The Poet-Dramatist: Catiline to Peer Gynt

Abstract

It is unlikely that anyone now comes to Ibsen’s earliest plays ‘in the expectation’ — to use the words of one of their latest English editors — ‘of finding unregarded masterpieces of world literature’.¹ If anything, the problem is the opposite, for many modern critics too readily dismiss the plays before Brand, or at least before Love’s Comedy, as boring and unworthy. No doubt a performance today, outside Norway, of any of the works written before 1860 could scarcely smooth away Ibsen’s crudities, but it would be to a minority, a curio, an oddly interesting experience. Such a minority need not be entirely made up of Ibsen enthusiasts or students of Norwegian history and culture, but might include individuals for whom Ibsen’s stance, despite its gaucherie, remains more or less acceptable. For the most part, in writing these immature works Ibsen was thinking against the grain of contemporary Norwegian culture while clumsily trying to cooperate with it. Naturally he was unsure of himself, confused, sometimes even dishonest. Yet the plays remain questioning enough to satisfy a sceptic of our day, provided the sceptic has not just fallen into either a derisive or a limply ‘democratic’ posture.