Henrik Ibsen
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The Norwegian playwright Henrik Johan Ibsen is the acknowledged originator—the "father"— of modern drama. He deserves this recognition because of his pioneering selections of challenging and sometime shocking private and public issues. Today there are few restrictions on dramatists except success at the box office. Plays may range freely on almost any subject, such as the drug culture, sexual perversity, the right to commit suicide, the problems of real-estate dealers, the life of a go-go dancer, violence, family dissension, homosexuality, and the Vietnam war. If one includes film as drama, there is virtually no limit to the topics that dramatists can explore. It is well to stress that dramatists have not always been this free and that Ibsen was in the forefront of the struggle for free dramatic expression. A brief consideration of some of his major dramatic topics shows his originality and daring: the blinding and crippling effects of congenital syphilis, a woman's renunciation of a traditional protective marriage, suicide, the manipulations of people seeking personal benefits, the sacrifices of pursuing truth, the rejection of a child by a parent, and the abandonment of personal happiness in favor of professional interests.
From Ibsen's beginnings, there was little to indicate how important he was to become. He was born in Skien (shee-en), Norway, a small town just seventy miles southwest of the capital, Christiana (now Oslo). Although his parents had been prosperous, they went bankrupt when he was only seven, and afterward the family struggled against poverty. When Ibsen was fifteen he was apprenticed to a pharmacist, and he seemed headed for a career in this profession even though he hated it. By 1849, however, when he wrote Catiline, his first play in verse, it was clear that the theater was to be his life. Largely through the efforts of the famous violinist Ole Bull, a new National Theater had been established in Bergen, and Ibsen was appointed its director. He stayed in Bergen for six years and then went to Christiana, where for the next five years he tried to fashion a genuine Norwegian national theater. His attempts proved fruitless, for the theater went bankrupt in 1862. After writing The Pretenders in 1864, he secured enough governmental travel money to enable him to leave Norway. For the next twenty-seven years he lived in Germany and Italy in what has been called a "self-imposed" exile. Although this first part of Ibsen's theatrical career was devoted to many practical matters—production, management, directing, and finances—he was also constantly writing. His early plays were in verse and were mainly nationalist and romantic, as a few representative titles suggest: Lady Inger of Oestraat (1855), The Feast of Solhaug (1856), Olaf Liljekrans (1857). In his first ten years in Germany and Italy he finished four plays. The best known of these is Peer Gynt (1867), a fantasy play about a historical Norwegian hero, Peer Gynt, who is saved from spiritual emptiness by the love of the patient heroine Solveig. Today, Peer Gynt is best known because of the incidental music written for it by Norway's major composer, Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Ibsen asked Grieg to compose the music for the initial performances in 1876. Grieg's response was enthusiastic and creative, and the result is enjoyed today by millions. Ibsen also supplied the poem for which Grieg composed one of his loveliest songs, "A Swan."
During the years when Ibsen was fighting poverty and establishing his career in the theater, Europe was undergoing great political and intellectual changes. Throughout the nineteenth century, Ibsen's home country, Norway, was trying to release itself from the domination of neighboring Sweden and to establish its own territorial and national integrity. In Ibsen's twentieth year, 1848, the "February Uprising" in Paris resulted in the deposition of the French king and the establishment of a new French republic. This same year also saw the publication of the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx (1818-1883). In 1864, the year Ibsen left Norway, Marx's first socialist International was held in London. In addition, during the time Ibsen lived in Italy and Germany, both countries were going through the tenuous political processes of becoming true nation-states. In short, change was everywhere. Ibsen also was changing and growing as a thinker and dramatist, driven by the idea that a forward and creative drama could bring about deeper and more permanent changes than could be effected by soldiers and politicians. Toward this end he developed the realistic problem play. Such a play posited a major personal, social, professional, or political problem that occasioned the play's dramatic conflicts and tensions. Each problem was timely, topical, and realistic, as were the characters, places, situations, and outcomes. In this vein Ibsen wrote the twelve major prose plays on which his reputation rests: The Pillars of Society (1877), A Dollhouse (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Lady from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), The Master Builder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), John Gabriel Borkman (1896), and When We Dead Awaken (1899). He finished the first eight of these plays while living in Germany and Italy, the last four after returning to Norway in 1891. In these major plays Ibsen dramatizes human beings breaking free from restrictions and inhibitions and trying to establish their individuality and freedom—freedom of self, inquiry, pursuit of truth, artistic dedication, and, above all, the freedom of love. In attempting to achieve these goals, Ibsen's dramatic characters find internal opposition in self-interest, self-indulgence, and self-denial, and external opposition in the personal and political influences and manipulations of others. Because the plays are designed to be realistic, Ibsen's characters fall short of their goals. At best they achieve a respite in their combat, as in An Enemy of the People, or begin a quest in new directions, as in A Doll's House. They always make great sacrifices, sometimes losing life itself, as in Hedda Gabler and John Gabriel Borkman.
