IBSEN, Henrik, Norwegian dramatist: b. Skien, Norway, 20 March Christiania, Norway, 23 May 1906. He became an apothe cary's apprentice in the little town of Grim stad, being forced to earn a living owing to the impoverished condition of his family, but was determined not to ignore any possibility of ob taining an education by reading and study. His opposition to convention at first took the form, so common among young persons, of an avowed advocacy of the wicked and irregular, expressed in the thought that if he should be destined ever to perform a great deed, it would necessarily be a "deed of night," and in his occupation with the study of the subversive characters of history, including chiefly Cati line (q.v.), who became the hero of his first play ('Catilina,' 1850). At Christiania, Ibsen attended a preparatory school in order to pre pare for the medical school of the university. He failed in the entrance examinations, how ever, and undertook the publication, together with two other young men (Aasmund O. Vinje and the bibliographer, Botten-Hansen), of an unsuccessful weekly, Andkrimnir. Ibsen's con tributions to this paper were short satires and lyrics. He was also much interested in Old Scandinavian history and legend, and began to write a number of dramas on themes con nected with these legends, not uninfluenced by the works of Oehlenschlager (q.v.) and H. Hertz, the first of which is 'Kzrnpehojen) ('The Warrior's Grave,' 1850), which had three performances at Christiania and was later printed serially in a Bergen newspaper (1854). In 1851 the violinist Ole Bull obtained for him the position of manager in the National Theatre at Bergen, which he held until 1857. Very im portant tor Ibsen's artistic development was the trip which he undertook in 1852, under instructions from the Bergen theatre, to in spect the theatres of Dresden and Copenhagen, which were then managed by Devrient and L Heiberg, respectively. His chief duty in con nection with the theatre at Bergen was to pro duce an original play for performance each year on the anniversary of the theatre's founda tion (2 January). The 1855 play was 'Fm Inger til Ostraat' ((Lady Inger of Ostraat,' dealing with the events preceding the Reforma tion in Norway). In 1856 came Lilje
krans' (not printed until 1898, and then only in German, as a part of the nine-volume edi tion edited by Georg Brandes for S. Fischer, Berlin), and in 1857, 'Gildet paa Solhaug' ('The Banquet of So[hang)), a drama from the life of the Norwegian people in the 14th century. From 1857 until the bankruptcy of the Norwegian Theatre at Christiania, in 1864, Ibsen held the post of manager at that institu tion. In this period he produced only three plays, paa Helgeland' (1868) (introduced to the English and American stage a few years ago by Ellen Terry: (The Vikings at a pregnant, intense, laconic tale of Icelandic family feuds, taken from the Saga of Sigurd, and written in a prose not unlike that of the Icelandic sagas; (Kjmrlighe dens Komedie' Comedy of Love,' 1862). a rimed satiric play dealing with social condi tions; and Pretenders,' 1864), another study of Norwegian history, in teresting chiefly in that it presents a picture of self-confidence and moral responsibility in their struggle with laxity and irresoluteness, as per sonified in the persons of King Hakon and Jari Skuli. In 1864 Ibsen was so fortunate as to obtain a traveling scholarship, and from this time until 1891 he spent almost all his time in foreign countries, where most of his great plays were to be produced, residing chiefly at Rome, Dresden and Munich. The larger, freer, more cosmopolitan life of Europe gave Ibsen a larger outlook than the narrow parochial atmosphere of the small Norwegian city, but he now turned to Norwegian themes with a greater intensity and vigor than before, treating them now as universal in their appeal; no dramatist ever limited himself so completely to his own coun try in his choice of subject, and none ever treated all his subjects so absolutely from the purely human point of view. 'Brand' (1866) and 'Peer Gynt' (1867) are the first of his great plays. They are the last plays Ibsen wrote before discarding verse. 'Brand' ex poses the danger and destructiveness of the idealist who would force others to live accord in to his ideals, while 'Peer Gynt' satirizes the idealist who constructs a world only for himself and shuts all others out of it.