THE MASTER BUILDER

Program Notes

HENRIK IBSEN TIMELINE

 

1828—Born on March 20th to Knud and Marichen Ibsen in the small Norwegian trading town of Skien.

1834—Ibsen’s father, once a prosperous merchant, falls into financial ruin. The shame and misery of his family’s circumstances eventually spur Henrik to leave Skien. Though he returns to his home town only once, Henrik Ibsen later writes to his sister Hedwig of “the old home, to which I still cling fast by so many roots.”

1844—Becomes an apothecary’s assistant in the port town of Grimstad. Working long hours by day, he writes his first play Catiline during the “purloined hours” of the night.

1846—An illegitimate son, Hans Jacob, is born to Ibsen and maid Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen, who is ten years his senior. The playwright, who will pay child support to Else for over fifteen years, reportedly meets Hans Jacob once in 1892.

1851—Lands a contract with Bergen’s Norwegian Theater, for which he writes such early plays as Lady Inger of Ostraat and The Feast at Solhoug. In residence for six years, Ibsen works with actors, stage-manages, and designs sets and costumes.

1852—Receives a travel grant and goes abroad for the first time. While in Copenhagen and Dresden, he sees dozens of plays, as well as his first ones by Shakespeare (Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and As You Like It).

1857—Appointed artistic director at the Norwegian Theater of Christiana (now Oslo), where he writes his first mature works, Love’s Comedy and The Pretenders.

1858—Marries Suzanne Daae Thoresen, whom he describes as “just the kind of character I need…illogical, but with a strong poetical intuition, a bigness of outlook, and an almost violent hatred of all things petty.”

1859—Suzanne gives birth to the Ibsens’ son, Sigurd, who will become a prominent diplomat and politician. He will also marry Bergliot, the daughter of his father’s friend and literary rival, Björnstern Björnsen.

1864—Begins a twenty-seven-year period of self-imposed exile in Italy and Germany. Outraged by Norway and Sweden breaking their pact to come to Denmark’s military aid, Ibsen leaves Norway and resides in such cities as Rome, Dresden and Munich. He writes most of his great dramas while abroad.

1871—Meets the Danish critic Georg Brandes for the first time, after two years of correspondence. Brandes’s fervid advocacy of Ibsen’s work gains the playwright a wider Scandinavian audience: “He shows each man the way back to the powers he may discover within himself when, without fear or scruple, he follows his own nature and his own star.”

1880—A Doll’s House premieres in Stockholm, followed by productions in Christiana and Bergen. The play is a controversial triumph in all three cities. Its 1884 London premiere brings Ibsen widespread European renown.

1891—Nostalgic for his homeland, Ibsen returns to Norway for a visit. He ends up living there for the remainder of his life.

1891—Ghosts opens in London. George Bernard Shaw praises the play as “a most terrible success,” but most critics are appalled by Ibsen’s attack on puritanical hypocrisy—and by the play’s frank treatment of syphilis. Reviews describe it as “an open drain,” “a loathsome sore unbandaged,” and a “repulsive and degrading work.”  Ghosts becomes the hottest ticket in London, and Henrik Ibsen a household name.

1891—Shaw publishes The Quintessence of Ibsenism. In the first English-language critical study of Ibsen’s work, Shaw explores Ibsen’s plays from the former’s Socialist point-of-view. Shaw also defends the dramatist against critics’ charges of immorality, praising Ibsen’s “vigilant open-mindedness.”

1893—The Master Builder premieres in Christiana. While early productions fail to register with the public, the play impresses numerous critics upon publication.  Georg Brandes, who considers The Master Builder to be Ibsen’s finest drama to date, calls it “technically flawless, profound and precise in its symbolism…at the same time enthralling and liberating.”

1899—Writes his final play, When We Dead Awaken, which marks his return to verse drama after more than thirty years of writing plays in prose.

1900—Suffers a stroke, which leaves the right side of his body partially paralyzed. A second stroke, the next year, renders him almost unable to walk.

1906—Dies on May 23rd at the age of 78. Fiery and defiant to the end, Ibsen’s last word is the Norwegian tvertimod (“to the contrary”).

CHRONOLOGY OF IBSEN PLAYS

1850—Catiline
1850—The Warrior’s Barrow (also known as The Burial Mound)
1851—Norma
1852—St. John’s Eve
1853—Lady Inger of Ostraat
1855—The Feast at Solhaug
1856—Olaf Liljekrans
1857—The Vikings at Helgeland
1862—Love’s Comedy
1863—The Pretenders
1866—Brand
1867—Peer Gynt
1869—The League of Youth
1873—Emperor and Galilean
1877—Pillars of Society
1879—A Doll’s House
1881—Ghosts
1882—An Enemy of the People
1884—The Wild Duck
1886—Rosmersholm
1888—The Lady from the Sea
1890—Hedda Gabler
1892—The Master Builder
1894—Little Eyolf
1896—John Gabriel Borkman
1899—When We Dead Awaken

—MAYA CANTU, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG