Read Drama Books Online Free


Our electronic library offers you a huge selection of books for every taste. On this website you can find any genre that suits your mood. Every day you can alternate book genres from the section TOP 100 books as it is free reading online.
You even don’t need register. Online library is always with you in your smartphone.


What is the genre of drama in books?


Read online books Drama in English at worldlibraryebooks.comIn literature a drama genre deserves your attention. Dramas are usually called plays. Every person is made up of two parts: good and evil. Due to life circumstances, the human reveals one or another side of his nature. In drama we can see the full range of emotions : it can be love, jealousy, hatred, fear, etc. The best drama books are full of dialogue. This type of drama is one of the oldest forms of storytelling and has existed almost since the beginning of humanity. Drama genre - these are events that involve a lot of people. People most often suffer in this genre, because they are selfish. People always think to themselves first, they want have a benefit.


Drama books online


All problems are in our heads. We want to be pitied. Every single person sooner or later experiences their own personal drama, which can leave its mark on him in his later life and forces him to perform sometimes unexpected actions. Sometimes another person can become the subject of drama for a person, whom he loves or fears, then the relationship of these people may be unexpected. Exactly in drama books we are watching their future fate.
eBooks on our website are available for reading online right now.


Electronic library are very popular and convenient for people of all ages.If you love the idea that give you a ride on a roller coaster of emotions choose our library site, free books drama genre for reading without registering.

Read books online » Drama » Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (best summer reads of all time txt) 📖

Book online «Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (best summer reads of all time txt) 📖». Author Henrik Ibsen



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 15
Go to page:
"out of small and scattered traits of reality Ibsen fashioned his close-knit and profoundly thought-out works of art."

For the character of Eilert Lovborg, again, Ibsen seem unquestionably to have borrowed several traits from a definite original. A young Danish man of letters, whom Dr. Brandes calls Holm, was an enthusiastic admirer of Ibsen, and came to be on very friendly terms with him. One day Ibsen was astonished to receive, in Munich, a parcel addressed from Berlin by this young man, containing, without a word of explanation, a packet of his (Ibsen's) letters, and a photograph which he had presented to Holm. Ibsen brooded and brooded over the incident, and at last came to the conclusion that the young man had intended to return her letters and photograph to a young lady to whom he was known to be attached, and had in a fit of aberration mixed up the two objects of his worship. Some time after, Holm appeared at Ibsen's rooms. He talked quite rationally, but professed to have no knowledge whatever of the letter-incident, though he admitted the truth of Ibsen's conjecture that the "belle dame sans merci" had demanded the return of her letters and portrait. Ibsen was determined to get at the root of the mystery; and a little inquiry into his young friend's habits revealed the fact that he broke his fast on a bottle of port wine, consumed a bottle of Rhine wine at lunch, of Burgundy at dinner, and finished off the evening with one or two more bottles of port. Then he heard, too, how, in the course of a night's carouse, Holm had lost the manuscript of a book; and in these traits he saw the outline of the figure of Eilert Lovborg.

Some time elapsed, and again Ibsen received a postal packet from Holm. This one contained his will, in which Ibsen figured as his residuary legatee. But many other legatees were mentioned in the instrument—all of them ladies, such as Fraulein Alma Rothbart, of Bremen, and Fraulein Elise Kraushaar, of Berlin. The bequests to these meritorious spinsters were so generous that their sum considerably exceeded the amount of the testator's property. Ibsen gently but firmly declined the proffered inheritance; but Holm's will no doubt suggested to him the figure of that red-haired "Mademoiselle Diana," who is heard of but not seen in Hedda Gabler, and enabled him to add some further traits to the portraiture of Lovborg. When the play appeared, Holm recognised himself with glee in the character of the bibulous man of letters, and thereafter adopted "Eilert Lovborg" as his pseudonym. I do not, therefore, see why Dr. Brandes should suppress his real name; but I willingly imitate him in erring on the side of discretion. The poor fellow died several years ago.

