Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was a Norwegian playwright often called the father of modern drama. In plays such as A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler, he brought realistic middle-class life to the stage and exposed the lies and constraints of society, especially those imposed on women.
Skien and Bergen
Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien, a small port in Norway, the son of a prosperous merchant who went bankrupt when Henrik was seven. At fifteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad, where he fathered an illegitimate child and wrote his first play, Catiline.
In 1851 the violinist Ole Bull hired him as playwright and stage manager of the new Norwegian Theatre in Bergen. There, and later in Christiania, now Oslo, he learned his craft, staging more than a hundred plays and writing historical dramas based on Norwegian sagas.
Exile
Disappointed by Norway, and by its failure to help Denmark against Prussia in 1864, Ibsen left the country with a travel grant and lived abroad for twenty-seven years, in Italy and Germany. In Rome he wrote Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867), two great dramatic poems.
He then turned to realistic plays in prose about contemporary society. The Pillars of Society, A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), whose subject of inherited syphilis caused outrage, and An Enemy of the People (1882) made him famous and controversial throughout Europe.
The late plays
His later plays, The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder, turned increasingly to psychology and symbolism, exploring guilt, desire and the burden of the past.
In 1891 Ibsen returned to Christiania as a national celebrity. After writing his last play, When We Dead Awaken, in 1899, he suffered a series of strokes. He died in 1906; Norway gave him a state funeral.
Anecdotes
A door slammed across Europe
A Doll's House ends with Nora leaving her husband and children and slamming the door behind her. The ending was so shocking that for a German production Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending in which Nora stays; he called it a barbaric outrage on his play.
A last word
According to a famous story, when a nurse remarked in his last days that he seemed a little better, Ibsen replied with a single word meaning on the contrary. He died the next day, 23 May 1906.
Frequently asked questions
What are Ibsen's most famous plays?
Peer Gynt (1867), A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884) and Hedda Gabler (1890).
Why is Ibsen called the father of modern drama?
Because he replaced romantic and historical spectacle with realistic plays about ordinary middle-class people, dealing frankly with social and moral problems.
What is A Doll's House about?
Nora Helmer, a seemingly carefree wife, who discovers that her marriage is built on illusions and leaves her husband to find herself.