Catiline (written 1849), The Warrior's Barrow (1850), and Olaf Liljekrans (first performed 1857.) Translated from the Norwegian by Anders Orbeck A. M., Assistant Professor of English at the University of Montana. (1921)
(1886) Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp As expressed by the protagonist, Rosmer, the theme of the play is social and political change, in which the traditional ruling classes relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society, but the action is entirely personal, resting on the conduct of the immoral, or amoral, "free thinking" heroine, Rebecca, who sets herself to undermine Rosmer's religious and political beliefs because of his influential position in the community. Rebecca has abandoned not only Christianity but, unlike Rosmer, she has abandoned the whole ethical system of Christianity as well. Possibly she may be taken as Ibsen's answer to the question of whether or not Christian ethics can be expected to survive the death of the Christian religion.
This play tells the story of the Allmer family. At the outset the father, Alfred, has just returned from a trip to the mountains. While there, he resolvs to focus foremost on raising his son Eyolf, rather than continue work on his book, Human Responsibility. Eyolf, though described as having "beautiful, intelligent eyes," is paralyzed in one of his legs, and thus his life is a sheltered one. He craves more than anything else to live the life of a normal boy, but his father knows that this is not possible. As such, Alfred wants to turn Eyolf towards loftier, intellectual pursuits.
(1890) Translation by Edmund Gosse and Scottish critic and author William Archer (1856-1924). This play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama. Hedda's married name is Hedda Tesman; Gabler is her maiden name. On the subject of the title, Ibsen wrote: "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 her husband's wife."
Norwegian: Kj rlighedens Komedie First published in December 1862. Translated by C. H. Herford As a result of being branded an "immoral" work in the press, the Christiania Theatre would not dare to stage this at first. "The play aroused a storm of hostility," Ibsen wrote in its preface three years later, "more violent and more widespread than most books could boast of having evoked in a community the vast majority of whose members commonly regard matters of literature as being of small concern." The only person who approved of it at the time, Ibsen later said, was his wife. He revised the play in 1866, in preparation for its publication "as a Christmas book," as he put it. His decision to make it more appealing to Danish readers by removing many of its specifically Norwegian words has been taken as an early instance of the expression of his contempt for the contemporary Norwegian campaign to purge the language of its foreign influences. Two students, Falk and Lind, are staying at the country house of Mrs. Halm, romancing her two daughters Anna and Svanhild. Lind has ambitions to be a missionary, Falk a great poet. Falk criticises bourgeois society in his verse and insists that we live in the passionate moment. Lind's proposal of marriage to Anna is accepted, but Svanhild rejects the chance to become Falk's muse, as poetry is merely writing, and he can do that on his own and without really risking himself for his beliefs.
A Doll's House is a three-act play written by Norway's Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.
The play is set in a Norwegian town circa 1879.
The play is significant for the way it deals with the fate of a married woman, who at the time in Norway lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. It aroused a great sensation at the time, and caused a "storm of outraged controversy" that went beyond the theatre to the world newspapers and society.
Henrik Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.
His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and by the early 20th century A Doll's House became the world's most performed play.
Characters: Nora Helmer: wife of Torvald, mother of three, living out the ideal of the 19th century wife, but leaves her family at the end of the play. Torvald Helmer: Nora's husband, a newly promoted bank manager, suffocates but professes to be enamoured of his wife. Dr. Rank: A rich family friend, who is secretly in love with Nora. He is terminally ill, and it is implied that his "tuberculosis of the spine" originates from a venereal disease contracted by his father. Christine Linde: Nora's old school friend, widowed, seeking employment (named Kristine in the original Norwegian text). She was in a relationship with Krogstad prior to the play's setting. Nils Krogstad: Employee at Torvald's bank, single father, pushed to desperation. A supposed scoundrel, he is revealed to be a long-lost lover of Kristine. The Children of Nora and Torvald: Ivar, Bobby and Emmy. Anne Marie: Nora's former nanny, who now cares for the children. Helene: The Helmers' maid.
