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| Henrik Ibsen |
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway on March 20, 1828, His father was a successful merchant and his mother painted, played the piano and loved to go to the theatre.
When Ibsen was 8 years old his father's business collapsed. Nearly all traces of their previous affluence had to be sold off to cover debts, and the family moved out of town. This financial ruin was later to become a recurrent theme in much of Ibsen's work as a playwright. At the age of 15, Ibsen left school and went to work as an apprentice in an apothecary in Grimstad.
In 1849, at the age of 21, he wrote his first play Catiline, a drama written in verse modeled after one of his great influences, William Shakespeare. Ibsen moved to Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1850 with the intent of studying at the University there. However instead he focused on writing plays. Catiline was published there, but to little acclaim.
The following year, Ibsen was offered a job as a writer and manager for the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen, where he wrote and staged six of his plays. In Bergen he met Suzannah Daae Thoresen whom he later married and with whom he had a son named Sigurd.
In 1857 Ibsen was offered the position of Artistic Director at Kristiania Norske Theater and moved back to the capital city. Some turbulent and difficult years followed there, ending with the Kristiania Norske Theater going bankrupt in 1862. He was then taken on by Kristiania Theater as a literary consultant. In 1864 he staged his own play The Pretenders at this theatre.
Ibsen left Norway in 1864, living first in Rome (where he wrote Brand and Peer Gynt) then Dresden (Emperor and Galilean), Munich (Pillars of Society), Rome again (A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People) and finally Munich again (The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler). All of these plays were published in Copenhagen to great success. A Doll's House in particular signified Ibsen's international breakthrough as a playwright as it was performed all over Europe. He returned to Norway in 1891 a literary hero.
Ibsen died on May 23, 1906. His last words were "To the contrary!" in Norwegian. Considered a literary titan at the time of his passing, he received a state funeral from the Norwegian government. In addition to his plays, Ibsen also wrote around 300 poems.
Play's included in this blog.
- Ghosts
Biography courtesy of UK Touring Theatre.
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