Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen (/ˈɪbsən/;[1]

Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩]; 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.[2] 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, Rosmersholm, and The Master
Builder. He is the most frequently
performed dramatist in the world after
Shakespeare,[3][4] and A Doll's House was
the world's most performed play in
2006.[5]
 Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen, 1900, by Gustav Borgen

Born Henrik Johan Ibsen
20 March 1828
Skien, Telemark,
Norway
Died 23 May 1906
(aged 78)
Kristiania, Norway
(modern Oslo)
Occupation Writer, playwright
Genres Naturalism
Notable works Peer Gynt (1867)
 A Doll's House
(1879)
Ghosts (1881)
An Enemy of the
People (1882)
The Wild Duck
(1884)
Hedda Gabler (1890)
Spouse Suzannah Thoresen
(m. 1858)
Children Sigurd Ibsen
Relatives Knud Ibsen (father)
Marichen Altenburg
(mother)

Signature
Ibsen caricatured by SNAPP for Vanity Fair, 1901

Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play

Peer Gynt has strong surreal elements.[6]
After Peer Gynt Ibsen abandoned verse
and wrote in realistic prose. Several of
his later dramas were considered
scandalous to many of his era, when
European theatre was expected to model
strict morals of family life and propriety.
Ibsen's later work examined the realities
that lay behind the facades, revealing
much that was disquieting to a number
of his contemporaries. He had a critical
eye and conducted a free inquiry into the
conditions of life and issues of morality.
In many critics' estimates The Wild Duck
and Rosmersholm are "vying with each
other as rivals for the top place among
Ibsen's works;"[7] Ibsen himself regarded
Emperor and Galilean as his
masterpiece.[8]

Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most

distinguished playwrights in the
European tradition.[9] He is widely
regarded as the foremost playwright of
the nineteenth century.[9][10] He
influenced other playwrights and
novelists such as George Bernard Shaw,
Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce,
Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleža.
Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize
in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.[11]

Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the

common written language of Denmark
and Norway during his lifetime)[12] and
they were published by the Danish
publisher Gyldendal. Although most of
his plays are set in Norway—often in
places reminiscent of Skien, the port
town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for
27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely
visited Norway during his most
productive years. Born into a patrician
merchant family, the intertwined
Ibsen and Paus family, Ibsen shaped his
dramas according to his family
background and often modelled
characters after family members. He was
the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen.
Ibsen's dramas had a strong influence
upon contemporary culture.

Early life and family

A silhouette (ca. 1815–1820) of Ibsen's mother (far

right), grandparents and other relatives
 g ) g p

Ibsen was born into an affluent merchant

family in the wealthy port town of Skien
in Bratsberg (Telemark). His parents
were Knud Ibsen (1797–1877) and
Marichen Altenburg (1799–1869). Henrik
Ibsen wrote that “my parents were
members on both sides of the most
respected families in Skien,” explaining
that he was closely related with “just
about all the patrician families who then
dominated the place and its
surroundings.”[13][14]

His parents, though not related by blood,

had been raised as something that
resembled social siblings.[15] Knud
Ibsen's biological father, ship's captain
Henrich Ibsen, died at sea when he was
newborn in 1797 and his mother married
captain Ole Paus the following year; Ole
Paus was the brother of Marichen's
mother Hedevig Paus, and their families
were very close; for example Ole's oldest
biological son and Knud's half-brother
Henrik Johan Paus was raised in
Hedevig's home together with his cousin
Marichen, and the biological and social
children of the Paus siblings, including
Knud and Marichen, spent much of their
childhood together. Some Ibsen scholars
have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was
fascinated by his parents’ “strange,
almost incestuous marriage;” he would
treat the subject of incestuous
relationships in several plays, notably his
masterpiece Rosmersholm.[16]

When Henrik Ibsen was around seven

years old, his father's fortunes took a
significant turn for the worse, and the
family was eventually forced to sell the
major Altenburg building in central Skien
and move permanently to their large
summer house, Venstøp, outside of the
city.[17] Henrik's sister Hedvig would write
about their mother: "She was a quiet,
lovable woman, the soul of the house,
everything to her husband and children.
She sacrificed herself time and time
again. There was no bitterness or
reproach in her."[18][19] The Ibsen family
eventually moved to a city house,
Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsen's half-
brother, wealthy banker and ship-owner
Christopher Blom Paus.[18]

