Jatgeir — And what should be my
warranty
that I did not
feign — ?
feign — ?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
Hence-
forth Ibsen is the pathologist who unerringly, and with cruel direct-
ness, makes his diagnosis of the ills of the social body; and although
the setting of his plays is Norwegian, their application is as universal
as are the conditions of modern society itself. The Pillars of Soci-
ety,' the first of the group, attacks the hypocrisy of the principal
supporters of a community, here typified in particular by the rich
Consul Bernick, the local magnate in a small Norwegian town. Ber-
nick ultimately avows his real character; he shows how he has
brought about his own personal aggrandizement at the expense of
the community of which he has been a vaunted pillar, and stands at
last for the first time on the firm ground of truth. « The spirits of
Truth and Freedom,”— it is declared at the end, — "these are the
Pillars of Society. ”
A Doll's House,' the next play, is concerned with the problem of
marriage as a failure. To answer the question, it furnishes an illus-
tration of the customary sacrifice of the individuality of the woman
to that of the man to whom she is married. Nora, the doll of this
particular doll's-house, is one of the most distinctive of Ibsen's crea-
tions, as is the drama one of his most pronounced successes. She is
an undeveloped child in mind and morals, and eventually, unthinking
of consequences, sacrifices honor to love, and forges her father's name
to a document in order to help her husband. At the end her illus-
ions have all vanished. She sees and understands the doll's-house
in which she has lived, and determines for her children's sake and
her own to leave it.
"Ghosts) is in some respects a complement to A Doll's House. )
It shows in reality, in its own way and with wholly different setting,
what might have happened had Nora Helmer remained with her hus-
band and children. The play is the most thrilling and dreadful of
all of Ibsen's works. Its fundamental idea is the awful consequences
of hereditary vices, which are ghosts to revisit the scenes of their
past existence. Oswald Alving, the son of a vicious father whose
memory has been cloaked by his wife after his death, becomes a
mere physical wreck, and begs his mother in the last awful scene to
give him the morphia that shall end his torment. It is left uncertain
whether this is or is not done, but it scarcely mitigates the horror of
(
## p. 7845 (#37) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7845
the end. (Ghosts' raised a howl of protest, but its drastic strength
cannot be questioned.
(An Enemy of the People' is to a great extent a personal polemic
due to the reception accorded “Ghosts. Its hero, Dr. Stockmann,
simply tells the truth in regard to the corruption of the medicinal
waters that had brought visitors and prosperity to a little town in
Norway. Every one knows that it is the truth, and he is stoned and
driven out for uttering it. The play as a whole is inferior to the
rest.
(The Wild Duck) receives its name from a bird that is kept
captive in a garret, and is the fondest treasure of a little girl
of fourteen, Hedwig. The play is gloomy and despairing. Hedwig,
ultimately, instead of killing the wild duck as she is advised to do,
turns the bullet into her own heart.
Rosmersholm) is the story of the clergyman Rosmer, the last of
his race, whose wife had committed suicide, and who had fallen under
the influence of her former companion Rebecca West. The relation-
ship between them, except in name, is love, tender but passionless.
Idle scandals arise, and Rosmer offers marriage, which Rebecca's con-
science does not allow her to accept. Both put an end to their con-
fused lives by throwing themselves into the mill-dam.
“The Lady from the Sea' is the daughter of a light-house keeper
who has become the second wife of Dr. Wangel, the physician of a
little coast town. She has however been mysteriously betrothed to a
seafaring man, a Finn, who finally comes back to claim her. When
her husband at her own request leaves her to choose between him
and the sailor, and tells her that she must bear the individual
responsibility for her action, she decides with rapture to remain.
Hedda Gabler' seems to be the only one of the social dramas
without a problem. Hedda is a woman of the modern literary type,
-- vain, pleasure-loving. undomestic, and selfish. As the wife of Dr.
,
Tisman she lures back to his destruction her old friend Lövborg, who
had once grievously insulted her. When in despair he threatens to
kill himself, she offers him one of her pistols. He is afterward found
dead with Hedda's pistol discharged, and she, fearful of the scandal
that will arise, ends her life with the other.
(Master Builder Solness) tells the story of the price of success: the
ruin of many for the benefit of the one, and the impoverishment in
heart and affections of the one, who must thus pay the penalty for
his successes. Halvard Solness, the builder, step by step has fought
his way to success; and in his desire to keep what he has gained he
is wary and jealous of any possible competitor, and particularly of
the coming generation, whom he recognizes as his enemies. His first
concession to youth, in the person of Hilda Wangel, brings about his
## p. 7846 (#38) ############################################
7846
HENRIK IBSEN
own destruction. Hilda challenges him to perform again the feat of
his earlier years.
He accordingly climbs to the tower of his new
house to place the garland upon the top, but grows giddy and falls
headlong to the earth.
Little Eyjolf' presents the problem of a loveless marriage. Little
Eyjolf, the crippled son of Allmers and Rita, is drowned in the fjord.
There are mutual recriminations, and the husband declares that they
must henceforth live apart. Rita however begs that they may still
live their lives together, and Allmers decides finally to remain; so
that there is a gleam of hope in the dénouement. The problem is
fundamentally that of A Doll's House, but the reverse solution is
much more hopeful, and possibly truer. This play seems to inculcate
too a new principle in Ibsen's philosophy of life. While the others,
one and all, turn upon the dissolution of modern society, constituted
as it is, this unmistakably looks toward the possibility of its regener-
ation.
In John Gabriel Borkman,' his latest drama, Borkman is a bank
official whose great money schemes lead him into dishonesty and dis-
grace. Estranged from his wife, he regards himself as more sinned
against than sinning, and dreams of yet redeeming the past. The
wife looks to their son to reinstate their name, but he forsakes her
to make a runaway match. Borkman, incensed by both mother and
son, wanders out, in a broken state of health, into a snowy winter's
night, in company with his wife's sister, a former sweetheart whom
he threw over for his ambition's sake; — and he perishes there, the
two women confronting each other across his body. The play has
poetic suggestion, but is hardly plain in purpose, - one implication
being that Borkman's greatest mistake was in putting ambition before
love.
