Editing Henrik Ibsen (section)

==Career==
===1846–1859: Grimstad years===
At fifteen, Ibsen left school. He moved to the small town of [[Grimstad]] to become an apprentice [[pharmacist]]. At that time he began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans Jacob Hendrichsen Birkdalen, whose upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw the child. Ibsen went to [[Oslo|Christiania]] (later spelled Kristiania and then renamed Oslo) intending to matriculate at the university. He soon rejected the idea (his earlier attempts at entering university were blocked as he did not pass all his entrance exams), preferring to commit himself to writing. His first play, the [[tragedy]] ''[[Catilina (play)|Catilina]]'' (1850), was published under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme", when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to be staged, ''[[The Burial Mound]]'' (1850), received little attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to be a playwright, although the numerous plays he wrote in the following years remained unsuccessful.<ref>Michael Meyes. ''Henrik Ibsen''. Chapters corresponding to individual early plays.</ref> Ibsen's main inspiration in the early period, right up to ''[[Peer Gynt]]'', was apparently the Norwegian author [[Henrik Wergeland]] and the [[Norwegian folk tales]] as collected by [[Peter Christen Asbjørnsen]] and [[Jørgen Moe]]. In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the most acclaimed, and by far the most read, Norwegian poet and playwright.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} 

Ibsen spent the next several years employed at [[Det norske Theater (Bergen)]], where he was involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} During this period, he published five new—though largely unremarkable—plays.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} Despite Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at the Norwegian Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to become the creative director of the [[Christiania Theatre]].{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}  He married [[Suzannah Ibsen|Suzannah Thoresen]] on 18 June 1858 and she gave birth to their only child [[Sigurd Ibsen|Sigurd]] on 23 December 1859.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and Ibsen became very disenchanted with life in Norway.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}

===1864–1883: Established work and acclaim ===
[[File:Portrait of Henrik Ibsen, 1863-64 (cropped).jpg|thumb|One of the oldest photographs of Ibsen from ca. 1863/64, around the time he began writing ''Brand'']]
[[File:Henrik Ibsen with friends in Rome.jpg|thumb|Ibsen (far left) with friends in Rome, ca. 1867]]

In 1864,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Meyer |first1=Michael |title=Ibsen: A Biography |publisher=Doubleday&Company |page=219}}</ref> he left Christiania and went to [[Sorrento]] in Italy in self-imposed exile.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}} He spent the next 27 years in Italy and Germany and only visited Norway a few times during those years.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}  His next play, ''[[Brand (play)|Brand]]'' (1865), brought him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of financial success, as did the following play, ''[[Peer Gynt]]'' (1867), to which [[Edvard Grieg]] composed [[incidental music]] and songs. Although Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish philosopher [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and traces of the latter's influence are evident in ''Brand'', it was not until after ''Brand'' that Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read ''[[Either/Or (Kierkegaard book)|Either/Or]]'' and ''[[Fear and Trembling]]''. Ibsen's next play ''Peer Gynt'' was consciously informed by Kierkegaard.<ref>Shapiro, Bruce. ''Divine Madness and the Absurd Paradox''. (1990) {{ISBN|978-0-313-27290-5}}</ref><ref>Downs, Brian. ''Ibsen: The Intellectual Background'' (1946)</ref> With success, Ibsen became more confident and began to introduce more and more of his own beliefs and judgements into the drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

Ibsen moved from Italy to [[Dresden]], Germany, in 1868, where he spent years writing the play he regarded as his main work, ''[[Emperor and Galilean]]'' (1873), dramatizing the life and times of the Roman emperor [[Julian the Apostate]]. Although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion, and his next works would be much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to [[Munich]] in 1875 and began work on his first contemporary realist drama ''[[The Pillars of Society]]'', first published and performed in 1877.<ref>{{cite web|title=Facts about Pillars of Society|url=http://ibsen.nb.no/index.gan?id=473|work=ibsen.nb.no|date=10 August 2001|first=Jens-Morten|last=Hanssen|access-date=8 February 2013}}</ref> ''[[A Doll's House]]'' followed in 1879. This play is a scathing criticism of the marital roles accepted by men and women which characterized Ibsen's society. Ibsen was already in his fifties when ''A Doll's House'' was published. He himself saw his latter plays as a series. At the end of his career, he described them as "that series of dramas which began with ''A Doll's House'' and which is now completed with ''[[When We Dead Awaken]]''".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Oxford Ibsen, Vol IV|last=MacFarlane|first=James|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1960|location=London|pages=439}}</ref> Furthermore, it was the reception of ''A Doll's House'' which brought Ibsen international acclaim.