His father's financial ruin would have a

strong influence on Ibsen's later work; the
characters in his plays often mirror his
parents, and his themes often deal with
issues of financial difficulty as well as
moral conflicts stemming from dark
secrets hidden from society. Ibsen would
both model and name characters in his
plays after his own family. A central
theme in Ibsen's plays is the portrayal of
suffering women, echoing his mother
Marichen Altenburg; Ibsen's sympathy
with women would eventually find
significant expression with their portrayal
in dramas such as A Doll's House and
Rosmersholm.[18]

At fifteen, Ibsen was forced to leave

school. He moved to the small town of
Grimstad to become an apprentice
pharmacist and began writing plays. In
1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a
liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter
Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans
Jacob Hendrichsen Birkdalen, whose
upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy
was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw
Hans Jacob. Ibsen went to Christiania
(later renamed Kristiania and then Oslo)
intending to matriculate at the university.
He soon rejected the idea (his earlier
attempts at entering university were
blocked as he did not pass all his
entrance exams), preferring to commit
himself to writing. His first play, the
tragedy Catilina (1850), was published
under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme",
when he was only 22, but it was not
performed. His first play to be staged,
The Burial Mound (1850), received little
attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to
be a playwright, although the numerous
plays he wrote in the following years
remained unsuccessful.[20] Ibsen's main
inspiration in the early period, right up to
Peer Gynt, was apparently the Norwegian
author Henrik Wergeland and the
Norwegian folk tales as collected by
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen
Moe. In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the
most acclaimed, and by far the most
read, Norwegian poet and playwright.

Life and writings

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He spent the next several years

employed at Det norske Theater
(Bergen), where he was involved in the
production of more than 145 plays as a
writer, director, and producer. During this
period, he published five new, though
largely unremarkable, plays. Despite
Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a
playwright, he gained a great deal of
practical experience at the Norwegian
Theater, experience that was to prove
valuable when he continued writing.

Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to

become the creative director of the
Christiania Theatre. He married
Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858
and she gave birth to their only child
Sigurd on 23 December 1859. The couple
lived in very poor financial circumstances
and Ibsen became very disenchanted
with life in Norway. In 1864, he left
Christiania and went to Sorrento in Italy
in self-imposed exile. He didn't return to
his native land for the next 27 years, and
when he returned to it he was a noted,
but controversial, playwright.

His next play, Brand (1865), brought him

the critical acclaim he sought, along with
a measure of financial success, as did
the following play, Peer Gynt (1867), to
which Edvard Grieg famously composed
incidental music and songs. Although
Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and
traces of the latter's influence are evident
in Brand, it was not until after Brand that
Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard
seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend
Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to
Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read
Either/Or and Fear and Trembling. Ibsen's
next play Peer Gynt was consciously
informed by Kierkegaard.[21][22]

With success, Ibsen became more

confident and began to introduce more
and more of his own beliefs and
judgements into the drama, exploring
what he termed the "drama of ideas". His
next series of plays are often considered
his Golden Age, when he entered the
height of his power and influence,
becoming the center of dramatic
controversy across Europe.
Ibsen photographed in Dresden c. 1870

Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden,

Germany, in 1868, where he spent years
writing the play he regarded as his main
work, Emperor and Galilean (1873),
dramatizing the life and times of the
Roman emperor Julian the Apostate.
Although Ibsen himself always looked
back on this play as the cornerstone of
his entire works, very few shared his
opinion, and his next works would be
much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to
Munich in 1875 and began work on his
first contemporary realist drama The
Pillars of Society, first published and
performed in 1877.[23] A Doll's House
followed in 1879. This play is a scathing
criticism of the marital roles accepted by
men and women which characterized
Ibsen's society.

Ibsen was already in his fifties when A

Doll’s House was published. He himself
saw his latter plays as a series. At the
end of his career, he described them as
“that series of dramas which began with
A Doll’s House and which is now
completed with When We Dead
Awaken”.[24] Furthermore, it was the
reception of A Doll’s House which
brought Ibsen international acclaim.

Ghosts followed in 1881, another

scathing commentary on the morality of
Ibsen's society, in which a widow reveals
to her pastor that she had hidden the
evils of her marriage for its duration. The
pastor had advised her to marry her
fiancé despite his philandering, and she
did so in the belief that her love would
reform him. But his philandering
continued right up until his death, and his
vices are passed on to their son in the
form of syphilis. The mention of venereal
disease alone was scandalous, but to
show how it could poison a respectable
family was considered intolerable.[25]