Ibsen's social dramas have carried his fame throughout the world,
and a vast literature of translation and comment has arisen. Many
of them, in Norway and out of it, have evoked loud protests of indig-
nation at the drastic presentation of his problems, and he has been
assailed as immoral, as a cynic and a pessimist. It is not impossible,
however, to absolve him of each and all of these charges. Ibsen's
whole problem, as it has well been stated, is the relation of the
individual to his social and personal surroundings; these are studies
accordingly in human responsibility, and the characters are intended
to be types of the race in modern social conditions. Such condi-
tions, moreover, in salient points Ibsen as diagnostician finds to be
inherently bad, and fearlessly he puts his finger upon the sore spots
to point out the danger they inevitably involve to the whole social
body. Ibsen in this is the poet of protest, and his voice is that of
one crying aloud against social hypocrisy and sophistry of whatever
## p. 7847 (#39) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7847
sort it may be. He is not immoral, in that no one has ever made
vice more repulsive, or by contrast virtue more attractive. When it
is urged against him that he destroys but suggests no remedy, his
critics have failed to apprehend the positive result of the lessons
involved in this very destruction, whose causes he has rendered so
apparent. He is not the mere cynic, for there is a whole galaxy of
characters to draw upon one's sympathies. «Truth, freedom, and
love," says his biographer, "are the three corner-stones of the edifice,
noble in proportion and serious in purpose, that the poet has erected. ”
Ibsen in the social dramas in many ways has struck the highest
note of modern dramatic art. Primarily his manner of construction
is analytic. He begins his plays where another dramatist would have
ended them. Often the climax has occurred before the opening of
the play, and the consequences accordingly form the subject-matter
of the action. There is no place in his dramas for the purely con-
ventional, and they bear characteristically the stamp of reality.
Ibsen in all this is the creator of a school, whose teachings have left
an indelible mark upon the literature of the century.
The following are the best works on Ibsen for the general reader:
(Henrik Ibsen' in Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century,' by
Georg Brandes (New York: 1886); Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Biogra-
phy,' by Henrik Jaeger (Chicago: 1890); A Commentary on the
Writings of Henrik Ibsen,' by H. H. Boyesen (New York: 1894);
(Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen,' by R. H. Wicksteed (London: 1892).
The most accessible edition of Ibsen's prose dramas is that trans-
lated by William Archer, in six volumes (New York: 1890-92).
(
Wast. Carpenter.
FROM THE PRETENDERS)
J
^ King Smule
The action passes in the first half of the Thirteenth Century. Present:
Skule; Jatgeir the Skald, an Icelander; Paul Flida, a nobleman.
ATGEIR [enters from the back] - Forgive my coming, lord King.
You come to my wish, Skald!
Jatgeir - I overheard some townsfolk at my lodging talking
darkly of
King Skule - Let that wait. Tell me, Skald, you who have
fared far abroad in strange lands,— have you ever seen a woman
love another's child ? Not only be kind to it — 'tis not that I
mean; but love it, love it with the warmest passion of her soul.
## p. 7848 (#40) ############################################
7848
HENRIK IBSEN
seem
Jatgeir — That can only those women do who have no child of
their own to love.
King Skule -- Only those women - ?
?
Jatgeir — And chiefly women who are barren.
King Skule — Chiefly the barren —? They love the children of
others with all their warmest passion ?
Jatgeir — That will oftentimes befall.
King Skule — And does it not sometimes befall that such a
barren woman will slay another's child, because she herself has
none ?
Jatgeir — Ay, ay; but in that she does unwisely.
King Skule – Unwisely?
Jatgeir — Ay, for she gives the gift of sorrow to her whose
child she slays.
King Skule - Think you the gift of sorrow is a great good ?
Jatgeir — Yes, lord.
King Skule [looking fixedly at him]— Methinks there are two
men in you, Icelander. When you sit amid the household at the
merry feast, you draw cloak and hood over all your thoughts;
when one is alone with you, sometimes
you
to be of
those among whom one were fain to choose his friend. How
comes it ?
Jatgeir — When you go to swim in the river, my lord, you
would scarce strip you where the people pass by to church: you
seek a sheltered privacy.
King Skule - True, true.
Jatgeir — My soul has a like shyness; therefore I do not strip
me when there are many in the hall.
King Skule -- Hm. (A short pause. ] Tell me, Jatgeir, how
[
came you to be a skald? Who taught you skaldcraft ?
Jatgeir — Skaldcraft cannot be taught, my lord.
King Skule — Cannot be taught? How came it then?
?
Jatgeir — I got the gift of sorrow, and I was a skald.
King Skule — Then 'tis the gift of sorrow the skald has need
of ?
Jatgeir I needed sorrow; others there may be who need
faith, or joy — or doubt -
King Skule — Doubt, as well ?
Jatgrir - Ay; but then must the doubter be strong and sound.
King Skule - And whom call you the unsound doubter?
Jatgeir — He who doubts his own doubt.
## p. 7849 (#41) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7849
King Skule [slowly] – That, methinks, were death.
Jatgeir —'Tis worse; 'tis neither day nor night.
King Skule (quickly, as if shaking off his thoughts] - Where
are my weapons ? I will fight and act — not think.
I
What was it
you would have told me when you came ?
Jatgeir —'Twas what I noted in my lodgings. The townsmen
whisper together secretly, and laugh mockingly, and ask if we be
well assured that King Hakon is in the west land: there is some-
what they are in glee over.
King Skule - They are men of Viken, and therefore against
me.
Jatgeir They scoff because King Olaf's shrine could not be
brought out to the mote-stead when we did you homage; they
say it boded ill.
King Skule — When next I come to Nidaros the shrine shall
out! It shall stand under the open sky, though I should have to
tear down St. Olaf's church and widen the mote-stead over the
spot where it stood.
Jatgeir - That were a strong deed; but I shall make a song
of it as strong as the deed itself.
King Skule — Have you many unmade songs within you,
Jatgeir ?
Jatgeir — Nay, but many unborn; they are conceived one after
the other, come to life, and are brought forth.
King Skule — And if I, who am King and have the might, –
if I were to have you slain, would all the unborn skald-thoughts
within you die along with you?
