An Enemy of the People E-Book

Henrik Ibsen

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Drama Classi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 202

Beschreibung

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding. An Enemy of the People tells the story of an idealistic doctor, Stockmann, who discovers that the waters from which his native spa town draws its wealth are dangerously contaminated. As the citizens realise the financial implications, Stockmann comes under increasing pressure to keep silent. Translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

AN ENEMYOF THE PEOPLE

by

Henrik Ibsen

translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Key Dates

Further Reading

Characters

An Enemy of the People

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)

Henrik Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 in Skien, a small town to the south of Kristiania (modern Oslo), into a prosperous middle-class family. His mother, Marichen, took a lively interest in the arts, and Ibsen was introduced to the theatre at an early age. When he was six, however, his father’s business failed, and Ibsen’s childhood was spent in relative poverty, until he was forced to leave school and find employment as an apprentice pharmacist in Grimstad. In 1846, an affair with a housemaid ten years his senior produced an illegitimate son, whose upbringing Ibsen had to pay for until the boy was in his teens, though he saw nothing of him. Ibsen’s family relationships in general were not happy, and after the age of twenty-two he never saw either of his parents again, and kept in touch with them only through his sister Hedvig’s letters.

While still working as a pharmacist, Ibsen was studying for university, in pursuit of a vague ambition to become a doctor. He failed the entrance examination, however, and at the age of twenty launched his literary career with the publication in 1850 of a verse play, Catiline, which sold a mere fifty copies, having already been rejected by the Danish Theatre in Kristiania. Drama in Norwegian, as opposed to Swedish and Danish, was virtually non-existent at this time, and the low status of the language reflected Norway’s own position, as a province of Denmark, for most of the preceding five centuries. Kristiania, the capital, was one of Europe’s smallest, with fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, and communications were primitive.

However, change, as far as the theatre was concerned, was already under way, and Ibsen and his younger contemporary Bjørnson were among the prime movers. Another was the internationally famous violinist, Ole Bull, who founded a Norwegian-language theatre in his hometown of Bergen, and in 1851 invited Ibsen to become its first resident dramatist, with a commitment to write one play each year, to be premiered on January 2nd, the anniversary of the theatre’s founding.

During his time at Bergen, Ibsen wrote five plays, mainly historical in content: St John’s Night, a comedy which he later disowned, loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Warrior’s Barrow, a reworking of a one-act verse play first staged in Kristiania; Lady Inger of Østråt, a five-act drama set in sixteenth-century Trondheim, on the theme of Norwegian independence; The Feast at Solhaug, which went on to be commercially published; and a romantic drama, Olaf Liljekrans (1857), to complete his contractual obligations in Bergen.

Ibsen had meanwhile met his future wife, Suzannah Thoresen, and the offer of a post as artistic director of the newly created Norwegian Theatre in Kristiania must have been very welcome. Ibsen took up his post in September 1857, with a specific remit to compete for audiences with the long-established Danish Theatre in Kristiania. A successful first season was accordingly crucial, and his own new play, The Vikings at Helgeland, set in tenth-century Norway, and based on material drawn from the Norse sagas, was an important contribution. By 1861, however, the Danish Theatre was clearly winning the battle, in part by extending its Norwegian repertoire, and Ibsen’s theatre was forced to close, in the summer of 1862.

Now unemployed, Ibsen successfully applied for a government grant to collect folk tales in the Norwegian hinterland. During this period he also wrote Love’s Comedy, a verse play on the theme of modern marriage, and a five-act historical drama, The Pretenders, now regarded as his first major play, premiered at the Kristiania Theatre in January 1864, under Ibsen’s own direction. A few months later, financed by another government grant, Ibsen left Norway for Copenhagen on 2 April 1864, beginning a journey that would take him on to Rome, and international recognition.

Brand, the first fruit of Ibsen’s self-imposed exile, sees him abandoning historical themes, and drawing on his own experience more directly, basing his uncompromising hero on a fanatical priest who had led a religious revival in Ibsen’s hometown of Skien in the 1850s. Like all of Ibsen’s plays, Brand was published before it was staged, in March 1866, only receiving its first full performance almost twenty years later, in 1885 at the Nya Theatre in Stockholm, though it seems clear that like Peer Gynt, his next play, Brand was intended to be read, rather than acted.

Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt in Rome, Ischia and Sorrento, through the summer of 1867, using material from Asbjørnsen’s recently published Norwegian Folktales, as well as the darker corners of his own life, but the end result is regarded as containing some of his finest dramatic writing, with the irrepressible Peer at the other end of the moral spectrum from Brand, a typical example of Ibsen’s fondness for opposites or antitheses in his dramatic work.

The following spring, Ibsen left Rome for Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps to work on a new play, The League of Youth, which was premiered at the Kristiania Theatre in October 1869, and attracted some hostility for its satirical portrayal of contemporary politicians. A few weeks later, Ibsen travelled to Egypt, to represent his country at the official opening of the Suez Canal.

On his return, Ibsen began work on what he regarded as his greatest achievement, the mammoth ten-act Emperor and Galilean, dramatising the conflict between Christianity and paganism through the life of Julian the Apostate. Published in Copenhagen in October 1873, to critical acclaim, the play nonetheless had to wait over a century before it was staged in full, an eight-hour marathon in Oslo in 1987.

By this time, Ibsen’s fame had brought him tempting offers to return to Norway, as well as recognition at the highest level in the award of the Order of St Olaf. However, apart from a brief sojourn in Kristiania in the summer of 1874, he remained in Germany, moving from Dresden to Munich the following year, to commence writing Pillars of the Community, completed in 1877, the first in a series of ‘social problem’ plays, although its large cast requirements make it nowadays something of a theatrical rarity. By contrast, his next play, A Doll’s House, has seldom been absent from the stage since its Copenhagen premiere in December 1879, and the challenge it offers to male hypocrisy and so-called ‘family values’ has ensured its continuing popularity.

In Ibsen’s characteristic manner, Ghosts in effect is the obverse of A Doll’s House. Whereas in the latter play Nora flees the family home, in Ghosts Ibsen shows the tragic consequences of a wife’s failure to break free from a disastrous marriage. Its exposure of taboo subjects like venereal disease, however, still retains the power to shock, and it was at first rejected by all Ibsen’s preferred theatres. After publication in 1881, almost two years elapsed before Ghosts was staged in Scandinavia, the world premiere having already taken place in Chicago, in May 1882. Ibsen was angered by his countrymen’s reception of Ghosts, especially the hostility shown it by the so-called liberal press, and An Enemy of the People, published in November 1882, is to a large extent a vehicle for that anger, as well as for Ibsen’s sceptical views on democracy. Ibsen’s rooted mistrust of ‘big government’ and his contempt for the party system are channelled into the delineation of familiar stereotypes: self-serving professional politicians; spineless fence-straddling ‘moderates’; venal and unprincipled hacks. Raised up against these, however, Dr Stockmann’s individual voice is rendered effectively impotent by his own political naivety, a device which rescues the play from becoming a tract. An Enemy of the People, as Ibsen no doubt intended, offended liberals and conservatives alike, but not enough to impede its staging. Premiered in Kristiania in January 1883, it received mixed reviews.

The initial reaction to The Wild Duck, published in November of the following year, was largely one of bewilderment, although it was produced without delay in all the major Scandinavian venues. While the ‘original sin’ of the drama, the housemaid made pregnant by her master and married off to a convenient dupe, echoes that of Ghosts, Ibsen’s use of symbolism appeared to sit uneasily with the naturalistic dialogue, and indeed still troubles modern audiences.

However, Ibsen was moving away from the concerns of the ‘problem play’ towards a more personal, oblique utterance, and the controversy which dogged his work scarcely lessened with the publication of Rosmersholm, in November 1886, following a brief return to Norway after an eleven-year absence. Partly inspired by Ibsen’s disillusionment with Norwegian politics, it is especially noteworthy for the creation of Rebecca West, one of his most compelling characters, though its witches’ brew of ingredients caused something of a scandal.

Ibsen’s reputation was by now unassailable, however, and in Germany particularly the innovative productions of the Saxe-Meiningen company had won him an eager following. In England, the enthusiasm of Edmund Gosse, and later William Archer, ensured that several of his plays were at least available in print in translation, but the first significant staging of his work in London had to wait until June 1889, with the Novelty Theatre production of A Doll’s House.

