tracts, was made to think by Major Barbara, wherein poverty is