Jatgeir My lord, it is a great sin to slay a fair thought.
King Skule— I ask not if it be a sin: I ask if it be possible !
Jatgeir - I know not.
King Skule – Have you never had another skald for your
friend, and has he never unfolded to you a great and noble song
he thought to make ?
Jatgeir — Yes, lord.
King Skule - Did you not then wish that you could slay him,
to take his thought and make the song yourself?
Jatgeir -— My lord, I am not barren: I have children of my
own; I need not to love those of other men. [Goes. ]
King Skule (after a pause]— The Icelander is in very deed a
skald. He speaks God's deepest truth and knows it not.
as a barren woman. Therefore I love Hakon's kingly thought-
I am
## p. 7850 (#42) ############################################
7850
HENRIK IBSEN
child, love it with the warmest passion of my soul. Oh that I
could but adopt it! It would die in my hands. Which were best,
that it should die in my hands or wax great in his ? Should I
ever have peace of soul if that came to pass ? Can I forego all ?
Can I stand by and see Hakon make himself famous for all time?
How dead and empty is all within me - and around me.
No
friend — ah, the Icelander! [Goes to the door and calls. ] Has the
skald gone from the palace ?
A Guard [outside]— No, my lord: he stands in the outer hall
talking with the watch.
King Skule Bid him come hither. [Goes forward to the
table; presently Jatgeir enters. ] I cannot sleep, Jatgeir: 'tis all
my great kingly thoughts that keep me awake, you see.
Jatgeir — 'Tis with the king's thoughts as with the skald's, I
doubt not. They fly highest and grow quickest when there is
night and stillness around.
King Skule - Is it so with the skald's thoughts too?
Jatgeir -- Ay, lord: no song is born by daylight; it may be
written down in the sunshine, but it makes itself in the silent
night.
King Skule — Who gave you the gift of sorrow, Jatgeir ?
Jatgeir — She whom I loved.
King Skule — She died, then ?
Jatgeir — No, she deceived me.
King Skule — And then you became a skald ?
Jatgeir - Ay, then I became a skald.
King Skule (seizes him by the arm] - What gift do I need to
become a king ?
Jatgeir - Not the gift of doubt; else would you not ques-
tion so.
King Skule— What gift do I need ?
Jatgeir — My lord, you are a king.
King Skule — Have you at all times full faith that you are a
skald ?
Jatgeir [looks silently at him for a while]— Have you never
loved ?
King Skule— Yes, once — burningly, blissfully, and in sin.
Jatgeir — You have a wife.
King Skule — Her I took to bear me sons.
Jatgeir — But you have a daughter, my lord — a gracious and
noble daughter.
## p. 7851 (#43) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7851
King Skule -- Were my daughter a son, I would not ask you
what gift I need. [Vehemently. ] I must have some one by me
who sinks his own will utterly in mine — who believes in me
unflinchingly, who will cling close to me in good hap and ill, who
lives only to shed light and warmth over my life, and must die
if I fall. Give me counsel, Jatgeir Skald!
Jatgeir — Buy yourself a dog, my lord.
King Skule -- Would no man suffice ?
Jatgeir — You would have to search long for such a man.
King Skule (suddenly) - Will you be that man to me, Jatgeir ?
Will you be a son to me? You shall have Norway's crown to
your heritage — the whole land shall be yours, if you will be a
son to me, and live for my life work, and believe in me.
Jatgeir — And what should be my warranty that I did not
feign — ?
King Skule — Give up your calling in life, sing no more songs,
and then will I believe you!
Jatgeir — No, lord: that were to buy the crown too dear.
King Skule — Bethink you well: 'tis greater to be a king than
a skald.
Jatgeir — Not always.
King Skule—'Tis but your unsung songs you must sacrifice!
Jatgeir - Songs unsung are ever the fairest.
King Skule — But I must -I must have one who can trust in
me! Only one. I feel it: had I that one I were saved!
Jatgeir — Trust in yourself and you will be saved !
Paul Flida [enters hastily] — King Skule, look to yourself!
Hakon Hakonsson lies off Elgjarness with all his fleet!
King Skule— Off Elgjarness! Then he is close at hand.
Jatgeir — Get we to arms then! If there be bloodshed to-night,
I will gladly be the first to die for you!
King Skule - You, who would not live for me!
Jatgeir — A man can die for another's life work; but if he go
on living, he must live for his own. [Goes. ]
## p. 7852 (#44) ############################################
7852
HENRIK IBSEN
FROM A DOLL'S HOUSE)
Scene : Sitting-room in Torvald Helmer's house (a flat) in Christiania.
Time : The Present Day. Nora Helmer enters, crossing to table
in every-day dress.
ELMER
H. .
Why, what's this? Not gone to bed ? You have
changed your dress.
Nora — Yes, Torvald; now I have changed my dress.
Helmer — But why now, so late?
Nora - I shall not sleep to-night.
Helmer - But, Nora dear -
Nora [looking at her watch]— It's not so late yet. Sit down,
Torvald: you and I have much to say to each other. [She sits at
one side of the table. ]
Helmer - Nora, what does this mean? Your cold, set face-
Nora — Sit down. It will take some time: I have much to
talk over with you.
Helmer (sitting down at the other side of the table] - You
alarm me; I don't understand you.
Nora — No, that's just it. You don't understand me; and I
have never understood you — till to-night. No, don't interrupt.
Only listen to what I say. We must come to a final settlement,
Torvald!
Helmer How do you mean?
Nora [after a short silence] - Does not one thing strike you
as we sit here?
Helmer - What should strike me ?
Nora — We have been married eight years. Does it not strike
you that this is the first time we two — you and I, man and wife
have talked together seriously?
Helmer - Seriously! Well, what do you call seriously?
?
Nora — During eight whole years and more - ever since the
day we first met - we have never exchanged one serious word
about serious things.
Helmer - Was I always to trouble you with the cares you
could not help me to bear?
Nora — I am not talking of cares. I say that we have never
yet set ourselves seriously to get to the bottom of anything.
Helmer - Why, my dear Nora, what have you to do with
serious things ?
## p. 7853 (#45) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7853
into yours.
-
Nora - There we have it! You have never understood me. I
have had great injustice done me, Torvald: first by my father,
and then by you.
