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Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen var en av de viktigste dramatikere på 1800-tallet. Også kjent som "prosa dramaens far"; den norske dramatikeren skrev også dikt og regisserte skuespill i teateret. Han er trolig best kjent for stykkene "Et dukkehjem", "Peer Gynt" og "Hedda Gabler" selv om han har skrevet nesten 30 forskjellige stykker.

Ibsen ble født i en komfortabel kjøpmannsfamilie i 1828 i Skien. Han var veldig stolt av sin borgerlige bakgrunn og refererte ofte til det faktum at han slektet til alle de mest fremtredende og kjente familier i Skienområdets øvre middelklasse. Imidlertid gikk faren konkurs, mens Ibsen ennå var et barn og de måtte selge hjemmet sitt og flytte inn i sommerhuset.

Hovedpersonene i skuespillene hans er svært like hans egne foreldre og situasjonene dreide seg ofte om problemstillinger og moralske spørsmål i den tiden. Ibsens skuespill ble ofte ansett for å være ganske skandaløse fordi de avslørte mye av hva som foregikk bak fasaden til anstendigheten, noe som var utbredt i europeisk teater på den tiden. For eksempel, stykket "Gengangere" fokuserte på en rik og respektabel familie som i hovedsak blir ødelagt av kjønnsykdom på grunn av farens utroskap, mange affærer, og svekket seksuell moral.

Ibsens mest produktive år var mens han bodde i Tyskland og Italia; en periode på tre tiår der han knapt besøkte sitt hjemland i Norge, selv om de fleste av skuespillene hans er satt der.

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Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen was one of the most important playwrights of the 1800s. Also known as "the father of prose drama," the Norwegian playwright also wrote poetry and directed plays in the theatre. He is probably best known for his plays A Doll’s House, Peer Gynt, and Hedda Gabler, although he has written almost thirty different plays.

Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien, Norway, where he was comfortably situated in a merchant family. He was very proud of his bourgeois background, often referring to the fact that he was related to all of the most prominent and well-known upper middle class families in the Skien area. However, his father went bankrupt while Ibsen was still a child, and they had to sell their main home and move to their smaller summer home.

The main characters in his plays are very similar to his own parents, and the situations typically revolved around issues and moral questions of the day In his own time, Ibsen’s plays were often considered quite scandalous because they revealed much of what was going on behind the façade of propriety that was prevalent in European theatre at the time. For example, his play Ghosts focused on a wealthy and respectable family that was essentially destroyed by sexually transmitted disease because of the father’s philandering, many affairs, and lack of sexual morals.

Ibsen’s most productive years were while he was living in Germany and Italy, an almost three-decade span during which he hardly visited his native land of Norway, even though most of his plays are set there.

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