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Henrik Ibsen’s Contribution to Modern Drama
by Noor Kadhoum Jawad
Margaret Drabble points out that Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is a
Norwegian dramatist who is generally “acknowledged as the founder of
modern prose drama.”1 His earlier plays were, to a great extent, concerned
with social and political issues, but his last ones are, in Drabble’s words,
“more deeply concerned with the forces of the unconscious, and were greatly
admired by Freud.”2 Ibsen stated that he was “more of a poet and less of a
social philosopher than people . . . suppose,” and also announced that his
“interest was in human rights.”3 Daniel S. Burt adds,
It is a critical commonplace to assert that modern drama originates with
Henrik Ibsen, even to mark the exact moment when the modern theater
began: December 4, 1879, with the publication of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House . .
. it is incontestable that Ibsen set in motion a revolution on the stage as
distinctive in the history of the theater as that in fifth-century b.c. Athens or
Elizabethan London.4
Ibsen’s wide range is allied to his excellent potentials to transcend
genre. He is similar to Shakespeare, the dominant though frequently hidden
influence upon his work. Shakespeare composed his plays, numbered 25, in a
quarter century; Ibsen composed for 50 years, and gave English modern
prose drama 25 plays. His masterpieces include Brand, Peer Gynt, Emperor
and Galilean, in the period between 1865–1873, with Hedda Gabler as a
great postlude in 1890.5 Harold Bloom points out that Peer Gynt and Hedda
Gabler retain their popularity, but do not seem so frequently performed as
what are taken to be Ibsen’s social dramas: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, An
Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, and the earlier Pillars of Society. When
he turned sixty, his final period, he gave English prose modern drama four
great visionary plays: The Lady from the Sea, The Master Builder, John
Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken. In this visionary drama, he
inherited Shakespeare’s invention of the human characters and his mastery of
inwardness is second only to Shakespeare’s. Ibsen’s characters are
convincing, having the ability of overhearing themselves.6
Ibsen’s audience had an interest in the socio-political problems he
tackled in his plays. His depiction of such issues sparked the fire of debate
among them. Whereas modern critics were more interested in the
philosophical and psychological elements described in his plays and the
ideological discussions they generated.7
In defending Ibsen against the attacks of some critics and in praising
his revolutionizing drama, G. B. Show (1856-1950) stated that “this was the
way the new drama should go. It should not be afraid to shock, it should
concentrate on ideas.” 8 It should lay great emphasis on “inner life rather than
on external ‘accidents’ like spectacle and comic turns.”9
Essentially, Ibsen put a new definition to drama and set a standard that
later playwrights have had to challenge or follow. The stage that he inherited
had largely ceased to function as a serious medium. Ibsen restored to drama
its significance as a vehicle for an all-inclusive criticism of life.10 Daniel S.
Burt states that the motivations that propelled Ibsen’s artistic stream was
sustained fundamentally from “his outsider status, as an exile both at home
and abroad.”11 The last word he uttered was “Tvertimod! [On the contrary!],
which serves as a fitting epitaph and description of his artistic stance.”12
Ibsen came up with new attitudes to drama. He is credited with being, as
Drabble believes, “the first major dramatist to write tragedy about ordinary
people in prose.”13 The nature of his dialogue, and his throwing away of
traditional theatrical influences, “demanded and achieved a new style of
performance.”14
Burt thinks that “in Ibsen’s tremendous artistic range,” he was
successful in achieving “a remarkable dramatic conception of human
experience while establishing the foundation for modern drama in both its
realism and symbolism.”15 Although many of his plays start with an
examination of contemporary social cases, such as, Burt says, “the
narrowness of small-town life, the consuming force of commercialism, and
the inadequacy of religious beliefs,” they are scarcely restricted to these cases
or bound by a narrow social analysis. Instead, Ibsen’s social description
becomes an opportunity for “a deeper penetration, from symptoms to causes
that reside in human nature itself.”16 In Ibsen’s strong rejection of traditional
patterns of behaviour, which are demonstrated as limiting and not adequate,
in Burt’s words, “he reveals a pioneering modern vision.”17
In this respect, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) pointed out that “Ibsen was a
true agonist struggling with very real problems. ‘Life is a combat with the
phantoms of the mind’—he was always in combat for himself and for the rest
of mankind. More than any one man, it is he who has made us ‘our world,’
that is to say, ‘our modernity.’18
Notes
1 Margaret Drabble (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 513.
2 Ibid.
3 Qtd in Ibid.
4 Daniel S. Burt, The Literary 100, Revised Edition: A Ranking of the Most
Influential Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time (New York: Facts On File,
2009), 133.
5 Harold Bloom, Dramatists and Dramas (Philadelphia: Chelsea House
Publishers, 2005), 142.
6 Ibid.,142-3.
7 David Galens and Lynn Spampinato (eds.), Drama for Students, vol 1,
(Detroit: Gale Research, 1998), 108.
8 Qtd in John Anthony Burgess Wilson, English Literature: A Survey for
Students (London: Longman, 1958) p. 259.
9 Qtd in Ibid.
10 Burt, 133.
11 Ibid.
12 Qtd in Ibid.
13 Drabble, 513.
14 Ibid.
15 Burt, 135-6.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Qtd in Ibid, 136.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold. Dramatists and Dramas. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers,
2005.
Burt, Daniel S. The Literary 100, Revised Edition: A Ranking of the Most Influential
Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Drabble, Margaret (ed.). The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Galens, David and Lynn Spampinato (eds.). Drama for Students, vol 1. Detroit: Gale
Research, 1998.
Wilson, John Anthony Burgess. English Literature: A Survey for Students. London:
Longman, 1958.