Helmer - What! by your father and me? — by us who have
loved you more than all the world ?
Nora (shaking her head] – You have never loved me. You
only thought it amusing to be in love with me.
Helmer — Why, Nora, what a thing to say!
Nora — Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with
father he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same
opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would
not have liked it. He used to call me his doll child, and play
.
with me
as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in
your house
Helmer — What an expression to use about our marriage!
Nora [undisturbed]-I mean I passed from father's hands
You settled everything according to your taste; and
I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to—I don't know
which — both ways, perhaps. When I look back on it now,
I
seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth.
I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would
have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong.
It's
your fault that my life has been wasted.
Helmer — Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you
are! Haven't you been happy here?
Nora — No, never: I thought I was, but I never was.
Helmer - Not — not happy?
Nora — No, only merry. And you have always been so kind
to me. But our house has been nothing but a play-room. Here
I have been your doll wife, just as at home I used to be papa's
doll child. And the children in their turn have been my dolls.
I thought it was fun when you played with me, just as the
children did when I played with them. That has been our mar-
riage, Torvald,
Helmer — There is some truth in what you say, exaggerated
and overstrained though it be. But henceforth it shall be differ-
ent. Play-time is over; now comes the time for education.
Nora – Whose education ? Mine, or the children's ?
Helmer - Both, my dear Nora.
Nora — 0 Torvald, you can't teach me to be a fit wife for
you.
## p. 7854 (#46) ############################################
7854
HENRIK IBSEN
me.
Helmer And you say that ?
Vora - And I - am I fit to educate the children?
Helmer - Xora!
Nora - Did you not say yourself a few minutes ago you dared
not trust them to me?
Helmer - In the excitement of the moment: why should you
dwell upon that?
Nora - Xo- you are perfectly right. That problem is beyond
There's another to be solved first — I must try to educate
myself. You are not the man to help me in that. I must set
about it alone. And that is why I am now leaving you.
Helmer (jumping up]- What do you mean to say –
Nora-I must stand quite alone to know myself and my sur-
roundings; so I cannot stay with you.
Helmer - Nora! Nora!
Nora — I am going at once.
Christina will take me in for
to-night-
Helmer – You are mad. I shall not allow it. I forbid it.
Nora - It's no use your forbidding me anything now. I shall
take with me what belongs to me. From you I will accept
nothing, either now or afterward.
Helmer - What madness!
Nora - To-morrow I shall go home.
Homer - Home!
Nora — I mean to what was my home. It will be easier for
me to find some opening there.
Helmer -Oh, in your blind inexperience –
Nora -- I must try to gain experience, Torvald.
Helmer — To forsake your home, your husband, and your child-
ren! You don't consider what the world will say.
Nora - I can pay no heed to that! I only know that I must
do it.
Helmer -- It's exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest
duties in this way?
Nora - What do you call my holiest duties ?
Helmer Do you ask me that ? Your duties to your husband
and your children.
Nora — I have other duties equally sacred.
Helmer -— Impossible! What duties do you mean?
Nora — My duties toward myself.
Helmer Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
## p. 7855 (#47) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7855
-
Nora – That I no longer believe. I think that before all else
I am a human being, just as much as you are or at least I will
try to become one. I know that most people agree with you,
Torvald, and that they say so in books. But henceforth I can't
be satisfied with what most people say, and what is in books. I
must think things out for myself, and try to get clear about them.
Helmer Are you not clear about your place in your own
home? Have you not an infallible guide in questions like these?
?
Have you not religion ?
Nora – O Torvald, I don't know properly what religion is.
Helmer What do you mean?
Nora — I know nothing but what our clergyman told me when
I was confirmed. He explained that religion was this and that.
When I get away from here and stand alone, I will look into
that matter too. I will see whether what he taught me is true,
or at any rate whether it is true for me.
Helmer - Oh, this is unheard of! But if religion cannot keep
you right, let me appeal to your conscience — for I suppose you
,
have some moral feeling? Or, answer me: perhaps you have
none ?
Nora - Well, Torvald, it's not easy to say. I really don't know
I am all at sea about these things. I only know that I think
quite differently from you about them. I hear too that the laws
are different from what I thought; but I can't believe that they
are right. It appears that a woman has no right to spare her
dying father, or to save her husband's life. I don't believe that.
Helmer You talk like a child. You don't understand the
society in which you live.
Nora - No, I don't. But I shall try to.
- ,
I must make up my
mind which is right — society or I.
Helmer - Nora, you are ill, you are feverish. I almost think
you are out of your senses.
Nora — I have never felt so much clearness and certainty as
to-night.
Helmer – You are clear and certain enough to forsake hus-
band and children ?
Nora — Yes, I am.
Helmer - Then there is only one explanation possible.
Nora — What is that?
Helmer - You no longer love me.
Nora — No, that is just it.
## p. 7856 (#48) ############################################
7856
HENRIK IBSEN
(
Helmer - Nora! Can you say so?
Nora - Oh, I'm so sorry, Torvald; for you've always been so
kind to me.
But I can't help it. I do not love you any longer.
Helmer [keeping his composure with difficulty]— Are you clear
and certain on this point too?
Nora — Yes, quite. That is why I won't stay here any longer.
Helmer — And can you also make clear to me how I have
forfeited your love ?
Nora — Yes, I can. It was this evening, when the miracle
did not happen; for then I saw you were not the man I had
taken you for.
Helmer - Explain yourself more clearly: I don't understand.
Nora — I have waited so patiently all these eight years; for
of course I saw clearly enough that miracles do not happen every
day. When this crushing blow threatened me, I said to myself
confidently, “Now comes the miracle! ” When Krogstad's letter
lay in the box, it never occurred to me that you would think of
submitting to that man's conditions. I was convinced that you
would say to him, “Make it known to all the world;" and that
then-
Helmer - Well? When I had given my own wife's name up
to disgrace and shame - ?
Nora — Then I firmly believed that you would come forward,
take everything upon yourself, and say, “I am the guilty one. ”
Helmer - Nora!