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity." In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play for that year. UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value. As part of our mission to publish great works of literary fiction and nonfiction, Sheba Blake Publishing Corp. is extremely dedicated to bringing to the forefront the amazing works of long dead and truly talented authors.
Original Norwegian title: Samfundets st tter (1877) Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp Ibsen had great trouble writing this play which came before the series of masterpieces which made him famous throughout the world. The ending is the most criticised feature, since Bernick is clearly guilty of attempted murder but gets off unscathed; it successfully illustrates that the rich and powerful are often selfish and corrupt.
Norwegian: Bygmester Solness (1892) 1892 translation by Edmund Gosse and Scottish critic and author William Archer (1856-1924) This is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works. Halvard Solness is a master builder and self-taught architect who is married to Aline, a woman above his station. Through an ambitious career he has built himself up to be a man of power in his home town, and it is hinted that he founded his success on an incident in which his wife's childhood home burned down to the ground. Aline has never recovered from the loss of her childhood home and the death of her newborn twins soon after. Lately she has also been worried about her husband's mental health, as she confides to their family doctor and friend, Dr. Herdal. Solness has three employees: Ragnar Brovik, his father Knut Brovik who as a younger man trained Solness in his work and is now an ailing, bitter old man, and Kaja Fosli, who is engaged to Ragnar but deeply and unhappily in love with Solness. When Solness finds out that Ragnar wants to set up in business on his own, he is unwilling to help Ragnar, whom he tries to get Kaja to marry, in order to keep them both in his own employment. Solness has an unexpected visit by a young woman, Hilde Wangel, whom he met ten years earlier at a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the roofing of a church tower he had built in her home town. She tells him that on that occasion he had kissed her and promised to return in ten years' time to offer her a "kingdom", which she has now come to claim.--Submitted by Mr. Cory
This is the last play written by Henrik Ibsen. It was published in December 1899. The first act takes place outside a spa overlooking a fjord. Sculptor Arnold Rubek and his wife Maia have just enjoyed breakfast and are reading newspapers and drinking champagne. They marvel at how quiet the spa is. Their conversation is lighthearted, but Arnold hints at a general unhappiness with his life. Maia also hints at disappointment. Arnold had promised to take her to a mountaintop to see the whole world as it is, but they have never done so. The play is dominated by images of stone and petrification. The play charts a progression up into the mountains, and Rubek is a sculptor. One of Ibsen's most dreamlike plays, it is also one of his most despairing. "When we dead awaken," Irene explains, "we find that we have never lived." The play is suffused by an intense desire for life, but whether it can be achieved is left problematic, given the play's ironic conclusion (which is, incidentally, reminiscent of the first of Ibsen's two major verse dramas, Brand, and one of his last works in prose, The Master Builder. Some critics suggest that the dark romance in the play is based on sculptor Auguste Rodin's relationship with Camille Claudel.
This was the first publicly successful drama by Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1855 and had its premier at Det norske Theater in Bergen on 2 January 1856. Part of the strength and charm of this play as well as Ibsen's other early poetic works results from the style of the poetic form and the inherent melody of the old ballads for those who speak Scandinavian languages. The play opens on the day of the feast celebrating the third wedding anniversary of the wedding of Bengt Guateson and Margit. Erik of Hogge, a friend of Knut Gesling, the King's sheriff, and Knut himself are seeking permission for Knut to marry Margit's sister, Signe. Knut, a warlike man, is advised that he must demonstrate peaceful ways for a year before Margit will support the marriage. They are invited to the feast, under pledge that they will be peaceful that night.
