Early Plays by Henrik Ibsen (ebook pc reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Henrik Ibsen
Book online «Early Plays by Henrik Ibsen (ebook pc reader .txt) 📖». Author Henrik Ibsen
One of the most remarkable facts about Ibsen is the orderly
development of his genius. He himself repeatedly maintained that
his dramas were not mere isolated accidents. In the foreword to
the readers in the popular edition of 1898 he urges the public to
read his dramas in the same order in which he had written them,
deplores the fact that his earlier works are less known and less
understood than his later works, and insists that his writings
taken as a whole constitute an organic unity. The three of his
plays offered here for the first time in English translation will
afford those not familiar with the original Norwegian some light
on the early stages of his development.
Volume: 1 Pg 2
_Catiline_, the earliest of Ibsen's plays, was written in
1849, while Ibsen was an apothecary's apprentice in Grimstad. It
appeared in Christiania in the following spring under the
pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. The revolutionary atmosphere of
1848-49, the reading of the story of Catiline in Sallust and
Cicero in preparation for the university examinations, the
hostility which existed between the apprentice and his immediate
social environment, the fate which the play met at the hands of
the theatrical management and the publishers, his own struggles
at the time,--are all set forth clearly enough in the preface to
the second edition. The play was written in the blank verse of
Oehlenschlaeger's romantic dramas. Ibsen's portrayal of the
Roman politician is not in accord with tradition; Catiline is not
an out-and-out reprobate, but an unfortunate and highly sensitive
individual in whom idealism and licentiousness struggle for
mastery. Vasenius, in his study of the poet (_Ibsens
Dramatiska Diktning in dess Forsta Skede_, Helsingfors, 1879),
insists that Ibsen thus intuitively hit upon the real Catiline
revealed by later nineteenth century research.
Volume: 1 Pg 3
The poet seems
not to have heard of Duma's _Catiline_, which appeared about
the same time, nor of earlier plays on the subject by Ben Jonson
and others. The struggle in Ibsen's play is centered in the soul
of Catiline; not once do his political opponents appear on the
scene. Only one critic raised his voice in behalf of the play at
the time of its appearance, and only a few copies of the original
edition survive. Ibsen issued in 1875 a revised edition in
celebration of his twenty-fifth anniversary as an author. Since
then a third edition has been issued in 1891, and a fourth in
1913.
_The Warrior's Barrow_, Ibsen's second play, was finished in
1850 shortly after the publication of _Catiline_. Ibsen
entered upon his literary career with a gusto he seems soon to
have lost; he wrote to his friend Ole Schulerud in January, 1850,
that he was working on a play about Olaf Trygvesson, an
historical novel, and a longer poem. He had begun _The
Warrior's Barrow_ while he was still at Grimstad, but this
early version, called _The Normans_, he revised on reaching
Christiania. In style and manner and even in subject-matter the
play echoes Oehlenschlaeger. Ibsen's vikings are, however, of a
fiercer type than Oehlenschlaeger's, and this treatment of viking
character was one of the things the critics, bred to
Oehlenschlaeger's romantic conception of more civilized vikings,
found fault with in Ibsen's play. The sketch fared better than
_Catiline_: it was thrice presented on the stage in
Christiania and was on the whole favorably reviewed.
Volume: 1 Pg 4
When Ibsen
became associated with the Bergen theater he undertook another
revision of the play, and in this version the play was presented
on the stage in 1854 and 1856. The final version was published
in the _Bergenske Blad_ in 1854, but no copy of this issue
has survived; the play remained inaccessible to the public until
1902, when it was included in a supplementary volume (Volume X)
to Ibsen's collected works. The earlier version remained in
manuscript form until it was printed in 1917 in _Scandinavian
Studies and Notes_ (Vol. IV, pp. 309-337).
_Olaf Liljekrans_, which was presented on the Bergen stage
in 1857, marks the end of Ibsen's early romantic interest. The
original idea for this play, which he had begun in 1850, he found
in the folk-tale "The Grouse in Justedal," about a girl who alone
had survived the Black Death in an isolated village. Ibsen had
with many others become interested in popular folk-tales and
ballads. It was from Faye's _Norwegian Folk-Tales_ (1844)
that he took the story of "The Grouse in Justedal." His interest
was so great that he even turned collector. Twice during this
period he petitioned for and received small university grants to
enable him to travel and "collect songs and legends still current
among the people."
Volume: 1 Pg 5
Of the seventy or eighty "hitherto
unpublished legends" which he collected on the first of these
trips only a few have ever appeared in print; the results of his
second trip are unknown. Ibsen had great faith in the
availability of this medieval material for dramatic purposes; he
even wrote an essay, "The Heroic Ballad and Its Significance for
Artistic Poetry," urging its superior claims in contrast to that
of the saga material, to which he was himself shortly to turn.
The original play based on "The Grouse in Justedal" was left
unfinished. After the completion of _Lady Inger of Ostrat_
and _The Feast at Solhoug_ he came back to it, and taking a
suggestion from the ballad in Landstad's collection (1852-3) he
recast the whole play, substituted the ballad meter for the
iambic pentameters, and called the new version _Olaf
Liljekrans_. _Olaf Liljekrans_ indicates clearly a
decline in Ibsen's interest in pure romance. It is much more
satirical than _The Feast at Solhoug_, and marks a step in
the direction of those superb masterpieces of satire and romance,
_Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_. The play was twice presented
on the stage in Bergen with considerable success, but the critics
treated it harshly.
The relationship of the revised versions to the original versions
of Ibsen's early plays is interesting, and might, if
satisfactorily elucidated, throw considerable light on the
development of his genius.
Volume: 1 Pg 6
It is evident that he was in this
early period experimenting in metrical forms. He employed blank
verse in _Catiline_, in the original version of _The
Grouse in Justedal_, and even as late as 1853 in the revision
of _The Warrior's Barrow_. There can be no question but
that he was here following the Ochlenschlaeger tradition.
Unrhymed pentameter, however, did not seem to satisfy him. He
could with difficulty keep from falling into rhyme in
_Catiline_, and in the early version of _The Warrior's
Barrow_ he used rhymed pentameters. After the revision of
this play he threw aside blank verse altogether. "Iambic
pentameter," he says in the essay on the heroic ballad, "is by no
means the most suitable form for the treatment of ancient
Scandinavian material; this form of verse is altogether foreign
to our national meters, and it is surely through a national form
that the national material can find its fullest expression." The
folk-tale and the ballad gave him the suggestion he needed. In
_The Feast at Solhoug_ and the final version of _Olaf
Liljekrans_ he employed the ballad meter, and this form became
the basis for the verse in all his later metrical plays.
Six years intervened between _The Grouse in Justedal_ and
_Olaf Liljekrans_, and the revision in this case amounted
almost to the writing of a new play.
Volume: 1 Pg 7
Fredrik Paasche in his
study (_Olaf Liljekrans_, Christiania, 1909) discusses the
relation of _Olaf Liljekrans_ to the earlier form of the
play. Three years intervened between the first and final
versions of _The Warrior's Barrow_. Professor
M. Sturtevant maintains (_Journal of English and GermanicPhilology_, XII, 407 ff.) that although "the influence of
Ochlenschlaeger upon both versions of _The Warrior's Barrow_
is unmistakable," yet "the two versions differ so widely from
each other ... that it may be assumed that ... Ibsen had begun to
free himself from the thraldom of Ochlenschlaeger's romantic
conception of the viking character." He points out the influence
of Welhaven and Heiberg on the second
Comments (0)