Nora — You mean I would never have accepted such a sacri-
fice ? No, certainly not. But what would my assertions have
been worth in opposition to yours?
forth Ibsen is the pathologist who unerringly, and with cruel direct-
ness, makes his diagnosis of the ills of the social body; and although
the setting of his plays is Norwegian, their application is as universal
as are the conditions of modern society itself. The Pillars of Soci-
ety,' the first of the group, attacks the hypocrisy of the principal
supporters of a community, here typified in particular by the rich
Consul Bernick, the local magnate in a small Norwegian town. Ber-
nick ultimately avows his real character; he shows how he has
brought about his own personal aggrandizement at the expense of
the community of which he has been a vaunted pillar, and stands at
last for the first time on the firm ground of truth. « The spirits of
Truth and Freedom,”— it is declared at the end, — "these are the
Pillars of Society. ”
A Doll's House,' the next play, is concerned with the problem of
marriage as a failure. To answer the question, it furnishes an illus-
tration of the customary sacrifice of the individuality of the woman
to that of the man to whom she is married. Nora, the doll of this
particular doll's-house, is one of the most distinctive of Ibsen's crea-
tions, as is the drama one of his most pronounced successes. She is
an undeveloped child in mind and morals, and eventually, unthinking
of consequences, sacrifices honor to love, and forges her father's name
to a document in order to help her husband. At the end her illus-
ions have all vanished. She sees and understands the doll's-house
in which she has lived, and determines for her children's sake and
her own to leave it.
"Ghosts) is in some respects a complement to A Doll's House. )
It shows in reality, in its own way and with wholly different setting,
what might have happened had Nora Helmer remained with her hus-
band and children. The play is the most thrilling and dreadful of
all of Ibsen's works. Its fundamental idea is the awful consequences
of hereditary vices, which are ghosts to revisit the scenes of their
past existence. Oswald Alving, the son of a vicious father whose
memory has been cloaked by his wife after his death, becomes a
mere physical wreck, and begs his mother in the last awful scene to
give him the morphia that shall end his torment. It is left uncertain
whether this is or is not done, but it scarcely mitigates the horror of
(
## p. 7845 (#37) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7845
the end. (Ghosts' raised a howl of protest, but its drastic strength
cannot be questioned.
(An Enemy of the People' is to a great extent a personal polemic
due to the reception accorded “Ghosts. Its hero, Dr. Stockmann,
simply tells the truth in regard to the corruption of the medicinal
waters that had brought visitors and prosperity to a little town in
Norway. Every one knows that it is the truth, and he is stoned and
driven out for uttering it. The play as a whole is inferior to the
rest.
(The Wild Duck) receives its name from a bird that is kept
captive in a garret, and is the fondest treasure of a little girl
of fourteen, Hedwig. The play is gloomy and despairing. Hedwig,
ultimately, instead of killing the wild duck as she is advised to do,
turns the bullet into her own heart.
Rosmersholm) is the story of the clergyman Rosmer, the last of
his race, whose wife had committed suicide, and who had fallen under
the influence of her former companion Rebecca West. The relation-
ship between them, except in name, is love, tender but passionless.
Idle scandals arise, and Rosmer offers marriage, which Rebecca's con-
science does not allow her to accept. Both put an end to their con-
fused lives by throwing themselves into the mill-dam.
“The Lady from the Sea' is the daughter of a light-house keeper
who has become the second wife of Dr. Wangel, the physician of a
little coast town. She has however been mysteriously betrothed to a
seafaring man, a Finn, who finally comes back to claim her. When
her husband at her own request leaves her to choose between him
and the sailor, and tells her that she must bear the individual
responsibility for her action, she decides with rapture to remain.
Hedda Gabler' seems to be the only one of the social dramas
without a problem. Hedda is a woman of the modern literary type,
-- vain, pleasure-loving. undomestic, and selfish. As the wife of Dr.
,
Tisman she lures back to his destruction her old friend Lövborg, who
had once grievously insulted her. When in despair he threatens to
kill himself, she offers him one of her pistols. He is afterward found
dead with Hedda's pistol discharged, and she, fearful of the scandal
that will arise, ends her life with the other.
(Master Builder Solness) tells the story of the price of success: the
ruin of many for the benefit of the one, and the impoverishment in
heart and affections of the one, who must thus pay the penalty for
his successes. Halvard Solness, the builder, step by step has fought
his way to success; and in his desire to keep what he has gained he
is wary and jealous of any possible competitor, and particularly of
the coming generation, whom he recognizes as his enemies. His first
concession to youth, in the person of Hilda Wangel, brings about his
## p. 7846 (#38) ############################################
7846
HENRIK IBSEN
own destruction. Hilda challenges him to perform again the feat of
his earlier years.
He accordingly climbs to the tower of his new
house to place the garland upon the top, but grows giddy and falls
headlong to the earth.
Little Eyjolf' presents the problem of a loveless marriage. Little
Eyjolf, the crippled son of Allmers and Rita, is drowned in the fjord.
There are mutual recriminations, and the husband declares that they
must henceforth live apart. Rita however begs that they may still
live their lives together, and Allmers decides finally to remain; so
that there is a gleam of hope in the dénouement. The problem is
fundamentally that of A Doll's House, but the reverse solution is
much more hopeful, and possibly truer. This play seems to inculcate
too a new principle in Ibsen's philosophy of life. While the others,
one and all, turn upon the dissolution of modern society, constituted
as it is, this unmistakably looks toward the possibility of its regener-
ation.
In John Gabriel Borkman,' his latest drama, Borkman is a bank
official whose great money schemes lead him into dishonesty and dis-
grace. Estranged from his wife, he regards himself as more sinned
against than sinning, and dreams of yet redeeming the past. The
wife looks to their son to reinstate their name, but he forsakes her
to make a runaway match. Borkman, incensed by both mother and
son, wanders out, in a broken state of health, into a snowy winter's
night, in company with his wife's sister, a former sweetheart whom
he threw over for his ambition's sake; — and he perishes there, the
two women confronting each other across his body. The play has
poetic suggestion, but is hardly plain in purpose, - one implication
being that Borkman's greatest mistake was in putting ambition before
love.