In An Enemy of the People (1882), Ibsen

went even further. In earlier plays,
controversial elements were important
and even pivotal components of the
action, but they were on the small scale
of individual households. In An Enemy,
controversy became the primary focus,
and the antagonist was the entire
community. One primary message of the
play is that the individual, who stands
alone, is more often "right" than the mass
of people, who are portrayed as ignorant
and sheeplike. Contemporary society's
belief was that the community was a
noble institution that could be trusted, a
notion Ibsen challenged. In An Enemy of
the People, Ibsen chastised not only the
conservatism of society, but also the
liberalism of the time. He illustrated how
people on both sides of the social
spectrum could be equally self-serving.
An Enemy of the People was written as a
response to the people who had rejected
his previous work, Ghosts. The plot of the
play is a veiled look at the way people
reacted to the plot of Ghosts. The
protagonist is a physician in a vacation
spot whose primary draw is a public
bath. The doctor discovers that the water
is contaminated by the local tannery. He
expects to be acclaimed for saving the
town from the nightmare of infecting
visitors with disease, but instead he is
declared an 'enemy of the people' by the
locals, who band against him and even
throw stones through his windows. The
play ends with his complete ostracism. It
is obvious to the reader that disaster is in
store for the town as well as for the
doctor.

As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's

next play again attacked entrenched
beliefs and assumptions; but this time,
his attack was not against society's
mores, but against overeager reformers
and their idealism. Always an iconoclast,
Ibsen saw himself as an objective
observer of society, “like a lone franc
tireur in the outposts”, playing a lone
hand, as he put it.[26] Ibsen, perhaps more
than any of his contemporaries, relied
upon immediate sources such as
newspapers and second-hand report for
his contact with intellectual thought. He
claimed to be ignorant of books, leaving
them to his wife and son, but, as Georg
Brandes described, “he seemed to stand
in some mysterious correspondence with
the fermenting, germinating ideas of the
day.[27]

The Wild Duck (1884) is by many

considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is
certainly the most complex. It tells the
story of Gregers Werle, a young man who
returns to his hometown after an
extended exile and is reunited with his
boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the
course of the play, the many secrets that
lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy
home are revealed to Gregers, who
insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or
the "Summons of the Ideal". Among
these truths: Gregers' father impregnated
his servant Gina, then married her off to
Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another
man has been disgraced and imprisoned
for a crime the elder Werle committed.
Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his
days working on a wholly imaginary
"invention", his wife is earning the
household income.

Ibsen displays masterful use of irony:

despite his dogmatic insistence on truth,
Gregers never says what he thinks but
only insinuates, and is never understood
until the play reaches its climax. Gregers
hammers away at Hjalmar through
innuendo and coded phrases until he
realizes the truth; Gina's daughter,
Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by
Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, he
disavows the child. Seeing the damage
he has wrought, Gregers determines to
repair things, and suggests to Hedvig
that she sacrifice the wild duck, her
wounded pet, to prove her love for
Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the
characters, recognizes that Gregers
always speaks in code, and looking for
the deeper meaning in the first important
statement Gregers makes which does
not contain one, kills herself rather than
the duck in order to prove her love for
him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.
Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers
realize that the absolute truth of the
"ideal" is sometimes too much for the
human heart to bear.

f b hi li h i d
Letter from Ibsen to his English reviewer and
translator Edmund Gosse: "30.8.[18]99. Dear Mr.
Edmund Gosse! It was to me a hearty joy to receive

your letter. So I will finally personally meet you and

your wife. I am at home every day in the morning
until 1 o'clock. I am happy and surprised at your
excellent Norwegian! Your amicably obliged Henrik
Ibsen."

Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more

introspective drama that had much less
to do with denunciations of society's
moral values and more to do with the
problems of individuals. In such later
plays as Hedda Gabler (1890) and The
Master Builder (1892), Ibsen explored
psychological conflicts that transcended
a simple rejection of current conventions.
Many modern readers, who might regard
anti-Victorian didacticism as dated,
simplistic or hackneyed, have found
these later works to be of absorbing
interest for their hard-edged, objective
consideration of interpersonal
confrontation. Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s
House are regularly cited as Ibsen's most
popular and influential plays,[28] with the
title role of Hedda regarded as one of the
most challenging and rewarding for an
actress even in the present day.

Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules

of drama with a realism which was to be
adopted by Chekhov and others and
which we see in the theatre to this day.
From Ibsen forward, challenging
assumptions and directly speaking about
issues has been considered one of the
factors that makes a play art rather than
entertainment. His works were brought
to an English-speaking audience, largely
thanks to the efforts of William Archer
and Edmund Gosse. These in turn had a
profound influence on the young James
Joyce who venerates him in his early
autobiographical novel "Stephen Hero".
Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it
was in many ways not the Norway he had
left. Indeed, he had played a major role in
the changes that had happened across
society. Modernism was on the rise, not
only in the theatre, but across public life..
Michael Meyer's translations in the 1950s
were welcomed by actors and directors
as playable, rather than academic. As
The Times newspaper put it, ‘This, one
may think, is how Ibsen might have
expressed himself in English'.

