ABSTRACT
Henry James's move from the novel to the play was one from freedom to restriction. His subsequent imposition on the novel of the theatrical limitations with which he had to work shows how valuable this experience of the 'theatrical strait-jacket' was to him. His greatest technical problem, a problem that continued into his late plays, was getting his characters on and off stage. James, with a difficulty foremost in his mind, transformed the entrance/exit problem into the 'Action', promising to turn coming and going into the essence of the play. He found in Ibsen a spartan economy that tended to emphasise the representative quality of the actions he described. 'Deficiencies', 'meagreness', a 'hard frugal charm' are all means to evoke the amount of work James saw Ibsen's writing performing. His characteristic recourse to painting as the paradigm for artistic activity represents the powerfully visual qualities of Ibsen's writing.