(1854) Fru Inger til steraad Translation by Scottish critic and author William Archer (1856-1924). This play by Ibsen is inspired by the life of Inger, Lady of Austraat. The play, the third work of the Norwegian's career, reflects the birth of Romantic Nationalism in the Norway of that period, and had a strongly anti-Danish sentiment. It centers on the Scandinavia of 1510–1540 as the Kalmar Union collapsed, the impacts of the Reformation were becoming evident in Norway, and a last desperate struggle was being mounted to maintain Norwegian independence. Its initial sentiments were so strongly anti-Danish that Ibsen ultimately toned them down.
The Borkman family fortunes have been brought down by the imprisonment of John Gabriel, who used his position as a bank manager to speculate with his investors' money. The action of the play takes place eight years after Borkman's release when John Gabriel Borkman, Mrs. Borkman, and her twin sister Ella Rentheim fight over young Erhart Borkman's future. Though John Gabriel Borkman continues the line of naturalism and social commentary that marks Ibsen's middle period, the final act suggests a new phase for the playwright, a phase brought to fruition in his final and more symbolic work When We Dead Awaken (1899).
(1888) Fruen fra Havet Translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling Inspired by the ballad Agnete og Havmanden, this drama is notable in the Ibsen corpus for introducing the portrayal of Hilde Wangel who is again portrayed in Ibsen's later play The Master Builder. This symbolic play is centred on a lady called Ellida. She is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, and grew up where the fjord met the open sea; she loves the sea. She is married to Doctor Wangel, a doctor in a small town in West Norway (in the mountains). He has two daughters (Bolette and Hilde) by his previous wife, and he and Ellida had a son who died as a baby. This put big strains on the marriage. Wangel, fearing for Ellida's mental health, has invited Arnholm, Bolette's former tutor and now the headmaster of a school, in hopes that he can help Ellida. DRAMATIS PERSONAE Doctor Wangel. Ellida Wangel, his second wife. Bolette, Hilde (not yet grown up), his daughters by his first wife. Arnholm (second master at a college). Lyngstrand. Ballested. A Stranger. Young People of the Town. Tourists. Visitors. (The action takes place in small fjord town, Northern Norway.)
(1882) Original Norwegian title: En folkefiende Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp. Written in response to the public outcry against Ibsen's play Ghosts (1881), which at that time was considered scandalous. Ghosts had challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality and was deemed indecent for its veiled references to syphilis. Characters: Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Medical Officer of the Municipal Baths. Mrs. Stockmann, his wife. Petra (their daughter) a teacher. Ejlif & Morten (their sons, aged 13 and 10 respectively). Peter Stockmann (the Doctor's elder brother), Mayor of the Town and Chief Constable, Chairman of the Baths' Committee, etc. Morten Kiil, a tanner (Mrs. Stockmann's adoptive father). Hovstad, editor of the "People's Messenger." Billing, sub-editor. Captain Horster. Aslaksen, a printer. Men of various conditions and occupations, a few women, and a troop of schoolboys--the audience at a public meeting. The action takes place in a coastal town in southern Norway.
H rm ndene paa Helgeland (1857) Translated by Scottish critic and author William Archer (1856-1924). This play was first performed at the Christiania Norske Theater in Oslo, Norway, on 24 November 1858. The scenes take place during the time of Erik Blood-axe (c. 930–934) in the north of Norway in historic Helgeland. The play takes place at a time in which Norwegian society was adjusting from the tradition of Old Norse Sagas to the new era of Christianity.
This play was first staged in 1882. Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Helen Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in the memory of her dead husband, Captain Alving. She reveals to her spiritual advisor, Pastor Manders, that she has hidden the evils of her marriage, and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband's wealth so that their son, Oswald, might not inherit anything from him. Pastor Manders had previously advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering, and she followed his advice in the belief that her love for her husband would eventually reform him. However her husband's philandering continued until his death, and Mrs. Alving was unable to leave him prior to his death for fear of being shunned by the community. During the action of the play she discovers that her son Oswald (whom she had sent away so that he would not be corrupted by his father) is suffering from inherited syphilis, and (worse) has fallen in love with Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving's maid.