Ibsen intentionally obscured his

influences. However, asked later what he
had read when he wrote Catiline, Ibsen
replied that he had read only the Danish
Norse saga-inspired Romantic tragedian
Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig
Holberg, "the Scandinavian Molière".[29]

Critical reception
At the time when Ibsen was writing,
literature was emerging as a formidable
force in 19th century society.[30] It was
still a relatively new form of popular
discussion and entertainment. With the
vast increase in literacy towards the end
of the century, the possibilities of
literature being used for subversion
struck horror into the heart of the
Establishment. Ibsen's plays, from A
Doll’s House onwards, caused an uproar:
not just in Norway, but throughout
Europe, and even across the Atlantic in
America. No other artist, apart from
Richard Wagner, had such an effect
internationally, inspiring almost
blasphemous adoration and hysterical
abuse.[31]

After the publication of Ghosts, he wrote:

“while the storm lasted, I have made
many studies and observations and I
shall not hesitate to exploit them in my
future writings.”[32] Indeed, his next play
An Enemy of the People was initially
regard by the critics to be simply his
response to the violent criticism which
had greeted Ghosts. Ibsen expected
criticism: as he wrote to his publisher:
“Ghosts will probably cause alarm in
some circles, but it can’t be helped. If it
did not, there would have been no
necessity for me to have written it.”[33]
Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction
to his plays, he actively corresponded
with critics, publishers, theatre directors
and newspaper editors on the subject.
The interpretation of his work, both by
critics and directors, concerned him
greatly. He often advised directors on
which actor or actress would be suitable
for a particular role. [An example of this
is a letter he wrote to Hans Schroder in
November 1884, with detailed
instructions for the production of The
Wild Duck.[34]]

Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider

audience as read plays rather than in
performance. It was 20 years, for
instance, before the authorities would
allow Ghosts to be performed in Norway.
Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from
1879 onwards, had an explosive effect
on intellectual circles. This was greatest
for A Doll’s House and Ghosts, and it did
lessen with the later plays, but the
translation of Ibsen's works into German,
French and English during the decade
following the initial publication of each
play and frequent new productions as
and when permission was granted,
meant that Ibsen remained a topic of
lively conversation throughout the latter
decades of the 19th century. When A
Doll’s House was published, it had an
explosive effect: it was the centre of
every conversation at every social
gathering in Christiana. One hostess
even wrote on the invitations to her
soirée, “You are politely requested not to
mention Mr Ibsen’s new play”.[35]

Death

Ibsen, late in his career

On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home
at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now
Oslo)[36] after a series of strokes in
March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse
assured a visitor that he was a little
better, Ibsen spluttered his last words
"On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died
the following day at 2:30 pm.[37]

Ibsen was buried in Vår Frelsers gravlund

("The Graveyard of Our Savior") in central
Oslo.

Centenary …

The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in

2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen
year" in Norway and other
countries.[38][39][40] In 2006, the
homebuilding company Selvaag also
opened Peer Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo,
Norway, in Henrik Ibsen's honour, making
it possible to follow the dramatic play
Peer Gynt scene by scene. Will Eno's
adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, titled
Gnit, had its world premiere at the 37th
Humana Festival of New American Plays
in March 2013.[41]

On 23 May 2006, The Ibsen Museum in

Oslo re-opened, to the public, the house
where Ibsen had spent his last eleven
years, completely restored with the
original interior, colours, and decor.[42]
Legacy

Plaque to Ibsen, Oslo marking his home from 1895-

1906

The social questions which concerned

Ibsen belonged unequivocally to the 19th
century. From a modern perspective, the
aspects of his writing that appeal most
are the psychological issues which he
explored. The social issues, taken up so
prominently in his own day, have become
dated, as has the late-Victorian middle-
class setting of his plays. The fact that,
whether read and staged, they still
possess a compelling power is
testament to his enduring quality as a
thinker and a dramatist.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary

of Ibsen's death in 2006, the Norwegian
government organised the Ibsen Year,
which included celebrations around the
world. The NRK produced a miniseries on
Ibsen's childhood and youth in 2006, An
Immortal Man. Several prizes are
awarded in the name of Henrik Ibsen,
among them the International Ibsen
Award, the Norwegian Ibsen Award and
the Ibsen Centennial Commemoration
Award.

Every year, since 2008, the annual "Delhi

Ibsen Festival", is held in Delhi, India,
organized by the Dramatic Art and
Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration
with The Royal Norwegian Embassy in
India. It features plays by Ibsen,
performed by artists from various parts
of the world in varied languages and
styles.[43][44]

The Ibsen Society of America (ISA) was

founded in 1978 at the close of the Ibsen
Sesquicentennial Symposium held in
New York City to mark the 150th
anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's birth.
Distinguished Ibsen translator and critic
Rolf Fjelde, Professor of Literature at
Pratt Institute and the chief organizer of
the Symposium, was elected Founding
President. In December 1979, the ISA
was certified as a non-profit corporation
under the laws of the State of New York.
Its purpose is to foster through lectures,
readings, performances, conferences,
and publications an understanding of
Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as
texts and produced on stage and in film
and other media. An annual newsletter
Ibsen News and Comment is distributed
to all members.[45]

Ancestry
Monogram of Henrik Ibsen

Ibsen's ancestry has been a much

studied subject, due to his perceived
foreignness[46] and due to the influence
of his biography and family on his plays.
Ibsen often made references to his
family in his plays, sometimes by name,
or by modelling characters after them.

The oldest documented member of the

Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus
Ibsen (1632–1703) from Stege,
Denmark. His son, ship's captain Peder
Ibsen became a burgher of Bergen in
Norway in 1726.[47] Henrik Ibsen had
Danish, German, Norwegian and some
distant Scottish ancestry. Most of his
ancestors belonged to the merchant
class of original Danish and German
extraction, and many of his ancestors
were ship's captains.

Ibsen's biographer Henrik Jæger

famously wrote in 1888 that Ibsen did
not have a drop of Norwegian blood in
his veins, stating that "the ancestral
Ibsen was a Dane". This, however, is not
completely accurate; notably through his
grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was
descended from one of the very few
families of the patrician class of original
Norwegian extraction, known since the
15th century. Ibsen's ancestors had
mostly lived in Norway for several
generations, even though many had
foreign ancestry.[48][49]

The name Ibsen is originally a

patronymic, meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a
Danish variant of Jacob). The patronymic
became "frozen", i.e. it became a
permanent family name, in the 17th
century. The phenomenon of
patronymics becoming frozen started in
the 17th century in bourgeois families in
Denmark, and the practice was only
widely adopted in Norway from around
1900.
 4. Henrich Ibs
ship's captain an

2. Knud Ibsen (1797–1877),

merchant in Skien

5. Johanne Cathrin
(married to shipowner Ole Paus

1. Henrik
Ibsen

6. Johan Andreas A
merchant and forme

3. Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg

(1799–1869)

7. Hedevig Christi
(a sister of Johanne Pl
Descendants
From his marriage with Suzannah
Thoresen, Ibsen had one son, lawyer and
government minister Sigurd Ibsen. Sigurd
Ibsen married Bergljot Bjørnson, the
daughter of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Their
son was Tancred Ibsen, who became a
film director and was married to Lillebil
Ibsen; their only child was diplomat
Tancred Ibsen, Jr. Sigurd Ibsen's
daughter, Irene Ibsen, married Josias
Bille, a member of the Danish ancient
noble Bille family; their son was Danish
actor Joen Bille.

Honours
Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873,
Commander in 1892, and with the Grand
Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1893. He
received the Grand Cross of the Danish
Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand
Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar
Star, and was Knight, First Class of the
Order of Vasa.[50]

Well known stage directors in Austria and

Germany as Theodor Lobe (1833–1905),
Paul Barnay (1884–1960), Max
Burckhard (1854–1912), Otto Brahm
(1956–1912), Carl Heine (1861–1927),
Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken (1874–1942),
Victor Barnowsky (1875–1952), Eugen
Robert (1877–1944), Leopold Jessner
(1878–1945), Ludwig Barnay (1884–
1960), Alfred Rotter (1886–1933), Fritz
Rotter (1888–1939), Paul Rose (1900–
1973) and Peter Zadek (1926–2009)
performed the work of Ibsen.

In 1995, the asteroid 5696 Ibsen was

named in his memory.

Works

Plays …

Plays entirely or partly in verse are

marked v.

1850 Catiline (Catilina)v

1850 The Burial Mound also known as
The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)v
1852 St. John's Eve
(Sancthansnatten)v[a]
1854 Lady Inger of Oestraat (Fru Inger
til Østeraad)
1855 The Feast at Solhaug (Gildet paa
Solhaug)v[b]
1856 Olaf Liljekrans (Olaf Liljekrans)v[c]
1858 The Vikings at Helgeland
(Hærmændene paa Helgeland)
1862 Love's Comedy (Kjærlighedens
Komedie)v
1863 The Pretenders (Kongs-
Emnerne)v[d]
1866 Brand (Brand)v
1867 Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt)v
1869 The League of Youth (De unges
Forbund)
1873 Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og
Galilæer)
1877 Pillars of Society (Samfundets
Støtter)
1879 A Doll's House (Et Dukkehjem)
1881 Ghosts (Gengangere)
1882 An Enemy of the People (En
Folkefiende)
1884 The Wild Duck (Vildanden)
1886 Rosmersholm (Rosmersholm)
 1888 The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra
Havet)
1890 Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler)
1892 The Master Builder (Bygmester
Solness)
1894 Little Eyolf (Lille Eyolf)
1896 John Gabriel Borkman (John
Gabriel Borkman)
1899 When We Dead Awaken (Når vi
døde vaagner)

Other Works …

1851 Norma or a Politician's Love

(Norma eller en Politikers Kjaerlighed),
an eight-page political parody[e]
 1871 Digte – only released collection
of poetry, included Terje Vigen (written
in 1862 but published in Digte from
1871)

English translations …

The authoritative translation in the

English language for Ibsen remains the
1928 ten-volume version of the Complete
Works of Henrik Ibsen from Oxford
University Press. Many other translations
of individual plays by Ibsen have
appeared since 1928 though none have
purported to be a new version of the
complete works of Ibsen.
 Ibsen: The Complete Major Prose Plays
(Rolf G. Fjelde, translator. Plume: 1978)
Ibsen – 3 Plays (Kenneth McLeish &
Stephen Mulrine, translators. Nick Hern
Books: 2005)
Ibsen's Selected Plays: A Norton Critical
Edition (ed. Brian Johnston, Brian
Johnston & Rick Davis, translators.
W.W. Norton: 2004)

See also
Centre for Ibsen Studies
Ibsen Studies
Naturalism (theatre)
Nineteenth-century theatre
Problem play
Notes
a. Only the prologue is in verse, the rest
is in prose.
b. In a combination of prose and verse.
c. In a combination of prose and verse.
d. Mainly in prose, with a few speeches
in verse.
e. Though sometimes identified as a
play, Norma was never intended for
performance. This "juvenile
polemical work" was an attack on
the Norwegian parliament or
Storting, identifying several
legislators by name as "fortune
hunters". It first appeared
anonymously in the satirical
 magazine Andhrimner.[51] Using play-
like dialog and the names of
characters from Bellini's opera
Norma, Ibsen's hero chooses the
"passive" female who represents the
government over the heroic title
character representing the
opposition.[52][53]