Realism extends also to the technique of presentation, particularly the exposition about the root causes of the problems that come to a head in the plays themselves. As A Dollhouse unfolds, we learn that years earlier, Nora Helmer had extended herself beyond her means to save Torvald from a near-fatal illness. We also learn that there had been an earlier relationship between Krogstad and Christine Linde. Similarly, in An Enemy of the People, we learn about Dr. Stockmann's earlier investigations into the problems of the water contamination, his indebtedness to his brother for his job, and the dangerous and virtually criminal cutting of corners that occurred when the town's therapeutic spa was built. These details are logically and chronologically essential for our understanding of the problems and conflicts within both plays.
Both A Dollhouse and An Enemy of the People are realistic, and they, like all the major plays, are replete with contextual symbolism. One of the later plays, for example, "John Gabriel Borkman," dramatizes the freezing to death of the major character, an occurrence symbolizing what Borkman had done to himself much earlier by denying love. In A Dollhouse, one of the earliest of the great plays, the title itself symbolizes the dependent and dehumanized role of the wife within traditional middle-class marriages. (The Norwegian-Danish word for doll—dukke—can also mean "puppet" or "marionette.") In addition, the entire nation of Norway (cold, legal, male) is contrasted symbolically with Italy (warm, emotional, female). Ironically, the break in the Helmers' marriage is symbolically aligned with events that occur or have occurred in both locations. Other symbols in A Dollhouse are the Christmas tree, the children's presents, the death of Dr. Rank, and the mailbox. In An Enemy of the People the symbols are the town spa, the toxic wastes from the nearby tanneries, and the concepts of public opinion and the popular majority. Additional symbols are the Mayor's hat and stick, Evensen's horn, and the spring weather at the play's end. Perhaps the major symbol is the intrafamily antagonism of Dr. Thomas Stockman and Mayor Peter Stockmann, for all the other conflicts stem from their personal alienation.
The plot and structure of both A Dollhouse and An Enemy of the People show Ibsen's use of the conventions of the well-made play (la pièce bien faite), a form developed and popularized in nineteenth-century France by Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) and Victorien Sardou (1831-1908). Ibsen was familiar with well-made plays, having directed many of them himself at Bergen and Christiana (Oslo). The well-made play follows a rigid and efficient structure in which the drama begins at the story's climax. Usually the plot is built on a secret known by the audience and perhaps one or two of the characters. The well-made play thus begins in suspense and offers a pattern of increasing tension produced through exposition and the timely arrivals of new characters (like Krogstad and Vik) and threatening news or props like the Mayor's information about the last will and testament of Morten Kiil. In the course of action of the well-made play, the fortunes of the protagonist go from a low point, through a peripeteia or reversal (Aristotle's concept), to a high point at which the protagonist confronts and defeats the villain. Although Ibsen makes use of many of the structural elements of the well-made play, he varies and departs from the pattern to suit his realistic purposes. Thus in An Enemy of the People his principal variations are his emphasis on the characterizations of the Stockmann brothers and also his introduction of three sets of villains confronting Dr. Stockmann in the fifth act (the Mayor, Morten Kiil, and Hovstad and Billing). In addition, because An Enemy of the People is a play about ideas and principles, Ibsen concludes the play on the new note of Dr. Stockmann's dedication to growth and the future. In A Dollhouse his variation is that Nora's confrontation with Krogstad, who is the apparent villain, does not lead to a satisfactory resolution, but rather precipitates the more significant albeit intractable confrontation with her husband. In A Dollhouse and also in An Enemy of the People there is not a traditionally well-made victorious outcome; rather there are provisional outcomes—adjustments—in keeping with the realistic concept that as life goes on, problems continue.