Some critics have been greatly troubled as to the precise meaning of Hedda's fantastic vision of Lovborg "with vine-leaves in his hair." Surely this is a very obvious image or symbol of the beautiful, the ideal, aspect of bacchic elation and revelry. Antique art, or I am much mistaken, shows us many figures of Dionysus himself and his followers with vine-leaves entwined their hair. To Ibsen's mind, at any rate, the image had long been familiar. In Peer Gynt (Act iv. sc. 8), when Peer, having carried off Anitra, finds himself in a particularly festive mood, he cries: "Were there vine-leaves around, I would garland my brow." Again, in Emperor and Galilean (Pt. ii. Act 1) where Julian, in the procession of Dionysus, impersonates the god himself, it is directed that he shall wear a wreath of vine-leaves. Professor Dietrichson relates that among the young artists whose society Ibsen frequented during his first years in Rome, it was customary, at their little festivals, for the revellers to deck themselves in this fashion. But the image is so obvious that there is no need to trace it to any personal experience. The attempt to place Hedda's vine-leaves among Ibsen's obscurities is an example of the firm resolution not to understand which animated the criticism of the 'nineties.

Dr. Brandes has dealt very severely with the character of Eilert Lovborg, alleging that we cannot believe in the genius attributed to him. But where is he described as a genius? The poet represents him as a very able student of sociology; but that is quite a different thing from attributing to him such genius as must necessarily shine forth in every word he utters. Dr. Brandes, indeed, declines to believe even in his ability as a sociologist, on the ground that it is idle to write about the social development of the future. "To our prosaic minds," he says, "it may seem as if the most sensible utterance on the subject is that of the fool of the play: 'The future! Good heavens, we know nothing of the future.'" The best retort to this criticism is that which Eilert himself makes: "There's a thing or two to be said about it all the same." The intelligent forecasting of the future (as Mr. H. G. Wells has shown) is not only clearly distinguishable from fantastic Utopianism, but is indispensable to any large statesmanship or enlightened social activity. With very real and very great respect for Dr. Brandes, I cannot think that he has been fortunate in his treatment of Lovborg's character. It has been represented as an absurdity that he would think of reading abstracts from his new book to a man like Tesman, whom he despises. But though Tesman is a ninny, he is, as Hedda says, a "specialist"—he is a competent, plodding student of his subject. Lovborg may quite naturally wish to see how his new method, or his excursion into a new field, strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type. He is, in fact, "trying it on the dog"—neither an unreasonable nor an unusual proceeding. There is, no doubt, a certain improbability in the way in which Lovborg is represented as carrying his manuscript around, and especially in Mrs. Elvsted's production of his rough draft from her pocket; but these are mechanical trifles, on which only a niggling criticism would dream of laying stress.

Of all Ibsen's works, Hedda Gabler is the most detached, the most objective—a character-study pure and simple. It is impossible—or so it seems to me—to extract any sort of general idea from it. One cannot even call it a satire, unless one is prepared to apply that term to the record of a "case" in a work of criminology. Reverting to Dumas's dictum that a play should contain "a painting, a judgment, an ideal," we may say the Hedda Gabler fulfils only the first of these requirements. The poet does not even pass judgment on his heroine: he simply paints her full-length portrait with scientific impassivity. But what a portrait! How searching in insight, how brilliant in colouring, how rich in detail! Grant Allen's remark, above quoted, was, of course, a whimsical exaggeration; the Hedda type is not so common as all that, else the world would quickly come to an end. But particular traits and tendencies of the Hedda type are very common in modern life, and not only among women. Hyperaesthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a keenly critical, relentlessly solvent intelligence, she combines a morbid shrinking from all the gross and prosaic detail of the sensual life. She has nothing to take her out of herself—not a single intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm. She cherishes, in a languid way, a petty social ambition; and even that she finds obstructed and baffled. At the same time she learns that another woman has had the courage to love and venture all, where she, in her cowardice, only hankered and refrained. Her malign egoism rises up uncontrolled, and calls to its aid her quick and subtle intellect. She ruins the other woman's happiness, but in doing so incurs a danger from which her sense of personal dignity revolts. Life has no such charm for her that she cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation and self-contempt. The good and the bad in her alike impel her to have done with it all; and a pistol-shot ends what is surely one of the most poignant character-tragedies in literature. Ibsen's brain never worked at higher pressure than in the conception and adjustment of those "crowded hours" in which Hedda, tangled in the web of Will and Circumstance, struggles on till she is too weary to struggle any more.

