ed by the play's action. Torvald comes onstage a fully formed personality, which is one of highly developed attachment to reason, common sense, and both public and private virtue. The fact that his character is fixed does not speak to one-dimensionality or playwright ineptitude, however. Rather, the firm fix of Torvald's internal psychological and emotional mechanism is what A Doll House is about and what causes his decline. That is why Rockwood is incorrect when he says that "if an actor is to play Torvald, he must be in strong accord with Torvald's motivations" and must "thoroughly sympathize with Torvald's point of view" (Rockwood 60). It is undoubtedly true that whoever plays Torvald must enact and perhaps become encased by Torvald's beliefs, in order to find and portray Torvald's truth as his own. But Rockwood's logic here argues that, say, only a murderer is suited to playing Macbeth. An actor does not have to close off understanding of a playwright's dramatic intent (and one could say of male chauvinism) in order to inhabit a role, in particular the
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