Ibsen's focus on real-life issues has given his plays continued timeliness and strength. A Dollhouse for example, is almost prophetic in its portrayal of the helpless position of married women in the nineteenth century. Most notably, a woman could not borrow funds without a man's cosignature, and Nora had to violate the law to obtain the money to restore her husband's health. The mailbox, to which Torvald has the only key, symbolizes this limitation, and the ultimate disclosure of the box's contents, rather than freeing Nora and Torvald, highlights her dependency. Today's feminism has stressed the issues of female freedom and equality, together with many other issues vital to women, but the need for feminine individuality and independence has not been more originally and forcefully dramatized than in "A Dollhouse." In a similarly prophetic vein, An Enemy of the People forcefully deals with the effects of pollution and the conflicts between preservers of the environment and proponents of business as usual. This issue emerges early in the play as soon as Dr. Stockmann learns about the toxic wastes contaminating the water of the town spa, on which the economic livelihood of the entire town depends. At first the conflict resulting from Dr. Stockmann's discovery seems minor because his facts are so unassailable. But the issue is raised to a political level with the entry of the local newspaper editor and his publisher. Once Mayor Stockmann convinces these men that Dr. Stockmann is using his discoveries to suit his own political goals, the play enlarges into the opposition between the individual and society at large. As these conflicts develop, Ibsen creates two of the great moments in the history of drama—those scenes in Acts II and III in which Dr. Stockmann and his brother the Mayor argue over the issue of truth and individuality versus interest and collective public opinion. Their conflict comes to a head in Act IV, in which Ibsen, through Dr. Stockmann, establishes an individual's need and absolute right to pursue truth, wherever it may lead. The dramatic force of the emptied stage at the end of this act, with the cries and jeers of the angry mob reverberating loudly backstage, has not been equaled.
Because of Ibsen's importance, there have been many translations and editions of the plays. The Modern Library Giant edition of Farquharson-Sharp's translations of Eleven Plays by Henrik Ibsen (introduction by H. L. Mencken) has been a mainstay for many decades. Rolf Fjelde published paperback translations in 1970 and followed these up with The Complete Major Prose Plays in 1978 (twelve plays). Michael Meyer's translations (sixteen plays in four paperback volumes, 1986) are of major significance. Other individual and collected plays have been translated by Peter Watts, Una Ellis-Fermor, James McFarlane, Christopher Hampton, Inger Lignell, Nicholas Rudall, William Archer, Christopher Fry, and Kenneth McLeish. These names by no means constitute a complete list. A short edition of Ibsen's poetry has been translated by Michael Feingold (1987). The major biography of Ibsen is Halvdan Hoht, Life of Ibsen, trans. and ed. Einar Haugen and A. E. Santaniello (New York: Blom, 1971). Significant critical and biographical studies include George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891; rpt. 1957), the pioneering work of Ibsen criticism; Rolf Fjelde, Ibsen: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965); Michael Meyer, Henrik Ibsen: The Farewell to Poetry 1864-1882 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971); James Hurt, Catiline's Dream: An Essay on Ibsen's Plays (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1972); Clela Allphin, Women in the Plays of Henrik Ibsen (New York: Revisionist, 1975); Harold Clurman, Ibsen (New York: Macmillan, 1977); Einar Haugen, Ibsen's Drama: Author to Audience (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1979); David Thomas, Henrik Ibsen (London, Macmillan, 1983); Yvonne Shafer, ed., Approaches to Teaching Ibsen's A Doll House (New York: MLA, 1985); Charles R. Lyons, ed., Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen (Boston: Hall, 1987); Frederick Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, Ibsen's Lively Art (New York: Cambridge UP, 1989); Joan Templeton, "The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen" (PMLA 104 (1989): 28-40); Naomi Lebowitz, Ibsen and the Great World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana UP, 1990); Errol Durbach, A Dollhouse: Ibsen's Myth of Transformation (Boston: Twayne, 1991); Brian Johnston, The Ibsen Cycle: The Design of the Plays from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1992); and James McFarlane, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994). Author Links
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An Enemy of the People
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