It may not be superfluous to note that the "a" in "Gabler" should be sounded long and full, like the "a" in "Garden"—NOT like the "a" in "gable" or in "gabble."

W. A.





FOOTNOTES.
   (A)Letters 214, 216, 217, 219.

   (B)In the Ibsen volume of Die Literatur (Berlin).

   (C)Dr. Julius Elias (Neue deutsche Rundschau, December 1906, p. 1462)
     makes the curious assertion that the character of Thea Elvsted was
     in part borrowed from this "Gossensasser Hildetypus."  It is hard to
     see how even Gibes' ingenuity could distil from the same flower two
     such different essences as Thea and Hilda.

   (D)See article by Herman Bang in Neue deutsche Rundschau, December
     1906, p. 1495.

   (E)Dr. Brahm (Neue deutsche Rundschau, December 1906, P. 1422) says
     that after the first performance of Hedda Gabler in Berlin Ibsen
     confided to him that the character had been suggested by a German
     lady whom he met in Munich, and who did not shoot, but poisoned
     herself.  Nothing more seems to be known of this lady.  See, too,
     an article by Julius Elias in the same magazine, p. 1460.





Transcriber's Note:

The inclusion or omission of commas between repeated words ("well, well"; "there there", etc.) in this etext is reproduced faithfully from both the 1914 and 1926 editions of Hedda Gabler, copyright 1907 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Modern editions of the same translation use the commas consistently throughout.—D.L.






HEDDA GABLER. PLAY IN FOUR ACTS.

CHARACTERS.

  GEORGE TESMAN.*
  HEDDA TESMAN, his wife.
  MISS JULIANA TESMAN, his aunt.
  MRS. ELVSTED.
  JUDGE** BRACK.
  EILERT LOVBORG.
  BERTA, servant at the Tesmans.

  *Tesman, whose Christian name in the original is "Jorgen," is
  described as "stipendiat i kulturhistorie"—that is to say, the
  holder of a scholarship for purposes of research into the History
  of Civilisation.

  **In the original "Assessor."
  The scene of the action is Tesman's villa, in the west end
  of Christiania.





ACT FIRST.
  A spacious, handsome, and tastefully furnished drawing room,
  decorated in dark colours.  In the back, a wide doorway with
  curtains drawn back, leading into a smaller room decorated
  in the same style as the drawing-room.  In the right-hand
  wall of the front room, a folding door leading out to the
  hall.  In the opposite wall, on the left, a glass door, also
  with curtains drawn back.  Through the panes can be seen
  part of a verandah outside, and trees covered with autumn
  foliage.  An oval table, with a cover on it, and surrounded
  by chairs, stands well forward.  In front, by the wall on
  the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed
  arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools.  A
  settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the
  upper right-hand corner.  In front, on the left, a little
  way from the wall, a sofa.  Further back than the glass
  door, a piano.  On either side of the doorway at the back
  a whatnot with terra-cotta and majolica ornaments.—
  Against the back wall of the inner room a sofa, with a
  table, and one or two chairs.  Over the sofa hangs the
  portrait of a handsome elderly man in a General's uniform.
  Over the table a hanging lamp, with an opal glass shade.—A
  number of bouquets are arranged about the drawing-room, in
  vases and glasses.  Others lie upon the
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 15
Go to page:

Free ebook «Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (best summer reads of all time txt) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment