In 1869 came (De unges forbund' ((The League of a modern social comedy exposing the knavery of conscienceless political agitators and inaugurating the long line of social dramas, dealing with vital and con-. crete problems of every-day life, to which Ibsen was to devote the rest of his active labors. Once only (in his !mitt play, peror and Galilean,' an enormous tragedy in two parts, of five acts each) he was to work again in the field of history, producing an im pressive study of the clash of free will and his toric preordination, impersonated in the char acter of Julian the Apostate, in his vain effort to restore paganism at a time when the world was already ripe for Christianity. It is the re maining plays, produced after 'Kejser og Gali lwer,) with which readers are chiefly acquainted, which make Ibsen immortal, and which have entirely remolded the dramatic literature of the world since their appearance. They are 'Sam fundets Stetter' ((Pillars of Society,' 1877), 'Et Dukkehjem' ((A Doll's House,' 1879), (Gjengangenie) ((Ghosts,' 1x1); 'En Folke fiende' ((An Enemy of the People,' 1882); 'Vildanden' ((The Wild Duck,' 1884); 'Ros mersholm' (1886) ; 'Fruen fra Havet' ((The Lady from the Sea,' 1888); 'Hedda Gabler' (1890) ; 'Bygmester Solness' ((The Master Builder,' 1892) ; 'Lille Eyjolf' (1894); 'John Gabriel Borkman> (1896) - 'Naar vi dode vaag net.' ((When We Dead Awaken,' 1900). These 12 plays are a complete camidie hoomaine,a com prehensive indictment of the evils necessarily associated with a disordered society, beginning with Pillars of Society,' which is a sort of headline synopsis, in cruder form, of all the plays that follow, and running on through play after play, each taking up and pursuing with merciless clearness some problem outlined but not completely disposed of in its predecessor. Thus, 'A Doll's House' puts the problem of the devoted self-sacrificing wife whose husband values respectability and social position above her affection, and who deserts him that she may know what life really is; it caused Ibsen's provincial critics to ask: "Why did she not remain? Was not her first duty with her two children?' Ibsen accordingly answered this question in the next play, in which, in three terrible acts, he presents the case of a wife who remained with her husband and child. The husband's respectability cloaked a boundless dissoluteness, and the disease con tracted in one of his dissipations causes the son to go insane many years later. The dis closure by Ibsen of these evils of modern family life led one of his critics to accuse him of being an "enemy of society,' and Ibsen's next play, 'Art Enemy of the People,' in which an honest physician calls attention to the infected condition of the waters, from the supposed healing qualities of which his fellow-townsmen earn their living, is his answer. The honest Dr. Stockmann is termed an "enemy of the people" and finally driven out of town. Un qualified truth-telling, even when it may be personally unprofitable, would appear to be the lesson of this play, but in the 'Wild Duck' his thesis seems to be, as Shaw, his most bril liant interpreter puts it, 'that a truth-teller who cannot hold his tongue on occasion may do as much mischief as a whole university full of trained liars.' The student wishing a com
plete interpretation of Ibsen and of the connec tion between his social plays is referred to G. B. Shaw's, 'The Quintessence of from which the above quotation is taken (1st ed., 1891) ; there is also an interesting but rather crabbed essay on 'Hedda Gabler' by Henry James. The understanding of the later plays, beginning with 'Rosmersholm' (1886), is rendered somewhat difficult by the introduc tion of numerous symbolic elements. The tone becomes one of bitter resignation, of regret at having wasted opportunities for natural living and real enjoyment. The last 15 years of his life were spent at Christiania, the last seven years in increasing mental disturbance, which indicated that Ibsen's mind was slowly weaken ing. In 1900, after the last play, 'When We Dead Awaken,' was finished (Ibsen seems to have intended it to be his last, for he called it °A. Dramatic Epilogue'), a bronze statue (by Sinding) was erected to him in Christiania. See Dot .'s House, A; GHOSTS ; HEDDA GABLER ; MASTER BUILDER, TICE; PEER GYNT ; WILD DUCK, Tx E.
The reception of Ibsen's plays in Norway and in foreign countries was at first uniformly hostile. The venomous nature of the attacks by professional literary critics is best evidenced by the quotations given in Shaw's book (see above) from contemporary London newspapers, and is paralleled only by the similar outbursts called forth from the musical critics by the first of the epoch-making innovations of Richard Wagner. The New York press greeted the first American performance of in 1902 with equal hostility. But Ibsen's popular ity long before his death was already so great that the later plays appeared simultaneously in all the capitals of Europe, translations into the important languages having been prepared be fore the publication of the original.
Bibliography.— Consult Ibsen's 'Collected Works,' with introduction by W. Archer (1906-07) •, 'Prose Drama,' edited by W. Archer (1890-91);
trans lated by Marison (1905)• 'Lyrical Poems,) selected and translated by R A. Streatfield (1902). Critical works on Ibsen are Trager, H.,