Meanwhile, The Lady from the Sea fared well enough at the box office, with simultaneous premieres in Kristiania and Weimar, on 12 February 1889, though again its complex amalgam of dreamy symbolism, evolutionary theory, and the daily routine of the Wangel household in northern Norway tended to confuse audiences, and is still something of an obstacle to production.

Hedda Gabler, premiered in Munich at the Residenztheater in January 1891, is now Ibsen’s most popular play, but attracted fierce criticism in its day, largely on account of the character of Hedda herself. Arguably Ibsen’s finest creation, Hedda’s contempt for the sacred roles of wife and mother seemed the more offensive in that Ibsen provided no explanation for it, no inherited moral taint, and she continues to unnerve us even today, like a glimpse into the abyss.

In that same year, there were no fewer than five London productions of Ibsen plays, including Hedda Gabler, and the publication of George Bernard Shaw’s seminal critique, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, helped assure his place in the permanent English repertoire. Ibsen himself finally returned to Norway in July, a national hero, though he suffered the indignity of hearing his achievement disparaged by the rising young novelist Knut Hamsun at a public lecture in October. In his declining years, Ibsen increasingly sought the company of young female admirers, and his relationships with Emilie Bardach, Helene Raff, and finally Hildur Andersen, find their way into his later plays, notably The Master Builder, in which Ibsen also revisits the theme of self, which had inspired his early masterpieces, Brand and Peer Gynt. The burden of fame, the generational conflict between age and youth, and Ibsen’s personal concerns are all explored in the relationship between the successful middle-aged architect Solness and the twenty-something ‘free spirit’ Hilde Wangel. Although the all-pervasive tower metaphor puzzled some critics, given that Freud had still to explain such things, the play was an instant success, going on from its premiere in Berlin in January 1893 to productions in Scandinavia, Paris, Chicago and London within the year.

Ibsen’s next play, Little Eyolf – despite having the distinction of a public reading in English, at the Haymarket Theatre in December 1893, even before it was published in Copenhagen – has enjoyed little success on the stage, where its mixed modes of realism and symbolism can fail to blend, with unintentionally comic results. However, John Gabriel Borkman, published three years later, and premiered in Helsinki in January 1897, achieves in prose the poetic grandeur of Brand. The play is drawn in part from Ibsen’s own experience of humiliating dependency, in the wake of his father’s bankruptcy, and explores Ibsen’s cherished themes: the corrupting influence of materialism, the freedom of the individual, self-doubt, and marital disharmony.

Ibsen was now permanently resident in Kristiania, venerated wherever he went, and his seventieth birthday, on 20 March 1898, was the occasion for widespread rejoicing. His collected works were in preparation in both Denmark and Germany, and his international fame rivalled that of Tolstoy. It is fitting, therefore, that Ibsen’s last play, When We Dead Awaken, should have been premiered on 15 January 1900, in effect launching the next century, at Kristiania’s new National Theatre, the confident expression of that Norwegian identity which Ibsen and Bjørnson, whose statues graced its entrance, did so much to promote.

Finally, like almost all of Ibsen’s plays, When We Dead Awaken is a response to the author’s psychic needs, and it can be argued that the ageing sculptor Rubek’s return to his first inspiration, Irene, now confined in a sanatorium, hints at Ibsen’s feelings of guilt over his neglect of his wife Suzannah, and his belated recognition that she had been the real sustaining force behind his work. The tone of When We Dead Awaken is accordingly elegiac, an appropriate coda to Ibsen’s long career. Two months later, in March 1900, he suffered the first of a series of strokes which was to lead to his death, in Kristiania, on 23 May 1906.

An Enemy of the People: What Happens in the Play

Acts One and Two take place in the living room of Dr Tomas Stockmann, medical superintendent of the municipal Baths in a small town in southern Norway. Stockmann’s wife Katrine is serving supper to Billing, a journalist on the local newspaper, The People’s Courier, while they wait for her husband and Billing’s editor Hovstad to arrive. An unexpected caller, however, is Stockmann’s brother Peter, the town’s Mayor, joined soon after by Hovstad. The conversation becomes rather strained, owing to the Mayor’s disapproval of the radical politics espoused by Hovstad’s paper. And although they all agree on the outstanding benefits the Baths will bring to the town’s flourishing economy, Hovstad’s assertion that the credit belongs to the superintendent alone irritates the Mayor, and an argument is only averted by the arrival of Stockmann himself, accompanied by his two young sons, and an old family friend, Captain Horster.

