Henrik+Ibsen

The Playwright

Henrik Ibsen, Norway's preeminent dramatist, is considered a realist, dealing objectively with the problems confronting everyday people and looking at these problems without the distortions of romanticism. Ibsen was certainly a prolific dramatist; his career as a playwright lasted from 1851 until his death in 1906. Many of Ibsen's plays were written during a period of nearly 30 years when he lived and worked primarily in Italy and Germany This long exposure to different European cultures infuses his work with a sense of the universal. Ibsen returned to Christiania (now known as Oslo) in 1891, and he lived there until his death.

Early in his career, he combined his love for poetry with his interest in drama, writing poetic dramas. //Peer Gynt// is the most notable play from this early period. Its fame has been cemented by the incidental music composed for it by Edvard Grieg, a fellow Norwegian. Ibsen's middle career, during which he wrote his most famous plays (including //A Doll's House//), showed his discomfort with and disapproval of the empty social traditions that limited mankind's success. One major theme of this period was the negative effect of treating women primarily as social ornaments or vessels. Ibsen came to believe that women should have equal rights with men and that, in fact, women had the potential to reform social institutions and create a better <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">world. The final phase of Ibsen's work emphasizes the use of symbolism; //The Master Builder// is <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">an example of his work from this period.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ibsen's gravestone is carved with a hand holding a hammer. For many critics, this symbolizes <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ibsen's role in tearing down old dramatic forms and subjects and rebuilding the theater with <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">new norms and topics. Yet this summation narrows the understanding of Ibsen, who was a <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">poet as well as a playwright, and who wrote historical dramas, satire, work with supernatural <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">overtones, and symbolic plays as well as //A Doll's House// and //Hedda Gabler//, two plays that shine <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">a sharp light on the limited role allowed to women in Ibsen's day.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Critics often cite Ibsen as the father of modern drama because of his willingness to tackle <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">social questions from the role of women to the negative role of social conventions (//Ghosts//) <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">to social divisions themselves (//An Enemy of the People//). Like Shakespeare in //Hamlet//, Ibsen <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">emphasized character over plot. He recognized the power of psychological tension, both <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">within a single character and between two characters. Ibsen's use of psychological tension is <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">amply illustrated in //A Doll's House//, and tracing the psychological shifts of the major characters <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">is one way of understanding the play.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Born to a middle-class family whose economic stability was threatened during his childhood, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ibsen used //A Doll's House// as one vehicle for questioning the importance-and the tyranny-of <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">wealth. This play comes from Ibsen's middle period, when his most radical ideas were presented.