Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and theatre director widely regarded as a founder of modern realist drama. [1] Working in exile for much of his career, he wrote plays such as Peer Gynt, A Doll's House, Ghosts and Hedda Gabler that examined middle-class morality with unprecedented candour. [2] By the end of his life he was among the most performed dramatists in Europe, and his influence on later playwrights earned him the informal title of the father of modern theatre. [1]
Early life
Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 in Skien, a small port town in southeastern Norway. [1] His family's prosperity collapsed when he was a child, and at fifteen he left home to work as an apprentice apothecary in the coastal town of Grimstad. [2] Largely self-taught, he read widely and began writing verse and his first play, Catiline, during these years of hardship and isolation.
Theatre apprenticeship
In the 1850s Ibsen took up posts at the newly founded Norwegian Theatre in Bergen and later at the theatre in Christiania, where he directed, staged and wrote plays steeped in Norwegian history and folklore. [1] The experience gave him a practical mastery of stagecraft, though the ventures were financially troubled and left him deeply frustrated with provincial cultural life. [3]
Years abroad and the dramatic poems
Embittered by his reception at home, Ibsen left Norway in 1864 and spent the next twenty-seven years living chiefly in Italy and Germany. [2] Abroad he produced the sweeping verse dramas Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867), works of moral and philosophical ambition that finally brought him fame and a state stipend. [1] These plays established his reputation across Scandinavia and marked his turn toward searching studies of individual conscience.
The realist plays
From the late 1870s Ibsen abandoned verse for prose and contemporary settings, creating the cycle of realist dramas on which his reputation rests. [2] A Doll's House (1879), in which the heroine Nora leaves her husband and children, provoked international controversy over marriage and the position of women. [1] It was followed by Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884) and Hedda Gabler (1890), plays that combined tight construction with unsparing social and psychological analysis. [3]
Later years and legacy
Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891 and settled in Christiania, where his final plays grew increasingly symbolic and introspective. [2] He suffered a series of strokes in his last years and died on 23 May 1906. [1] Honoured across Europe with royal orders and decorations, he transformed the theatre by treating ordinary domestic life as a subject for serious drama, and his work shaped writers from George Bernard Shaw to James Joyce and Arthur Miller. [3]