Stockmann is in high spirits and proudly contrasts his new-found prosperity, thanks to his position as Baths superintendent, with the hardships of his former life as a poorly rewarded physician in the remote north of the country. Hovstad has called to collect an article Stockmann had promised to write about the Baths, but the doctor enigmatically hints at some new development, and his reluctance to explain further prompts the Mayor to accuse him of egotism, before indignantly leaving the house. After the Mayor’s departure, Stockmann asks if that day’s post has been delivered, while his guests discuss the forthcoming municipal elections. Hovstad and Billing rebuke Captain Horster for his freely confessed lack of interest in politics. Stockmann’s daughter Petra, a schoolteacher, then arrives home bearing a letter for her father, which he immediately takes into his study to open, emerging triumphant a few moments later – the letter contains an analyst’s report that a water sample from the Baths is seriously polluted. Stockmann’s long-held opinion, rejected by the planning committee, that the water-supply system had been incorrectly installed, has now been vindicated. The Baths must be shut down for the entire system to be relaid, and Stockmann will instruct the board of directors to that effect. Hovstad asks permission to run the story in the Courier, and Act One ends in a spirit of joyful celebration.

At the beginning of Act Two, Stockmann is awaiting the arrival of the Mayor, who has now received the news of the analyst’s report. However, it is his wife’s foster-father, Morten Kiil, who first appears, and although sceptical of the existence of Stockmann’s ‘invisible’ bacteria, he expresses delight at the embarrassment the story of the polluted Baths will cause the Mayor and council, against whom he has a long-standing grudge. Hovstad is next to arrive, and while Stockmann is initially startled by the editor’s assertion that the Baths affair is symbolic of the essential rottenness at the core of the town’s political establishment, he accepts the premise, regardless of the consequences, in the defence of truth. The pair are then joined by Aslaksen, the printer of The People’s Courier, who in turn promises the support of the town’s small-business community, while at the same time, rather to Hovstad’s distaste, urging the necessity for moderation. As his guests leave, Stockmann asks Hovstad not to publish the damaging article about the Baths before the Mayor has had a chance to respond; if, however, the Mayor should refuse to act on Stockmann’s advice, Hovstad and the Courier will take up the fight.

Buoyed up by these offers of support, Stockmann is able to confront the Mayor from a position of strength, and when the latter suggests a compromise, to avoid the loss of revenue attendant on closing the Baths, Stockmann accuses his brother of attempting to conceal his own part in the original flawed decision to install the inferior system which has caused the problem. The Mayor is insistent – the board of directors will keep the Baths open, until some long-term solution is found, and Stockmann must remain silent on the content of the analyst’s report. Stockmann tells him that the whole matter is about to become public knowledge, through the pages of The People’s Courier. The Mayor then warns him of potentially dire consequences for his family, and declares that Stockmann must publicly confess to having made a grave mistake and affirm his complete faith in the board of directors. However, if Stockmann persists in his misguided commitment to the truth at all costs, he is almost certain to lose his position at the Baths, and his respect in the community. His ultimatum delivered, the Mayor leaves, and Katrine and Petra, eavesdropping in the adjoining room, rush in. The idealistic and headstrong Petra urges her father to action, but Katrine, anxious for the future of their family, advises caution. In a show of defiance, Stockmann storms out, now even more determined to assert his rights as a free man.

