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 This often misunderstood Norwegian playwright
once remarked, "With pleasure I will torpedo the ark."
As a young writer, he was discontent with everything. He found
himself unable to identify with any existing forms of drama,
so Henrik Ibsen set out to create his own.
Along the way, Ibsen experienced multiple shifts in dramatic
form and philosophy as he gradually came to terms with the intellectual,
emotional, and spiritual forces that were at war within his complex
psyche. But throughout, his plays are characterized by their
rebellious spirit and their unforgiving scrutiny of Ibsen’s own
faults and virtues.
Ibsen’s early plays are wild and epic, utilizing an open form
and concentrating on mystical, romantic, poetic visions of the
rebel figure in search of an ultimate truth which is always just
out of reach. In Brand, revolts against God, howling at
the heavens, like Prometheus, only to be punished with a huge
avalanche which buries him alive. In Peer Gynt, a young
man rebels against society by choosing to live a life of waste,
only to find himself, ultimately, living in a world of lost opportunities.
Emperor and Galilean traces the life of the fourth-century
Roman Emperor Julian, a disenchanted youth who seeks out a variety
of religious experiences in a search for beauty and truth, but
eventually, after failing to find contentment, devotes himself
to overthrowing the stage religion of Christianity.
With The League of Youth, Ibsen begins his "modern"
phase–an eleven year period during which he would consciously
suppress his Romanticism along with his poetry and mysticism
and focus instead on the problems of modern society. These plays
are characterized by their "realism," a self-imposed
discipline which the playwright hoped would help audiences to
more easily digest his radical views. This period produced several
masterpieces, including Ghosts and Hedda Gabbler, but
the aging playwright continued to suffer harsh attacks from his
critics.
In his final period, Ibsen returned to the more mystical subjects
of his youth, tempered now by the Classical restraint of his
middle period. Embittered by the lack of public enthusiasm for
some of his plays, the dramatist painted a moving portrait in
The Master Builder of an aging architect who, having given
up his dreams of building great monuments and churches with towers
reaching up to the heavens, instead devotes his life to building
regular houses for people to live in. When the architect finally
realizes that society doesn’t even appreciate his sacrifice,
he returns once again to the more mystical structures of his
youth. Although Henrik Ibsen was never fully appreciated during
his lifetime, he has since come to be recognized as one of the
great dramatists of all time and the "Father of Modern Drama."
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