INTRODUCTION.
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN.
ACT FIRST.
ACT SECOND.
ACT THIRD.
INTRODUCTION.
From
Pillars of Society
to
John Gabriel Borkman,
Ibsen's plays had followed each other at regular intervals of two
years, save when his indignation over the abuse heaped upon
Ghosts
reduced to a single year the interval between that play and
An Enemy of the People.
John Gabriel Borkman
having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in 1898; but
Christmas came and brought no rumour of a new play. In a man now over
seventy, this breach of a long-established habit seemed ominous. The
new National Theatre in Christiania was opened in September of the
following year; and when I then met Ibsen (for the last time) he told
me that he was actually at work on a new play, which he thought of
calling a "Dramatic Epilogue." "He wrote
When We Dead Awaken,"
says Dr. Elias, "with such labour and such passionate agitation,
so spasmodically and so feverishly, that those around him were almost
alarmed. He must get on with it, he must get on! He seemed to hear
the beating of dark pinions over his head. He seemed to feel the grim
Visitant, who had accompanied Alfred Allmers on the mountain paths,
already standing behind him with uplifted hand. His relatives are
firmly convinced that he knew quite clearly that this would be his
last play, that he was to write no more. And soon the blow fell."When
We Dead Awaken
was published very shortly before Christmas 1899. He had still a year
of comparative health before him. We find him in March 1900, writing
to Count Prozor: "I cannot say yet whether or not I shall write
another drama; but if I continue to retain the vigour of body and
mind which I at present enjoy, I do not imagine that I shall be able
to keep permanently away from the old battlefields. However, if I
were to make my appearance again, it would be with new weapons and in
new armour." Was he hinting at the desire, which he had long ago
confessed to Professor Herford, that his last work should be a drama
in verse? Whatever his dream, it was not to be realised. His last
letter (defending his attitude of philosophic impartiality with
regard to the South African war) is dated December 9, 1900. With the
dawn of the new century, the curtain descended upon the mind of the
great dramatic poet of the age which had passed away.When
We Dead Awaken
was acted during 1900 at most of the leading theatres in Scandinavia
and Germany. In some German cities (notably in Frankfort on Main) it
even attained a considerable number of representatives. I cannot
learn, however, that it has anywhere held the stage. It was produced
in London, by the State Society, at the Imperial Theatre, on January
25 and 26, 1903. Mr. G. S. Titheradge played Rubek, Miss Henrietta
Watson Irene, Miss Mabel Hackney Maia, and Mr. Laurence Irving
Ulfheim. I find no record of any American performance.In
the above-mentioned letter to Count Prozor, Ibsen confirmed that
critic's conjecture that "the series which ends with the
Epilogue really began with
The Master Builder."
As the last confession, so to speak, of a great artist, the Epilogue
will always be read with interest. It contains, moreover, many
flashes of the old genius, many strokes of the old incommunicable
magic. One may say with perfect sincerity that there is more
fascination in the dregs of Ibsen's mind than in the "first
sprightly running" of more common-place talents. But to his sane
admirers the interest of the play must always be melancholy, because
it is purely pathological. To deny this is, in my opinion, to cast a
slur over all the poet's previous work, and in great measure to
justify the criticisms of his most violent detractors. For
When We Dead Awaken
is very like the sort of play that haunted the "anti-Ibsenite"
imagination in the year 1893 or thereabouts. It is a piece of
self-caricature, a series of echoes from all the earlier plays, an
exaggeration of manner to the pitch of mannerism. Moreover, in his
treatment of his symbolic motives, Ibsen did exactly what he had
hitherto, with perfect justice, plumed himself upon never doing: he
sacrificed the surface reality to the underlying meaning. Take, for
instance, the history of Rubek's statue and its development into a
group. In actual sculpture this development is a grotesque
impossibility. In conceiving it we are deserting the domain of
reality, and plunging into some fourth dimension where the properties
of matter are other than those we know. This is an abandonment of the
fundamental principle which Ibsen over and over again emphatically
expressed—namely, that any symbolism his work might be found to
contain was entirely incidental, and subordinate to the truth and
consistency of his picture of life. Even when he dallied with the
supernatural, as in
The Master Builder
and
Little Eyolf,
he was always careful, as I have tried to show, not to overstep
decisively the boundaries of the natural. Here, on the other hand,
without any suggestion of the supernatural, we are confronted with
the wholly impossible, the inconceivable. How remote is this alike
from his principles of art and from the consistent, unvarying
practice of his better years! So great is the chasm between
John Gabriel Borkman
and
When We Dead Awaken
that one could almost suppose his mental breakdown to have preceded
instead of followed the writing of the latter play. Certainly it is
one of the premonitions of the coming end. It is Ibsen's
Count Robert of Paris.
To pretend to rank it with his masterpieces is to show a very
imperfect sense of the nature of their mastery.
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN.
A
DRAMATIC EPILOGUE.CHARACTERS.PROFESSOR
ARNOLD RUBEK, a sculptor. MRS. MAIA
RUBEK, his wife. THE INSPECTOR at
the Baths. ULFHEIM, a landed
proprietor. A STRANGER LADY.
A SISTER OF MERCY. Servants,
Visitors to the Baths, and Children.The
First Act passes at a bathing establishment on the coast; the Second
and Third Acts in the neighbourhood of a health resort, high in the
mountains.
ACT FIRST.
[Outside
the Bath Hotel. A portion of the main building can be seen
to the right. An open, park-like place with a
fountain, groups of fine old trees, and shrubbery.
To the left, a little pavilion almost covered with
ivy and Virginia creeper. A table and chair
outside it. At the back a view over the fjord, right out to
sea, with headlands and small islands in the
distance. It is a calm, warm and sunny summer
morning. [PROFESSOR RUBEK and MRS. MAIA RUBEK are
sitting in basket chairs beside a covered table on
the lawn outside the hotel, having just breakfasted.
They have champagne and seltzer water on the table,
and each has a newspaper. PROFESSOR RUBEK is an elderly man
of distinguished appearance, wearing a black velvet
jacket, and otherwise in light summer attire.
MAIA is quite young, with a vivacious expression and
lively, mocking eyes, yet with a suggestion of
fatigue. She wears an elegant travelling dress.