Ibsen's social dramas have carried his fame throughout the world,
and a vast literature of translation and comment has arisen. Many
of them, in Norway and out of it, have evoked loud protests of indig-
nation at the drastic presentation of his problems, and he has been
assailed as immoral, as a cynic and a pessimist. It is not impossible,
however, to absolve him of each and all of these charges. Ibsen's
whole problem, as it has well been stated, is the relation of the
individual to his social and personal surroundings; these are studies
accordingly in human responsibility, and the characters are intended
to be types of the race in modern social conditions. Such condi-
tions, moreover, in salient points Ibsen as diagnostician finds to be
inherently bad, and fearlessly he puts his finger upon the sore spots
to point out the danger they inevitably involve to the whole social
body. Ibsen in this is the poet of protest, and his voice is that of
one crying aloud against social hypocrisy and sophistry of whatever
## p. 7847 (#39) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7847
sort it may be. He is not immoral, in that no one has ever made
vice more repulsive, or by contrast virtue more attractive. When it
is urged against him that he destroys but suggests no remedy, his
critics have failed to apprehend the positive result of the lessons
involved in this very destruction, whose causes he has rendered so
apparent. He is not the mere cynic, for there is a whole galaxy of
characters to draw upon one's sympathies. «Truth, freedom, and
love," says his biographer, "are the three corner-stones of the edifice,
noble in proportion and serious in purpose, that the poet has erected. ”
Ibsen in the social dramas in many ways has struck the highest
note of modern dramatic art. Primarily his manner of construction
is analytic. He begins his plays where another dramatist would have
ended them. Often the climax has occurred before the opening of
the play, and the consequences accordingly form the subject-matter
of the action. There is no place in his dramas for the purely con-
ventional, and they bear characteristically the stamp of reality.
Ibsen in all this is the creator of a school, whose teachings have left
an indelible mark upon the literature of the century.
The following are the best works on Ibsen for the general reader:
(Henrik Ibsen' in Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century,' by
Georg Brandes (New York: 1886); Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Biogra-
phy,' by Henrik Jaeger (Chicago: 1890); A Commentary on the
Writings of Henrik Ibsen,' by H. H. Boyesen (New York: 1894);
(Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen,' by R. H. Wicksteed (London: 1892).
The most accessible edition of Ibsen's prose dramas is that trans-
lated by William Archer, in six volumes (New York: 1890-92).
(
Wast. Carpenter.
FROM THE PRETENDERS)
J
^ King Smule
The action passes in the first half of the Thirteenth Century. Present:
Skule; Jatgeir the Skald, an Icelander; Paul Flida, a nobleman.
ATGEIR [enters from the back] - Forgive my coming, lord King.
You come to my wish, Skald!
Jatgeir - I overheard some townsfolk at my lodging talking
darkly of
King Skule - Let that wait. Tell me, Skald, you who have
fared far abroad in strange lands,— have you ever seen a woman
love another's child ? Not only be kind to it — 'tis not that I
mean; but love it, love it with the warmest passion of her soul.
## p. 7848 (#40) ############################################
7848
HENRIK IBSEN
seem
Jatgeir — That can only those women do who have no child of
their own to love.
King Skule -- Only those women - ?
?
Jatgeir — And chiefly women who are barren.
King Skule — Chiefly the barren —? They love the children of
others with all their warmest passion ?
Jatgeir — That will oftentimes befall.
King Skule — And does it not sometimes befall that such a
barren woman will slay another's child, because she herself has
none ?
Jatgeir — Ay, ay; but in that she does unwisely.
King Skule – Unwisely?
Jatgeir — Ay, for she gives the gift of sorrow to her whose
child she slays.
King Skule - Think you the gift of sorrow is a great good ?
Jatgeir — Yes, lord.
King Skule [looking fixedly at him]— Methinks there are two
men in you, Icelander. When you sit amid the household at the
merry feast, you draw cloak and hood over all your thoughts;
when one is alone with you, sometimes
you
to be of
those among whom one were fain to choose his friend. How
comes it ?
Jatgeir — When you go to swim in the river, my lord, you
would scarce strip you where the people pass by to church: you
seek a sheltered privacy.
King Skule - True, true.
Jatgeir — My soul has a like shyness; therefore I do not strip
me when there are many in the hall.
King Skule -- Hm. (A short pause. ] Tell me, Jatgeir, how
[
came you to be a skald? Who taught you skaldcraft ?
Jatgeir — Skaldcraft cannot be taught, my lord.
King Skule — Cannot be taught? How came it then?
?
Jatgeir — I got the gift of sorrow, and I was a skald.
King Skule — Then 'tis the gift of sorrow the skald has need
of ?
Jatgeir I needed sorrow; others there may be who need
faith, or joy — or doubt -
King Skule — Doubt, as well ?
Jatgrir - Ay; but then must the doubter be strong and sound.
King Skule - And whom call you the unsound doubter?
Jatgeir — He who doubts his own doubt.
## p. 7849 (#41) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7849
King Skule [slowly] – That, methinks, were death.
Jatgeir —'Tis worse; 'tis neither day nor night.
King Skule (quickly, as if shaking off his thoughts] - Where
are my weapons ? I will fight and act — not think.
I
What was it
you would have told me when you came ?
Jatgeir —'Twas what I noted in my lodgings. The townsmen
whisper together secretly, and laugh mockingly, and ask if we be
well assured that King Hakon is in the west land: there is some-
what they are in glee over.
King Skule - They are men of Viken, and therefore against
me.
Jatgeir They scoff because King Olaf's shrine could not be
brought out to the mote-stead when we did you homage; they
say it boded ill.
King Skule — When next I come to Nidaros the shrine shall
out! It shall stand under the open sky, though I should have to
tear down St. Olaf's church and widen the mote-stead over the
spot where it stood.
Jatgeir - That were a strong deed; but I shall make a song
of it as strong as the deed itself.
King Skule — Have you many unmade songs within you,
Jatgeir ?
Jatgeir — Nay, but many unborn; they are conceived one after
the other, come to life, and are brought forth.
King Skule — And if I, who am King and have the might, –
if I were to have you slain, would all the unborn skald-thoughts
within you die along with you?
Jatgeir My lord, it is a great sin to slay a fair thought.
