George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Quintessence of Ibsenism,

The drama was born of old from the union of two desires: the desire to have a dance and the desire to hear story. The dance became a rant; the story became a situation. When Ibsen began to make plays, the art of the dramatist had shrunk into the art of contriving a situation. And it was held that the stranger the situation, the more interesting the play. Shakespeare had put ourselves on the stage but not our situations . … Ibsen supplies the want left by Shakespeare. He gives us not only ourselves, but ourselves in our situations . … his plays … are capable of both hurting us cruelly and of filling us with excited hope of escape from idealistic tyrannies, and with visions of intenser life in the future.