''[[Ghosts (play)|Ghosts]]'' followed in 1881, another scathing commentary on the morality of Ibsen's society, in which a widow reveals to her pastor that she had hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration. The pastor had advised her to marry her fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But his philandering continued right up until his death, and his vices are passed on to their son in the form of syphilis. The mention of venereal disease alone was scandalous, but to show how it could poison a respectable family was considered intolerable.<ref>{{cite book|first=Mary|last=Spongberg|date=1998 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xPg8DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA162|title=Feminizing Venereal Disease: The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse|page=162|isbn=0814780822|publisher=NYU Press|access-date=2019-08-26}}</ref>

In ''[[An Enemy of the People]]'' (1882), Ibsen went even further. In earlier plays, controversial elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small scale of individual households. In ''An Enemy'', controversy became the primary focus, and the antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. Contemporary society's belief was that the community was a noble institution that could be trusted, a notion Ibsen challenged. In ''An Enemy of the People'', Ibsen chastised not only the conservatism of society, but also the liberalism of the time. He illustrated how people on both sides of the social spectrum could be equally self-serving. ''An Enemy of the People'' was written as a response to the people who had rejected his previous work, ''Ghosts''. The plot of the play is a veiled look at the way people reacted to the plot of ''Ghosts''. The protagonist is a physician in a vacation spot whose primary draw is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water is contaminated by the local [[Tanning (leather)|tannery]]. He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared an 'enemy of the people' by the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster is in store for the town as well as for the doctor.

As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and assumptions; but this time, his attack was not against society's mores, but against overeager reformers and their idealism. Always an iconoclast, Ibsen saw himself as an objective observer of society, "like a lone franc tireur in the outposts", playing a lone hand, as he put it.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Oxford Ibsen, Vol V|last=MacFarlane|first=James|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1961|location=London|pages=476}}</ref> Ibsen, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, relied upon immediate sources such as newspapers and second-hand report for his contact with intellectual thought. He claimed to be ignorant of books, leaving them to his wife and son, but, as [[Georg Brandes]] described, "he seemed to stand in some mysterious correspondence with the fermenting, germinating ideas of the day."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ibsen: A biography|last=Meyer|first=Michael|publisher=Doubleday and Company|year=1971|pages=500}}</ref>

=== 1884–1896: Later work ===
[[File:Christopher Paus.jpg|thumb|Count [[Christopher de Paus|Christopher Paus]] paid an extended visit to Ibsen in Rome in 1884, when Ibsen was working on ''[[The Wild Duck]]'', an intimate play that draws inspiration from his own family. It was the only meeting between Ibsen and his family from Skien during Ibsen's years in exile. Ibsen had not been this close to his own family since he left his hometown over 30 years ago, and was eager to hear news from his family and hometown. Shortly after the visit Ibsen declared that he had overcome a [[writer's block]]]]

''[[The Wild Duck]]'' (1884) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly one of the most complex, alongside ''[[Rosmersholm]]''. When working on the play, Ibsen received his only visit from a relative during his decades in exile, when 21-year old (Count) [[Christopher de Paus|Christopher Paus]] paid an extended visit to him in Rome. [[Jørgen Haave]] notes that Ibsen "had not been this close to his own family since he left his hometown over 30 years ago," and he was eager to hear news from his family and hometown. Shortly after the visit Ibsen declared that he had overcome a [[writer's block]].<ref name=Haave/> ''The Wild Duck'' draws inspiration from Ibsen's family and tells the story of Gregers Werle – described by Ibsen scholar [[Jon Nygaard]] as representing the spirit of the [[Paus family]]<ref name=Nygaard2012>{{cite journal |last1= Nygaard |first1=Jon|author-link=Jon Nygaard|date=2012 |title= Henrik Ibsen og Skien: «... af stort est du kommen, og till stort skalst du vorde engang!» |journal=Bøygen |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=81–95|url=http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-nb_digitidsskrift_2018030781098_001}}</ref> – a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile, and who is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

[[File:Handwriting2.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Letter from Ibsen to his English reviewer and translator [[Edmund Gosse]]: "30.8.[18]99. Dear Mr. Edmund Gosse! It was to me a hearty joy to receive your letter. So I will finally personally meet you and your wife. I am at home every day in the morning until 1 o'clock. I am happy and surprised at your excellent Norwegian! Your amicably obliged Henrik Ibsen."]]

Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such later plays as ''[[Hedda Gabler]]'' (1890) and ''[[The Master Builder]]'' (1892), Ibsen explored psychological conflicts that transcended a simple rejection of current conventions. ''Hedda Gabler'' and ''A Doll's House'' are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and influential plays,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/theatre/henrik-ibsen-plays-a-dolls-house-hedda-gabler-a4233501.html|title=Henrik Ibsen's greatest plays, from A Doll's House to Hedda Gabler|last=Paskett|first=Zoe|date=11 September 2019|website=Evening Standard}}</ref> with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day.

Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. However, asked later what he had read when he wrote ''[[Catiline (play)|Catiline]]'', Ibsen replied that he had read only the Danish [[Norse saga]]-inspired [[Romantic period|Romantic]] tragedian [[Adam Oehlenschläger]] and [[Ludvig Holberg]], "the Scandinavian Molière".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b42q58|title=In Our Time: Henrik Ibsen: Audio podcast|date=21 May 2018|website=BBC Radio 4|access-date=13 Jun 2020}}</ref>