The Wild Duck E-Book

Henrik Ibsen

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Should the truth be pursued, whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based. Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck, considered a masterpiece of modern tragicomedy, was premiered in January 1885 at Den Nationale Scene, Bergen, Norway. This English translation by Stephen Mulrine is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, with a full introduction.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

THE WILD DUCK

by

Henrik Ibsen

translated and introduced by

Stephen Mulrine

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Ibsen: Key Dates

Characters

Wild Duck

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, keeping in touch with them only through his sister Hedvig’s letters.

While still working as a pharmacist, Ibsen studied for university, in pursuit of a vague ambition to become a doctor. He failed the entrance examination, however, and at the age of twenty-two 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 home town of Bergen, and invited Ibsen to become its first resident dramatist in 1851.

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 16th-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, 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 10th-century Norway, 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. This is now regarded as his first major play, and premièred 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 home town of Skien in the 1850s. Like all of Ibsen’s plays, Brand was published before it was staged, in March 1866, and received 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 at Rome, Ischia and Sorrento, through the summer of 1867, using material from Asbjørnsen’s recently published Norwegian Folk-Tales, as well as the darker corners of his own life. 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. This was premièred 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 to critical acclaim in Copenhagen in October 1873, 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 form of a knighthood, 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 in 1875 to commence writing Pillars of the Community. This was 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 première 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, Ghosts 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. It was published in 1881 and premièred in Scandinavia two years later.

Ibsen was angered by his countrymen’s reception of Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People is to an extent a vehicle for that anger, as well as for Ibsen’s sceptical views on democracy. The play thus offended liberals and conservatives alike, and it was premièred in Kristiania in January 1883, to 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. Again, Ibsen revisits a previous theme, significantly shifting his angle of attack. Where Dr Stockmann, the ‘whistle-blower’ of An Enemy of the People, bravely maintains his moral authority at the cost of social ostracism, Gregers Werle’s commitment to truth in The Wild Duck is presented as a dangerous aberration. With this acknowledged masterpiece, Ibsen mines a rich vein of symbolism, integral to the narrative, in a new departure for European drama.

The controversy which dogged almost all of Ibsen’s work continued undiminished with the publication of Rosmersholm, in November 1886. Partly inspired by his disillusionment with Norwegian politics, it is especially noteworthy for the creation of Rebecca West, one of his most compelling characters.

Ibsen’s reputation was by now unassailable, and in Germany particularly, the innovative productions of the Saxe-Meiningen company won him an eager following. His work was translated into English and published, 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 premières in Kristiania and Weimar, on 12 February 1889, though its complex amalgam of dreamy symbolism, evolutionary theory, and the routine of the Wangel household in northern Norway, tended to confuse audiences, and is still something of an obstacle to production.

Hedda Gabler, premièred in Munich at the Residenztheater in January 1891, is now Ibsen’s most popular play, but it 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 as the cause remained unexplained.

In that same year, 1891, 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 Ibsen’s place in the permanent English repertoire. He finally returned to Norway in July, a national hero.

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 this play, Ibsen’s personal concerns are explored in the relationship between the middle-aged architect Solness and the ‘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 première in Berlin in January 1893, to productions in Scandinavia, Paris, Chicago and London within the year.

Ibsen’s next play, Little Eyolf, despite the distinction of a public reading in English at the Haymarket Theatre in December 1893, before its publication 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 premièred 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 financial ruin, and explores Ibsen’s cherished themes, the corrupting influence of materialism, personal freedom and 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 premièred 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.

Like almost all of Ibsen’s plays, When We Dead Awaken is part confession, part exorcism, and it can be argued that the ageing sculptor Rubek’s return to his first inspiration, Irene, represents Ibsen’s feelings of guilt over his neglect of his wife Suzannah, and his belated acknowledgement 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.

The Wild Duck: What Happens in the Play

The play opens with a dinner party in full swing in the home of Håkon Werle, a wealthy mill-owner. In addition to playing host to the local dignitaries, Werle is also celebrating the long-delayed return of his son Gregers, who has been managing the family business in the remote northern town of Høydal. Among the other guests is Hjalmar Ekdal, an old university friend of Gregers’, whom he has not seen for many years. Two servants gossip freely about the guests, revealing that Håkon Werle is romantically attached to his housekeeper, the attractive widow Mrs Sørby, until they are interrupted by the entrance of the shabbily-dressed old Ekdal, Hjalmar’s father, seeking access to Werle’s office to collect some papers. Ekdal, it emerges, had once been the elder Werle’s business partner, but a conviction for fraud had resulted in imprisonment and disgrace, and he now survives on copying work charitably provided by his former associate.