References
1. "Ibsen" . Random House Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary.
2. On Ibsen's role as "father of modern
drama", see "Ibsen Celebration to
Spotlight 'Father of Modern
Drama' " . Bowdoin College. 23
January 2007. Archived from the
 original on 12 December 2013.
Retrieved 27 March 2007.; on Ibsen's
relationship to modernism, see Moi
(2006, 1–36)
3. "shakespearetheatre.org" (PDF).
Archived from the original (PDF) on
14 February 2019. Retrieved
25 January 2013.
4. "Henrik Ibsen – book launch to
commemorate the "Father of Modern
Drama" " . Archived from the
original on 19 September 2016.
Retrieved 25 January 2013.
5. Bonnie G. Smith, "A Doll's House", in
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women
 in World History, Vol. 2, p. 81, Oxford
University Press
6. Klaus Van Den Berg, "Peer Gynt"
(review), Theatre Journal 58.4 (2006)
684–687
7. McFarlane, James (1999).
"Introduction". In: Ibsen, Henrik, An
Enemy of the People; The Wild Duck;
Rosmersholm. Oxford World
Classics. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press. p. ix.
ISBN 0192839438,
ISBN 9780192839435.
8. Peter Normann Waage (1986).
"Henrik Ibsen og Keiser Julian".
Libra.
 9. Valency, Maurice. The Flower and
the Castle. Schocken, 1963.
10. Byatt, AS (15 December 2006). "The
age of becoming" . The Guardian.
London.
11. "Nomination Archive" .
NobelPrize.org.
12. Danish language was the written
language of both Denmark and
Norway at the time, although it was
referred to as Norwegian in Norway
and occasionally included some
minor differences from the language
used in Denmark. Ibsen occasionally
used some Norwegianisms in his
early work, but he wrote his later
 works in a more standardised
Danish, as his plays were published
by a Danish publisher and marketed
to both Norwegian and Danish
audiences in the original Danish. Cf.
Haugen, Einar (1979). "The nuances
of Norwegian" . Ibsen's Drama:
Author to Audience. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota. p. 99 .
ISBN 978-0-8166-0896-6.
13. "Henrik Ibsens skrifter: Brev til
GEORG BRANDES (21. september
1882)" . www.ibsen.uio.no.
14. Haugen (1979: 23)
15. Templeton, Joan (1997). Ibsen's
Women. Cambridge University Press.
 pp. 1ff.
16. Ferguson p. 280
17. Michael Meyers. Henrik Ibsen,
Chapter one.
18. Michael Meyers. Henrick Ibsen.
Chapter one.
19. Hans Bernhard Jaeger, Henrik Ibsen,
1828–1888: et literært livsbillede,
Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 1888
20. Michael Meyes. Henrik Ibsen.
Chapters corresponding to individual
early plays.
21. Shapiro, Bruce. Divine Madness and
the Absurd Paradox. (1990)
ISBN 978-0-313-27290-5
22. Downs, Brian. Ibsen: The Intellectual
Background (1946)
23. Hanssen, Jens-Morten (10 August
2001). "Facts about Pillars of
Society" . ibsen.nb.no. Retrieved
8 February 2013.
24. MacFarlane, James (1960). The
Oxford Ibsen, Vol IV. London: Oxford
University Press. p. 439.
25. Spongberg, Mary (1998). Feminizing
Venereal Disease: The Body of the
Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century
Medical Discourse . NYU Press.
p. 162. ISBN 0814780822. Retrieved
26 August 2019.
26. MacFarlane, James (1961). The
Oxford Ibsen, Vol V. London: Oxford
University Press. p. 476.
27. Meyer, Michael (1971). Ibsen: A
biography. Doubleday and Company.
p. 500.
28. Paskett, Zoe (11 September 2019).
"Henrik Ibsen's greatest plays, from
A Doll's House to Hedda Gabler" .
Evening Standard.
29. "In Our Time: Henrik Ibsen: Audio
podcast" . BBC Radio 4. 21 May
2018. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
30. Hughes, H. Stuart (2002).
Consciousness and Society: the
Reorientation of European Social
 Thought. Transaction Publishers.
ISBN 978-0765809186.
31. Meyer, Michael (1971). Ibsen: A
Biography. Doubleday & Company.
32. MacFarlane, Robert (1961). The
Oxford Ibsen. London: Oxford
University Press. p. 477.
33. Meyer, Michael (1971). Ibsen: A
biography. Doubleday & Company.
p. 505.
34. Meyer, Michael (1971). Ibsen: A
Biography. Doubleday & Company.
p. 559.
35. MacFarlane, James. Henrik Ibsen:
Four Major Plays (Introduction). The
World’s Classics. pp. Introduction.
36. since 2006 The Ibsen Museum
(Oslo)
37. Michael Meyer, Ibsen – A Biography,
Doubleday 1971, p. 807
38. "Page not found" . www.norges-
bank.no. Archived from the original
on 10 November 2014.
39. norway.sk
40. Mazur, G.O. One Hundrd Year
Commemoration to the Life of
Henrik Ibsen, Semenenko
Foundation, Andreeff Hall, 12, rue de
Montrosier, 92200 Neuilly, Paris,
France, 2006.
41. Gioia, Michael. "Premiere of Will
Eno's Gnit, Adaptation of Peer Gynt
 Directed by Les Waters, Opens
March 17 at Humana Fest"
Archived 8 January 2014 at the
Wayback Machine playbill.com, 17
March 2013
42. "Henrik Ibsen" . Nasjonalbiblioteket.
43. "Ibsen time of the year again –
Hindustan Times" . 22 November
2012. Archived from the original on
27 December 2013. Retrieved
21 December 2013.
44. Daftuar, Swati (24 November 2012).
"Showcase: Reinventing Ibsen" . The
Hindu. Chennai, India. Retrieved
21 December 2013.
45. Schanke, Robert A. (1988). Ibsen in
America: A Century of Change .
Scarecrow Press. p. 157. ISBN 978-
0810820999. Retrieved 28 January
2018.
46. Johan Kïelland Bergwitz, Henrik
Ibsen i sin avstamning: norsk eller
fremmed?, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag,
1916
47. Terje Bratberg (15 November 2018).
"Ibsen – norsk slekt" . Store norske
leksikon.
48. Henrik Jaeger, Henrik Ibsen. A
Critical Biography, Chicago: A.C.
McClurg & Co., 1891
49. Bergwitz, Joh. K, Henrik Ibsen i sin
avstamning. Norsk eller fremmed?,
Nordisk forlag, Gyldendalske
boghandel, Christiania and
Copenhagen, 1916
50. Amundsen, O. Delphin (1947). Den
kongelige norske Sankt Olavs Orden
1847–1947 (in Norwegian). Oslo:
Grøndahl. p. 12.
51. Jaeger, Henrik Bernhard (1890). The
Life of Henrik Ibsen . London:
William Heinemann. p. 64 . Retrieved
4 April 2015.
52. Templeton, Joan (1997). Ibsen's
Women . Cambridge University
 Press. p. 340. ISBN 9780521001366.
Retrieved 4 April 2015.
53. Hanssen, Jens-Morten (10 July
2005). "Facts about Norma" .
National Library of Norway.
Retrieved 13 April 2015.

