Henrik Ibsen: The Father of Modern Theater

 

Henrik Ibsen is often cited as the father of modern theater. His plays are the most performed works just next to William Shakespeare. A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, An Enemy of the People are some of the plays that made Henrik Ibsen one of the finest dramatists of the world. Anti-foundational thoughts and a strong leaning towards nonconformity are two glaring aspects to be found in most of his plays. Henrik Ibsen's attachment with existential philosophy is another point to be noted about him which is deeply felt while reading the text of his tragic play Brand.

Henrik Ibsen was born on 20th March 1828 in a small town called Skien in Norway. He moved to Italy in 1862 where he wrote his most celebrated tragedy Brand. He migrated to Germany in 1868 where he produced another masterpiece A Doll's House. His fame and iconic image as an eminent playwright spread across Europe and when he returned to Norway in 1890, he was greeted by the Norwegians like a literary hero. He passed away on 23 May 1906.

 Henrik Ibsen's anti-foundational standpoint sharply appears in this play An Enemy of the People. Dr. Stockmann, the protagonist of the play identifies harmful germs in some of the reservoirs of his hometown in southern Norway where lots of people take bath in the reservoirs' water. Moreover, huge numbers of tourists visit that town to see those reservoirs and to take a dip into the water and it's an enormous source of earning for the town's administrative authority. As Dr. Stockmann talked to the town's mayor about the germs, the mayor asked him to keep silent over the issue because people might stop coming to the town if anything about the doctor's apprehension gets disclosed. However, Dr. Stockmann remained firm on this point and he kept on requesting the mayor to shut down the reservoirs for a while for purifying the water of those pools. The town's municipal authority turned against the doctor as the doctor's remarks on the pools posed a threat to their lavish income from tourists.

They tried to intimidate Dr. Stockmann but the doctor is a hard nut to crack. He pointed at other forms of corrupt malpractices being done by the town's administrators and campaigned through newspapers and speeches to make people aware of the injurious organisms of those pools. His house was one day attacked by a group of hooligans but it could not silence the doctor's resentment. Dr. Stockmann's fight against corruption represents one man's irreversible willpower to combat the evil entities of society all alone. His lonesome struggle to liberate his town from social and administrative ailments puts forward Henrik Ibsen's anti-establishment approach to social reforms.

In Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen touched upon the moral degeneration that polluted the characters of people across Europe including Norway during 19th century. This play shows the immoral activities done by its leading characters and illegitimate relationships that jeopardized the sanctity of human bonds. This play sparked off much controversy for its content which includes disagreeable carnal appeals among humans, corrupt social aspects and infidelity.

In A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen piercingly presented his stance against the male-dominated European society of 19th century. Nora, a Norwegian woman and the protagonist of the play leaves behind her husband for the unprecedented purpose of self-exploration. Nora's drive to rediscover herself flouting the regimentation of patriarchy which was a very unconventional and valiant deed during 19th century is another evidence of Henrik Ibsen's nonconformist image as a playwright of his time. 

A widely repeated proverb says, "No conflict, no play." Henrik Ibsen portrayed different dimensions of social and interpersonal conflicts in his plays. Those conflicts unmasked the true visage of people with vested interest, exposed the hollowness of humbugs and vigorously exhibited the spirit of human beings to fight against evil forces. Henrik Ibsen's plays are larger than life. His works comprehensively influenced the literary creations by great playwrights and novelists like Arthur Miller, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce. It needs to be noted that, Henrik Ibsen's plays were initially translated into English by William Archer and James Walter. There might have been some more translations during recent years. His works have been translated into other major languages too and his plays are taught in academic institutions worldwide.

Ibsen was in the forefront of those early modern authors whom one could refer to as the great disturbers; he belongs with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William Blake. Ibsen wrote plays about mostly prosaic and commonplace persons, but from them he elicited insights of devastating directness, great subtlety, and occasional flashes of rare beauty. His plots are not cleverly contrived games but deliberate acts of cognition, in which persons are stripped of their accumulated disguises and forced to acknowledge their true selves, for better or worse. Thus, he made his audiences reexamine with painful earnestness the moral foundation of their being. During the last half of the 19th century he turned the European stage back from what it had become-a plaything and a distraction for the bored-to make it what it had been long ago among the ancient Greeks, an instrument for passing doom-judgment on the soul.
 

Mahfuz Ul Hasib
Chowdhury is a columnist for
The Asian Age. He is also involved in a diplomatic mission based in Dhaka.