As the main body of guests adjourn to the music room, with Håkon Werle observing to his son that Hjalmar’s unexpected presence had made them thirteen at table, Gregers and Hjalmar are left alone to review the events of the past seventeen years since they last met. Hjalmar explains how his father has deteriorated since his prison experience, and admits to his own disappointment at being unable to pursue the glittering academic career of his dreams, compelled now to earn his living as a photographer, in a studio set up by Håkon Werle. Hjalmar is also now married, he tells Gregers, to old Werle’s former housekeeper Gina, a match brought about by the good offices of her erstwhile employer. At this point, Mrs Sørby enters with Håkon Werle, remarking significantly on his poor eyesight, and the other guests reappear. Hjalmar is then made to look foolish by the rather patronising attentions of Werle’s wealthy associates, and worse still, thoroughly embarrassed by the sudden entrance of his father. Hjalmar affects not to see him, and denies all knowledge of the old man’s identity. With a promise to pay the reluctant Hjalmar a visit at his modest apartment, Gregers bids his friend goodbye.

Determined to get to the bottom of the Ekdal family’s curious situation, Gregers then confronts his father, suggesting first that Håkon Werle may have been as guilty as his unfortunate partner, and that he is therefore to blame for the Ekdals’ present woes. When Håkon defends himself, citing his generous treatment of the family, Gregers goes on the attack over Hjalmar’s marriage to his father’s former housekeeper, and the likelihood that Håkon had been sleeping with her, claiming that his unhappy mother had confided her own suspicions to him on her deathbed. Håkon dismisses these as neurotic fancies, and in turn demands to know why Gregers chooses to spend his working life as a mere clerk in faraway Høydal, rather than accept the offer of a partnership. Gregers, however, suspects that his true role in his father’s plans is simply to help legitimise the old man’s relationship with Mrs Sørby and vehemently rejects his father’s offer of work, announcing that he has finally discovered his true mission in life.

Act Two, and the remaining three acts, remove the action to the studio apartment of Hjalmar Ekdal, where his wife Gina and daughter Hedvig are waiting for Hjalmar to return from the Werles’ dinner party and looking forward to sharing the delicacies which he has promised to bring home with him. Old Ekdal is first to return, however, bearing a bottle of brandy, courtesy of Mrs Sørby, and before going off to enjoy it in private, he opens a double door leading to the loft to check on the condition of its mysterious inhabitants.

Hjalmar returns soon afterwards, and gives Gina and Hedvig a very different account of the evening’s events from the reality – one in which the awkward misfit scored a notable triumph over Werle’s snobbish guests. Hedvig, however, had been hoping for a special treat from the dinner table, and when she realises that her father has completely forgotten his promise, bursts into tears. Hjalmar reacts to this like a spoilt child, accusing Hedvig of selfishness. Eventually, employing a well-developed strategy of appeasement, Gina and Hedvig manage to coax him out of his black mood.

At this point, a knock at the door announces the unexpected arrival of Gregers Werle, who has walked out of the family home, and is now seeking to rent a room in town somewhere. In the course of conversation, Gregers is keenly interested to discover that Hedvig’s eyesight is deteriorating, and that Hjalmar and Gina were married some fifteen years ago, the year before the fourteen-year-old Hedvig was born. Old Ekdal then enters, and emboldened by Gregers recalling his reputation as a skilled huntsman, proudly opens up the loft, which turns out to be a virtual menagerie, with rabbits, pigeons, hens, and the like, and strangest of all, a wild duck. Ekdal tells Gregers that the duck had been shot and wounded by Håkon Werle, and had dived to the bottom of the lake to die, but had been dragged up to the surface by Werle’s dog. Later, Werle had ordered a servant to kill the ailing bird, but old Ekdal had taken it in, and the wild duck is now happily ensconced in the loft.

Gregers then enquires about the possibility of renting the Ekdals’ spare room, and rather against Gina’s wishes, this is agreed. In a curious observation, before he leaves them that night, Gregers tells the Ekdals that he would like to be a really clever dog, one that could drag wild ducks up from the bottom of the lake.

At the beginning of Act Three, Gina is complaining about the mess Gregers has already made of his room, attempting to light the stove, but Hjalmar has nonetheless invited him to lunch, along with the other tenants of the building, Molvik, a former theology student, and Dr Relling, both prone to over-indulgence. Hjalmar is retouching a photograph, but soon abandons the work, and joins his father in the loft. Gregers then enters, and engages Hedvig in conversation, first about the wild duck, but also about her failing eyesight. Gina begins laying the table for lunch, and Gregers is startled to hear a gunshot from the loft, where Hjalmar and his father are ‘hunting’. Hjalmar emerges to show Gregers the pistol – which he carefully places on a high shelf, warning Hedvig that it is still loaded.

Hjalmar then tells Gregers of the wonderful invention he is working on, leaving Gina to attend to the more mundane chores of their photography business. Hjalmar is convinced that his success will restore his father’s reputation, which had been so damaged that the old man had even contemplated shooting himself with that very pistol. Indeed, as he admits to Gregers, the shame of his father’s imprisonment had almost driven Hjalmar himself to suicide. Gregers presses Hjalmar for details of his great invention, but when these are not forthcoming, he decides that Hjalmar is clinging to an illusion, like the wild duck at the lake bottom, and announces that he too has a mission in life.

Molvik and Dr Relling join Hjalmar and Gregers for lunch, and it emerges that Relling knows Gregers from Høydal, where he remembers Gregers going round the workers, preaching an extreme kind of idealism, a venture which signally failed. Gregers is still committed to that idealism, however, and Relling enquires whether he cannot simply be content to take his ease among a happy family, such as the Ekdals – a proposition Gregers emphatically rejects. At this point, Håkon Werle unexpectedly appears, and the others withdraw, leaving Gregers alone with his father.

