Henrik Ibsen :: essays papers

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Ibsen was born at Skien in Norway on March 20, 1828. When he was eight, his father went bankrupt. This event made a deep impression upon him. After they went bankrupt, his family moved to a small farm north of the town where they lived in poverty. Henrik was forced to attend a small local school. He received a substandard education. In 1843, the family returned to town. Unfortunately they were still poor. Ibsen came from a very dysfunctional family. His domineering father was an alcoholic who found solace in alcohol. His quiet mother found comfort in religion. He used them as a model for his plays. The blend of an overbearing husband and a submissive wife made appearances in his plays Brand, A Doll's House, and Ghosts. The bitter character of Hjalmar Ekdal in The Wild Duck was based on Ibsen's father. When he was sixteen, he moved to Grimstad to work for a druggist. He had wanted to become a doctor, but game up on the idea after he failed Greek and Math on his! University entrance exams. Medicine was not his only ambition. He also wanted to be a painter. In 1850, Ibsen entered the first of his three writing periods. His romantic period went from 1850 to 1873. The greatest works from this period are the Brandand Peer Gynt Most of the plays that he wrote during these years are romantic historical dramas. Lady Inger of Ostraat was a romantic drama with intrigue. The Vikings of Helgeland was a simple and sad tragedy. The last play of the Romantic period was Emperor and Galilean. It is similar to Ibsen's other play Catiline because it showed his impatience with traditional attitudes and values. In both plays he showed sympathy for historical characters who were famous for being rebellious. Ibsen became the stage manager and playwright of the National Stage in Bergen in 1851. He worked there for six years. In 1857, he moved to Christiania (Oslo), where he became director of the Norwegian Theatre. He neglected both writing and the theatre. He plunged into social life with his literary friends and drank heavily. In 1858, Ibsen married Suzannah Thoresen, with whom he had one child, Sigurd Ibsen. This was a marriage that was often as misunderstood as the marriages of Ibsen's dramas. At the age of thirty, Ibsen saw his first performances of Shakespeare in Copenhagen and Dresden. Shakespeare's work convinced Ibsen that serious drama must strive toward a psychological truth and form its basis on the characters and conflicts of mankind. Ibsen and