had for several months." Three weeks later (November 20) he wrote
to his French translator, Count Prozor: "My new play is finished; the
manuscript went off to Copenhagen the day before yesterday.  .  .  .  It
produces a curious feeling of emptiness to be thus suddenly separated
from a work which has occupied one's time and thoughts for several
months, to the exclusion of all else.  But it is a good thing, too,
to have done with it.  The constant intercourse with the fictitious
personages was beginning to make me quite nervous." To the same
correspondent he wrote on December 4: "The title of the play is
_Hedda Gabler_.  My intention in giving it this name was to indicate
that Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father's
daughter than as her husband's wife.  It was not my desire to deal in
this play with so-called problems.  What I principally wanted to do
was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon
a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of
the present day." 

So far we read the history of the play in the official
"Correspondence."(1) Some interesting glimpses into the poet's moods
during the period between the completion of _The Lady from the Sea_