In a tense confrontation, Gregers accuses his father of complicity in old Ekdal’s guilt, and claims that his charitable actions since are simply evidence of a bad conscience. Gregers is determined to bring Hjalmar to acknowledge the truth, though Håkon Werle warns him that Hjalmar may not be able to bear it and the two part company. When the others return, Gregers ominously invites Hjalmar to join him for a long walk, and Relling expresses the view that Gregers is suffering from what he calls ‘rectitudinal fever’.

Act Four opens with Gina and Hedvig waiting for Hjalmar to return, and he is clearly agitated when he does so, absurdly threatening to kill the wild duck, and demanding to know the details of the family’s finances, ordinarily Gina’s province, to ascertain what her relationship had been with her former employer. A distraught Gina eventually admits that she had given herself to Werle, but only under extreme pressure, and naively believing that he might one day marry her. Hjalmar melodramatically declares that Gina’s tainted past has now struck a death blow to his great invention. Gregers then enters, and is oddly surprised not to find the Ekdals elated at having finally confronted the truth. Later, a disgusted Relling rebukes Gregers and warns him not to repeat the process with the innocent Hedvig, for fear she might harm herself.

Mrs Sørby is next to arrive at the Ekdals’ apartment, to inform the company that Håkon Werle has already left for Høydal, where she will be his wife and devoted carer, as he descends inexorably into blindness. Gregers can’t resist reminding her that she was once intimate with Relling, but Mrs Sørby and Werle have no secrets from each other. She then invites Hjalmar to direct any request for financial assistance to Werle’s bookkeeper, but Hjalmar stands on his dignity, vowing to pay back every penny owed to Werle, and Mrs Sørby leaves.

Hedvig meanwhile has been sent out for a walk, and when she returns, tells them that Mrs Sørby has given her a letter to be read on her birthday, the next morning. Hjalmar insists on reading it there and then, and discovers that it is a deed of gift, the terms of which are that old Ekdal is to receive a hundred crowns every month, the money to pass to Hedvig when the old man dies. Hedvig attempts to hug her father from sheer joy, but Hjalmar cruelly rebuffs her and tears the letter up, while Gregers looks on in triumph. Hjalmar challenges Gina directly – is Hedvig his child or Håkon Werle’s? Gina genuinely does not know, and Hjalmar’s response is to run from the house, brushing the anguished Hedvig aside. Gina sets off to pursue him, and in her absence, Gregers suggests to Hedvig that she might win back her father’s love by an act of sacrifice, such as killing her beloved wild duck.

At the beginning of Act Five, Hjalmar is back home, reportedly sleeping off a hangover, while Relling and Gregers debate his situation. According to Relling, Hjalmar is a very ordinary human being, his estimate of his own mediocre abilities inflated by flattery. Relling argues that Gregers’ sacred mission demands a hero to worship, whereas he sees his as encouraging flawed personalities such as Hjalmar and Molvik in their lifesaving illusions – like Old Ekdal, playing the hunter in his loft.

When Old Ekdal appears, Hedvig asks him how one should go about shooting the wild duck – always against the lie of the feathers, he tells her, as she ponders the loaded pistol on the shelf. Hjalmar finally enters, and once more brutally rejects Hedvig, insisting that she keep out of his sight. A distraught Hedvig then slips quietly into the loft, taking the pistol with her.

Hjalmar begins collecting his belongings, preparing to leave, but Gina persuades him to stay until he has found new accommodation. Hjalmar suggests that Werle’s deed of gift letter should perhaps be pasted together again, in case his father wishes to use it. Gregers and Hjalmar then discuss the latter’s future, and Hjalmar finally admits how much he has always depended on Hedvig’s faith in him, though he now doubts her love. Gregers tells him he may soon have proof of that love, and expresses delight when a gunshot is heard from the loft. Old Ekdal, they assume, has killed the wild duck at Hedvig’s request. However, when Hjalmar opens the loft, they find Hedvig lying dead on the floor, the pistol still in her hand. Hjalmar is grief-stricken, but Gregers believes his unswerving commitment to truth will now be vindicated in a new, healthy relationship between Hjalmar and Gina. The cynical Relling chooses to disagree, but Gregers blindly persists in his conviction, proud of his role in the tragic affair.

The Wild Duck: Flight of Fancy

Ibsen first mentions the play that is to become The Wild Duck in a letter to the critic Georg Brandes in June 1883, when he refers to ‘crazy ideas’ taking shape in his mind, and seeking an outlet. Unusually for Ibsen, who as a rule worked quickly, it took him a full year to complete the first draft, and the new play was ready for publication only in September 1884, when he was able to inform his publisher Hegel that The Wild Duck represented a significant departure from his previous practice, and that he believed it might influence some of the younger dramatists to attempt a fresh approach. Ibsen’s confidence was not misplaced, and The Wild Duck is now regarded as one of the great seminal works of the dramatic repertoire.