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2008 -- script.vtheatre.net/413 [ unit 1 ]
Before Ibsen and After
Ibsen Before Ibsen
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Ibsen vs. Chekhov
Ibsen: "The State is the curse of the individual." + lecture on DH
Fall02: "A Doll's House" online
Doll's House and other tapes: BBC Videos for Education & Training. Rm. AG 150 Woodlands 80 Wood Lane London W12 0TT tel - 081 576 2415
SummaryWilde Duck online 2007 : dramlitNotesHEDVIG: And there's an old bureau with drawers and flaps, and a big clock with figures that go out and in. But the clock isn't going now. GREGERS: So time has come to a standstill in there — in the wild duck's domain. HEDVIG: Yes. And then there's an old paint-box and things of that sort; and all the books. GREGERS: And you read the books, I suppose? HEDVIG: Oh, yes, when I get the chance. Most of them are English though, and I don't understand English. But then I look at the pictures. — There is one great big book called Harrison's History of London. It must be a hundred years old; and there are such heaps of pictures in it. At the beginning there is Death with an hour-glass and a woman. I think that is horrid. But then there are all the other pictures of churches, and castles, and streets, and great ships sailing on the sea. (Wild Duck) RELLING: Oh, life would be quite tolerable, after all, if only we could be rid of the confounded duns that keep on pestering us, in our poverty, with the claim of the ideal. GREGERS: [looking straight before him] In that case, I am glad that my destiny is what is. RELLING: May I inquire,—what is your destiny? GREGERS: [going] To be the thirteenth at table. RELLING: The devil it is. (Wild Duck)The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population--the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority. (Ibsen) Four Major Plays: A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, the Master Builder (Oxford World's Classics) Ibsen: 4 Major Plays, Vol. 2: Ghosts/An Enemy of the People/The Lady from the Sea/John Gabriel Borkman
Hedda Gabler (Dover Thrift Editions) One of the most widely studied and performed works in the theatrical repertoire, this dark psychological drama, first produced in Norway in 1890, depicts the evil machinations of a ruthless, nihilistic heroine. Readers will discover in the shocking events Hedda Gabler precipitates a masterly exploration of the nature of evil and the potential for tragedy that lies in human frailty. Hedda Gabler and Other Plays (Penguin Classics) Doll's House, Study Questions:
1. As the curtain rises at the beginning of the play, and Nora comes in, why, in particular, is she happy?
[ home-take test ]
HS SG -- what grade do they read it?
* When did Chekhov see Ibsen? [ Chekhov once told Stanislavsky, with soft surprise as if it were something too obvious to say: ‘But listen, Ibsen is no playwright! . . . Ibsen just doesn’t know life. In life it simply isn’t like that.’ ] (... the didactic A Doll’s House, one sees why George Bernard Shaw admired Ibsen.)
Literature Lesson Plans, Teacher's Guides, and Study Guides
for Middle School and High School English Teachers - LitPlans.com:
Shakespeare (Hamlet) > Ibsen
[ they have it all = quizes, Links, Resources and etc. ]
The Three: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov – "the rise of the modern drama"
... The reaction of Sweden's August Strindberg to Ibsen was considerably more complex, determined largely by the miasmic turbulence of his shattering psyche. Ibsen's stylistic advances were important to his work, but Strindberg felt personally threatened by Ibsen's social ideas, especially by those about women. A few years after The Father (1887) and Miss Julie (1888), Strindberg moved from this fertile realistic period into one of self-exploration, in which he plumbed his subconscious, searching for dramatic forms to express his dreams, fears, and feelings of guilt. With A Dream Play (1902), Strindberg's dramatic techniques became virtually expressionistic. *
Modern Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov and After... This is where THR413 Playscript Anlysis starts... Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Albee, Paula Vogel... [ no time to think, they have to read the scripts! ]
* G.V. Plekhanov * Ibsen, Petty Bourgeois Revolutionist (1891)
"Of course, those critics who compare Ibsen to Shakespeare fall into rather extreme exaggeration. For even if Ibsen were possessed of Shakespeare’s genius, as works of art his dramas could not attain the heights of Shakespeare. They have an inartistic – an artificial – quality which can be sensed by anyone who reads Ibsen’s dramas carefully and repeatedly. And that is why his dramas, replete with the greatest suspense and interest, every now and then become dull and boring.
If I were opposed to works of art expressing ideas, I might say that this artificial element in Ibsen’s dramas is due to the fact that they are saturated with ideas. And a statement of this kind might even, at first glance, seem very apt."
"... In other words, the real reason for the artist’s weakness lies not in the ideological content of his work, as might appear on first thought, but quite the contrary, in his confusion or lack of ideas."
Marxism & Literature [ Bernard Shaw * Bertolt Brecht * see ]
19th Century Melodrama: Realism of spectacle led to the elimination of the wing and drop sets, and the development of the "box set," with three walls and perhaps a ceiling to represent interiors. It was not used consistently until the end of the 19th century.
This "realism" also led to the leveling of the stage floor, stagehands moving scenery manually (though grooves or chariot-and-pole systems were still used), revolving stages, elevators, rolling platforms, groundrows (cutaway flats), closed front curtain, acting upstage of the proscenium line (rather than on the apron), and the 4th wall convention was accepted more fully.
With the use of electric lighting, which illuminated much better, there was an increased need for greater scenic realism.
But the plays themselves were still romantic and melodramatic. The movement of Realism would shake things up a bit.
"Ibsen's obvious sympathy for women and his unusual ability to portray them not in an idealized manner, but as psychological entities every bit as nuanced and sophisticated as their male counterparts, has led to a good deal of GENDER analysis of his plays, especially those, like A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler, which feature complex female protagonists. And the mode of READER-RESPONSE criticism has allowed us to appreciate the richness and depth of his portrayal of life's unresolvable complexities, as well as his refusal to impose easy answers on situations that often have no answers at all." [ Longman Publishers ] [ some from * Pinkmonkey.com ]: references -- "Shakespear had put ourselves on the stage but not our situations.... Ibsen supplies the want left by Shakespear. He gives us not only ourselves but our situations. The things that happen to his stage figures are things that happen to us. One consequence is that his plays are much more important to us than Shakespear's. Another is that they are capable both of hurting us cruelly and of filling us with excited hopes of escape from idealistic tyrannies and with visions of intenser life in the future." George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1913 "A Doll's House almost irresistibly invites sweeping generalizations. It is the first Modern Tragedy, as Ibsen originally named it. The strong divorce play and the social drama are alike descended from it. A Doll's House stands in relation to modern drama as Queen Victoria to the royal families of Europe. It is not Ibsen's greatest play, but it is probably his most striking achievement, in the sense that it changed most decisively the course of literature. Its significance for contemporaries is quite distinct from its permanent significance or, again, from its place in the personal development of Ibsen as an artist." M. C. Bradbrook, Ibsen the Norwegian, 1948 "NORA AS A TRAGIC HEROINE
In 1871, eight years before Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, Ibsen met a Norwegian girl called Laura Petersen. Ibsen took quite a fancy to her and called her his 'skylark.' In 1872, she married a Danish schoolmaster, Victor Kieler, who subsequently contracted tuberculosis. His doctors prescribed a warmer climate, but they were poor, and Victor became hysterical at the mention of money. Laura arranged a loan without her husband's knowledge, for which a friend stood security. The trip to Italy thus financed was successful, and Victor made a good recovery. Two years later, however, repayment of the loan was demanded. Laura did not have the money herself, dared not tell her husband and, worse, still, the friend who had stood security had himself fallen on hard times. Laura attempted to pay off the loan by forging a check. The forgery was discovered, the bank refused payment, and Laura was forced to tell her husband the whole story. Despite the fact that she had done it purely to save his life, Victor Kieler treated Laura like a criminal. He claimed she was an unfit wife and mother and when she suffered a nervous breakdown, he had her committed to a public asylum, and demanded a separation so that the children could be removed from Laura's care. She was discharged after a month, and managed to persuade Victor to take her back for the children's sake, which he eventually, but grudgingly, agreed to do. In September 1878, only a couple of months after hearing about Laura's committal to the asylum, Ibsen began work on A Doll's House. In his notes he wrote the following: A woman cannot be herself in modern society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess female conduct from a male standpoint. Copyright © 1996-1998 Frank McGuinness [ * ] ... Ibsen's Women (Hardcover) by Joan Templeton 0521590396
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bio:Methods: PSYCHOLOGICAL analysis has always been the preferred angle of approach to his work in all phases of his career, but most especially to the great plays of the middle period. HISTORICAL criticism, SOCIOLOGICAL, MYTHOLOGICAL criticism, and the BIOGRAPHICAL approach.Ibsen, Henrik Johan (1828-1906), Norwegian dramatist, whose well-constructed plays dealing realistically with psychological and social problems won him recognition as the father of modern drama.
Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, and schooled in Skien. He briefly assisted an apothecary and began medical studies before beginning a lifetime association with the theater. He was stage manager-playwright at the National Theater at Bergen from 1851 to 1857 and later director of the theater at Christiania (now Oslo) from 1857 to 1862. During these years of practical theater work he wrote his first plays. From 1863 to 1891 Ibsen lived chiefly in Italy and Germany. He subsisted first on a traveling scholarship and later on an annual pension, granted by the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. In 1891 he returned to Christiania; he died there May 23, 1906.
Ibsen's early work included two verse dramas. The first, Brand (1866; first produced in 1885), dramatized the tragedy of blind devotion to a false sense of duty; the second, Peer Gynt (1867), related, in allegorical terms, the adventures of a charming opportunist. With Pillars of Society (1877), the story of an unscrupulous businessman, Ibsen began the series of plays that brought him worldwide fame. A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and Hedda Gabler (1890) have probably been the most frequently performed of his plays. The first tells of a loveless marriage and an overprotected wife; the second deals with hereditary insanity and the conflict of generations; the third portrays the relationships of a strong-willed woman with those around her. Among the other plays written by Ibsen are An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Lady from the Sea (1888), The Master Builder (1892), and When We Dead Awaken (1900).
Although Ibsen's plays shocked contemporary audiences, they were championed by such serious critics as George Bernard Shaw and William Archer in England and Georg Brandes in Denmark. Ibsen's characters, the critics pointed out, were recognizable people; their problems were familiar to the audience. Ibsen's plays marked the end of the wildly romantic and artificial melodramas popular in the 19th century. His influence on 20th-century drama is immeasurable. [Encarta][Notes on Ibsen are from my THR413 Playscript Analysis Class (1998): THE WILD DUCK (1884), A Doll's House -- DramLit class.]
"We see that we have never lived." (Ibsen, The Dramatic Epilogue)
New Drama: Not between people, but within myself. (Inner conflict. Our Father is Hamlet). Self is a situation and story. Man as a text and narrative. (see Raymond Williams p. 88, Modern Drama Textbook).
Socialism, marxism and modernism. Nietzsche. False relations, society.
"New" Feelings?
Ibsen: 1) the social critic, 2) the romantic or existentialist
Self-liberation. Time of Nietzsche, the final revolt.
Self against Self. Guilt (internal and personal). "Every move towards relationship ends in guilt." "to be born is to be guilty." (R. Williams 91)Next -- Freud. But first Chekhov, when a character is a story.
"It was self-murder, a deadly sin against myself." (92)
Provost:
The surest way to destroy a man
Is to turn him into an individual. [89]Realism: between Naturalism and Symbolism (blindness).
The prose drama.
Realistic mise-en-scene [ ]The World Before Chekhov. Two Ibsen-s. Wild Duck and Seagull (compare).
French (classic) forms (units) and the Romantic hero Gregers) are together.
Raisonneur (Horatio).Verisimilitude: "Well-made play" with a series of "secrets" -- revelations. The burden of the past and present (society).
Family (Fathers and Sons. Generations: Parents and Children). The foundation of the family : husband and wife is in question. That's why the naive "futurists" (Americans) loved the future.[Connect with the following Brecht's revolt against the realism. Also, Dada, Futurism and etc.]
COMPLICATIONS -- rising action, escalation of conflicct. Real drama is in the evolution of situation. What is the suspense? Plot and story, the gap -- tension between the knowledge of the audience and characters. Identification and separateness.
Why do we come so close (inside) an individual? 20 century drama. Character -- complexity, the universe. Finaly we can see it.
How is it different from Oedipus? No gods. Nobody to blame. Society! New God.
Modernity = individual. Woman as a human, finally.
Naturalism and Realism. Sanislavsky -- p. 1148
Line of action and INTERNAL TECHNIQUE
Emotions, continuity and their reality.
A Doll's House Dramatic Literature THR 215 (Compact Bedford)Basic Freud must be introduced. Psychology as a science is a product of high modernity. Also, Dr. Freud is needed for interpretation of symbols (see Symbolism).
Woman's revolt against "society" starts with her revolt against social institution of marriage. Woman became "individual" (How is it different from the antiquity heroines?)
See p. 379 Notes for the Modern Tragedy (1878)
Separate sensibility (spiritual law) for man and women. (Strindberg) Sex as a social construction (Foucault).
Woman became a new tragic hero. War against all is her war now.
Nora and next -- Chekhov's women.
"Well made play" and new drama.
Suicide, Death and Ibsen.
"Dramatic discussion"?