Act Three takes place in the editorial office of The People’s Courier, where Hovstad and Billing are preparing to publish Stockmann’s article. They take special satisfaction from the fact that the Mayor’s reputation will be damaged no matter how he handles the affair – if he endorses Stockmann’s view, he risks incurring the wrath of the town’s wealthy establishment; if he opposes the doctor, he will lose the support of the small businessmen and ratepayers, represented by the printer Aslaksen. With municipal elections imminent, this is very good news for the radical opposition, and the arrival of Stockmann, promising further incendiary articles on a daily basis, is seen as a godsend. Aslaksen, as ever, pleads for moderation, but Billing and Hovstad brush his objections aside. Later, Petra calls at the editorial office to return an English story which Hovstad had asked her to translate, and which she regards as unworthy of the Courier on the grounds of its falsity and sentimentality. Hovstad explains that Billing had intended it as a sort of ‘sweetener’ to make the more radical material seem acceptable. In an unguarded moment, Hovstad goes on to confess that his dedication to her father’s cause is partly motivated by the attraction he feels for Petra. She takes exception to this and curtly dismisses him.

After Petra leaves, the Mayor comes in search of Stockmann’s article. In the course of conversation, he manages to convince Aslaksen and Hovstad that the drastic measures being insisted upon by his brother will seriously damage the town’s economy, with the burden of increased taxation to pay for them falling most heavily on those who can least afford it, including the small-business community represented by Aslaksen. The Mayor then suggests that the Courier should suppress Stockmann’s controversial article and replace it with one written by himself, proposing a long-term compromise solution. At this point, Stockmann is seen approaching the office, and the Mayor hurriedly withdraws to an adjoining room. Stockmann is not unduly perturbed to find that his article is not yet ready to proofread, and modestly insists that there should be no great display of public gratitude when it does appear. An embarrassed Hovstad is about to disabuse him, when the doctor’s wife arrives, urging her husband to consider the implications for his family if the article is printed. Stockmann, confident of the support of the ‘solid majority’, dismisses Katrine’s fears and, even when he flushes his shamefaced brother out of his hiding place, continues to maintain his triumphant stance. Aslaksen and Hovstad are then forced to confess that they can no longer publish his article in the Courier. Stockmann, defiant to the end, declares he will proclaim the truth from every street corner, and Katrine vows to stand by him.

Act Four takes place in a large room in Captain Horster’s house, where Dr Stockmann and the other interested parties are to address a public meeting. It is Stockmann’s intention to denounce the Mayor, but before he can begin, Aslaksen moves that a chairman be elected, and the Mayor proposes Aslaksen himself. The latter duly takes the chair, urging moderation, his constant watchword, and the Mayor swiftly acts to gag his brother, forbidding Stockmann to make any reference to the alleged pollution of the water supply. He then advocates his own plan to deal with the problem, and warns of the ruinous costs of the doctor’s radical alternative. Aslaksen suggests that Stockmann’s real motive is to disrupt the ordered society of the town, and Hovstad follows his lead, claiming that the doctor appears to have no support even from readers of the Courier. Stockmann promises to make no mention of the Baths, but when he is finally allowed to speak, he launches an attack on the town’s ruling elite, in particular his own brother, accusing them of polluting the very lives of their fellow-citizens through routine double-dealing and corruption. As a consequence, the entire community is based on a fundamental lie, upheld by that same solid majority, who are the greatest enemies of society, more so even than their political masters.

Stockmann’s speech ends in uproar, and, when the meeting is eventually called to order, Aslaksen asks him to withdraw his comments. Stockmann not only refuses but goes on to challenge the basic premise of democracy, arguing that it cannot be justified, since the majority of the people are ignorant and stupid, unfitted to hold sway over the enlightened minority, who are by definition always right. His audience is further outraged when he develops his argument by citing the example of pure-bred animals, superior in every way to hybrids, and compares the majority of people to mongrels. These, he says, are regarded by Hovstad and his like as the bedrock of society. True breadth of mind, on the other hand, is morality in action, and possessed only by those of rare spiritual and intellectual gifts. Rather than see his hometown flourish on a foundation of lies, Stockmann announces his intention to destroy it by speaking the truth at every opportunity. In response, Hovstad calls upon the meeting to proclaim Dr Stockmann an enemy of the people, and a resolution is passed to that effect. Meanwhile, Morten Kiil asks Stockmann if he also intends to identify his tannery as the source of the pollution to the Baths water supply, and warns him of unnamed dire consequences. The meeting then concludes in acrimonious exchanges, and the Stockmann family leave to go home, cries of ‘Enemy of the people!’ ringing in their ears.