King Skule— I ask not if it be a sin: I ask if it be possible !
Jatgeir - I know not.
King Skule – Have you never had another skald for your
friend, and has he never unfolded to you a great and noble song
he thought to make ?
Jatgeir — Yes, lord.
King Skule - Did you not then wish that you could slay him,
to take his thought and make the song yourself?
Jatgeir -— My lord, I am not barren: I have children of my
own; I need not to love those of other men. [Goes. ]
King Skule (after a pause]— The Icelander is in very deed a
skald. He speaks God's deepest truth and knows it not.
as a barren woman. Therefore I love Hakon's kingly thought-
I am
## p. 7850 (#42) ############################################
7850
HENRIK IBSEN
child, love it with the warmest passion of my soul. Oh that I
could but adopt it! It would die in my hands. Which were best,
that it should die in my hands or wax great in his ? Should I
ever have peace of soul if that came to pass ? Can I forego all ?
Can I stand by and see Hakon make himself famous for all time?
How dead and empty is all within me - and around me.
No
friend — ah, the Icelander! [Goes to the door and calls. ] Has the
skald gone from the palace ?
A Guard [outside]— No, my lord: he stands in the outer hall
talking with the watch.
King Skule Bid him come hither. [Goes forward to the
table; presently Jatgeir enters. ] I cannot sleep, Jatgeir: 'tis all
my great kingly thoughts that keep me awake, you see.
Jatgeir — 'Tis with the king's thoughts as with the skald's, I
doubt not. They fly highest and grow quickest when there is
night and stillness around.
King Skule - Is it so with the skald's thoughts too?
Jatgeir -- Ay, lord: no song is born by daylight; it may be
written down in the sunshine, but it makes itself in the silent
night.
King Skule — Who gave you the gift of sorrow, Jatgeir ?
Jatgeir — She whom I loved.
King Skule — She died, then ?
Jatgeir — No, she deceived me.
King Skule — And then you became a skald ?
Jatgeir - Ay, then I became a skald.
King Skule (seizes him by the arm] - What gift do I need to
become a king ?
Jatgeir - Not the gift of doubt; else would you not ques-
tion so.
King Skule— What gift do I need ?
Jatgeir — My lord, you are a king.
King Skule — Have you at all times full faith that you are a
skald ?
Jatgeir [looks silently at him for a while]— Have you never
loved ?
King Skule— Yes, once — burningly, blissfully, and in sin.
Jatgeir — You have a wife.
King Skule — Her I took to bear me sons.
Jatgeir — But you have a daughter, my lord — a gracious and
noble daughter.
## p. 7851 (#43) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7851
King Skule -- Were my daughter a son, I would not ask you
what gift I need. [Vehemently. ] I must have some one by me
who sinks his own will utterly in mine — who believes in me
unflinchingly, who will cling close to me in good hap and ill, who
lives only to shed light and warmth over my life, and must die
if I fall. Give me counsel, Jatgeir Skald!
Jatgeir — Buy yourself a dog, my lord.
King Skule -- Would no man suffice ?
Jatgeir — You would have to search long for such a man.
King Skule (suddenly) - Will you be that man to me, Jatgeir ?
Will you be a son to me? You shall have Norway's crown to
your heritage — the whole land shall be yours, if you will be a
son to me, and live for my life work, and believe in me.
Jatgeir — And what should be my warranty that I did not
feign — ?
King Skule — Give up your calling in life, sing no more songs,
and then will I believe you!
Jatgeir — No, lord: that were to buy the crown too dear.
King Skule — Bethink you well: 'tis greater to be a king than
a skald.
Jatgeir — Not always.
King Skule—'Tis but your unsung songs you must sacrifice!
Jatgeir - Songs unsung are ever the fairest.
King Skule — But I must -I must have one who can trust in
me! Only one. I feel it: had I that one I were saved!
Jatgeir — Trust in yourself and you will be saved !
Paul Flida [enters hastily] — King Skule, look to yourself!
Hakon Hakonsson lies off Elgjarness with all his fleet!
King Skule— Off Elgjarness! Then he is close at hand.
Jatgeir — Get we to arms then! If there be bloodshed to-night,
I will gladly be the first to die for you!
King Skule - You, who would not live for me!
Jatgeir — A man can die for another's life work; but if he go
on living, he must live for his own. [Goes. ]
## p. 7852 (#44) ############################################
7852
HENRIK IBSEN
FROM A DOLL'S HOUSE)
Scene : Sitting-room in Torvald Helmer's house (a flat) in Christiania.
Time : The Present Day. Nora Helmer enters, crossing to table
in every-day dress.
ELMER
H. .
Why, what's this? Not gone to bed ? You have
changed your dress.
Nora — Yes, Torvald; now I have changed my dress.
Helmer — But why now, so late?
Nora - I shall not sleep to-night.
Helmer - But, Nora dear -
Nora [looking at her watch]— It's not so late yet. Sit down,
Torvald: you and I have much to say to each other. [She sits at
one side of the table. ]
Helmer - Nora, what does this mean? Your cold, set face-
Nora — Sit down. It will take some time: I have much to
talk over with you.
Helmer (sitting down at the other side of the table] - You
alarm me; I don't understand you.
Nora — No, that's just it. You don't understand me; and I
have never understood you — till to-night. No, don't interrupt.
Only listen to what I say. We must come to a final settlement,
Torvald!
Helmer How do you mean?
Nora [after a short silence] - Does not one thing strike you
as we sit here?
Helmer - What should strike me ?
Nora — We have been married eight years. Does it not strike
you that this is the first time we two — you and I, man and wife
have talked together seriously?
Helmer - Seriously! Well, what do you call seriously?
?
Nora — During eight whole years and more - ever since the
day we first met - we have never exchanged one serious word
about serious things.
Helmer - Was I always to trouble you with the cares you
could not help me to bear?
Nora — I am not talking of cares. I say that we have never
yet set ourselves seriously to get to the bottom of anything.
Helmer - Why, my dear Nora, what have you to do with
serious things ?
## p. 7853 (#45) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7853
into yours.
-
Nora - There we have it! You have never understood me. I
have had great injustice done me, Torvald: first by my father,
and then by you.
Helmer - What! by your father and me? — by us who have
loved you more than all the world ?
Nora (shaking her head] – You have never loved me. You
only thought it amusing to be in love with me.
Helmer — Why, Nora, what a thing to say!
Nora — Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with
father he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same
opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would
not have liked it. He used to call me his doll child, and play
.
with me
as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in
your house
Helmer — What an expression to use about our marriage!
Nora [undisturbed]-I mean I passed from father's hands
You settled everything according to your taste; and
I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to—I don't know
which — both ways, perhaps. When I look back on it now,
I
seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth.
I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would
have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong.
It's
your fault that my life has been wasted.
Helmer — Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you
are! Haven't you been happy here?
Nora — No, never: I thought I was, but I never was.
Helmer - Not — not happy?
Nora — No, only merry. And you have always been so kind
to me. But our house has been nothing but a play-room. Here
I have been your doll wife, just as at home I used to be papa's
doll child. And the children in their turn have been my dolls.
I thought it was fun when you played with me, just as the
children did when I played with them. That has been our mar-
riage, Torvald,
Helmer — There is some truth in what you say, exaggerated
and overstrained though it be. But henceforth it shall be differ-
ent. Play-time is over; now comes the time for education.
Nora – Whose education ? Mine, or the children's ?
Helmer - Both, my dear Nora.
Nora — 0 Torvald, you can't teach me to be a fit wife for
you.
## p. 7854 (#46) ############################################
7854
HENRIK IBSEN
me.
Helmer And you say that ?
Vora - And I - am I fit to educate the children?
Helmer - Xora!
Nora - Did you not say yourself a few minutes ago you dared
not trust them to me?
Helmer - In the excitement of the moment: why should you
dwell upon that?
Nora - Xo- you are perfectly right. That problem is beyond
There's another to be solved first — I must try to educate
myself. You are not the man to help me in that. I must set
about it alone. And that is why I am now leaving you.
Helmer (jumping up]- What do you mean to say –
Nora-I must stand quite alone to know myself and my sur-
roundings; so I cannot stay with you.
Helmer - Nora! Nora!
Nora — I am going at once.
Christina will take me in for
to-night-
Helmer – You are mad. I shall not allow it. I forbid it.
Nora - It's no use your forbidding me anything now. I shall
take with me what belongs to me. From you I will accept
nothing, either now or afterward.
Helmer - What madness!
Nora - To-morrow I shall go home.
Homer - Home!
Nora — I mean to what was my home. It will be easier for
me to find some opening there.
Helmer -Oh, in your blind inexperience –
Nora -- I must try to gain experience, Torvald.
Helmer — To forsake your home, your husband, and your child-
ren! You don't consider what the world will say.
Nora - I can pay no heed to that! I only know that I must
do it.
Helmer -- It's exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest
duties in this way?
Nora - What do you call my holiest duties ?
Helmer Do you ask me that ? Your duties to your husband
and your children.
Nora — I have other duties equally sacred.
Helmer -— Impossible! What duties do you mean?
Nora — My duties toward myself.
Helmer Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
## p. 7855 (#47) ############################################
HENRIK IBSEN
7855
-
Nora – That I no longer believe. I think that before all else
I am a human being, just as much as you are or at least I will
try to become one. I know that most people agree with you,
Torvald, and that they say so in books. But henceforth I can't
be satisfied with what most people say, and what is in books. I
must think things out for myself, and try to get clear about them.
Helmer Are you not clear about your place in your own
home? Have you not an infallible guide in questions like these?
?
Have you not religion ?
Nora – O Torvald, I don't know properly what religion is.
Helmer What do you mean?
Nora — I know nothing but what our clergyman told me when
I was confirmed. He explained that religion was this and that.
When I get away from here and stand alone, I will look into
that matter too. I will see whether what he taught me is true,
or at any rate whether it is true for me.
Helmer - Oh, this is unheard of! But if religion cannot keep
you right, let me appeal to your conscience — for I suppose you
,
have some moral feeling? Or, answer me: perhaps you have
none ?
Nora - Well, Torvald, it's not easy to say. I really don't know
I am all at sea about these things. I only know that I think
quite differently from you about them. I hear too that the laws
are different from what I thought; but I can't believe that they
are right. It appears that a woman has no right to spare her
dying father, or to save her husband's life. I don't believe that.
Helmer You talk like a child. You don't understand the
society in which you live.
Nora - No, I don't. But I shall try to.
- ,
I must make up my
mind which is right — society or I.
Helmer - Nora, you are ill, you are feverish. I almost think
you are out of your senses.
Nora — I have never felt so much clearness and certainty as
to-night.
Helmer – You are clear and certain enough to forsake hus-
band and children ?
Nora — Yes, I am.
Helmer - Then there is only one explanation possible.
Nora — What is that?
Helmer - You no longer love me.
Nora — No, that is just it.
## p. 7856 (#48) ############################################
7856
HENRIK IBSEN
(
Helmer - Nora! Can you say so?
Nora - Oh, I'm so sorry, Torvald; for you've always been so
kind to me.
But I can't help it. I do not love you any longer.
Helmer [keeping his composure with difficulty]— Are you clear
and certain on this point too?
Nora — Yes, quite. That is why I won't stay here any longer.
Helmer — And can you also make clear to me how I have
forfeited your love ?
Nora — Yes, I can. It was this evening, when the miracle
did not happen; for then I saw you were not the man I had
taken you for.
Helmer - Explain yourself more clearly: I don't understand.
Nora — I have waited so patiently all these eight years; for
of course I saw clearly enough that miracles do not happen every
day. When this crushing blow threatened me, I said to myself
confidently, “Now comes the miracle! ” When Krogstad's letter
lay in the box, it never occurred to me that you would think of
submitting to that man's conditions. I was convinced that you
would say to him, “Make it known to all the world;" and that
then-
Helmer - Well? When I had given my own wife's name up
to disgrace and shame - ?
Nora — Then I firmly believed that you would come forward,
take everything upon yourself, and say, “I am the guilty one. ”
Helmer - Nora!
Nora — You mean I would never have accepted such a sacri-
fice ? No, certainly not. But what would my assertions have
been worth in opposition to yours?