Further reading
Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth, A
Commentary on the Works of Henrik
Ibsen (New York: Macmillan, 1894)
Ferguson, Robert (2001) Henrik Ibsen:
A New Biography. New York: Dorset
Press. ISBN 0760720940
Goldman, Michael, Ibsen: The
Dramaturgy of Fear, Columbia
University Press, 1998
Haugan, Jørgen, Henrik Ibsens
Metode:Den Indre Utvikling Gjennem
Ibsens Dramatikk (Norwegian:
Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. 1977)
Jensen, Morten Høi, "Escape Artist"
(review of Ivo de Figueiredo, Henrik
Ibsen: The Man and the Mask,
translated from the Norwegian by
Robert Ferguson, Yale University Press,
694 pp.), The New York Review of
Books, vol. LXVI, no. 17 (7 November
2019), pp. 26–28.
Johnston, Brian: The Ibsen Cycle,
Pennsylvania State University Press
1992
Johnston, Brian, To the Third Empire:
Ibsen's Early Plays , University of
Minnesota Press (1980)
Johnston, Brian, Text and Supertext in
Ibsen's Drama , Pennsylvania State
Press (1988)
Koht, Halvdan. The Life of Ibsen
translated by Ruth Lima McMahon and
Hanna Astrup Larsen. W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., New York, 1931
Krys, Svitlana, A Comparative Feminist
Reading of Lesia Ukrainka’s and Henrik
Ibsen’s Dramas . Canadian Review of
Comparative Literature 34.4 (Dec.
2007 [Sept 2008]): pp. 389–409
Lucas, F. L. The Drama of Ibsen and
Strindberg, Cassell, London, 1962. (A
useful introduction, giving the
biographical background to each play
and detailed play-by-play summaries
and discussion for the theatre-goer,
including the less well-known plays)
Meyer, Michael. Ibsen. History Press
Ltd., Stroud, reprinted 2004
Moi, Toril (2006) Henrik Ibsen and the
Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater,
Philosophy. Oxford and New York:
Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-920259-1
Shaw, George Bernard. The
Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). The
 classic introduction, setting the
playwright in his time and place.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to:

Henrik Ibsen

Wikisource has original works

written by or about:
Henrik Ibsen

Wikimedia Commons has media

related to Henrik Ibsen.

The Ibsen Society of America Official

Website
ibsen.nb.no
Ibsen Studies The only international
academic journal devoted to Ibsen
Online course by Ibsen scholar Brian
Johnston author of The Ibsen Cycle
and To the Third Empire: Ibsen's Early
Drama
Extensive resource in several
languages from the Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Multilingual edition of all Ibsen Plays in
the Bibliotheca Polyglotta
Digitized books and manuscripts by
Ibsen in the National Library of
Norway
Ibsen's Influence on Hitler
Peer Gynt Sculpture Park, Official
Website
Works by Henrik Ibsen at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Henrik Ibsen at
Internet Archive
Works by Henrik Ibsen at LibriVox
(public domain audiobooks)
Henrik Ibsen at Project Gutenberg (the
biography by Edmund Gosse)
Henrik Ibsen – A Bibliography of
Criticism and Biography , by Ina Ten
Eyck Firkins, from Project Gutenberg
"Ibsen and His Discontents" – a
critical, conservative view of Ibsen's
works, written by Theodore Dalrymple
 Ibsen Museum – Former home of the
famous playwright is situated in Henrik
Ibsen's gate 26, across from the Royal
Palace
Henrik Ibsen: Critical Studies by Georg
Brandes (1899). Retrieved 5 January
2017.

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