Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen [best books to read for women txt] 📗

Theatre, Soho. I have elsewhere [Note: See “The Mausoleum of Ibsen,” Fortnightly Review, August 1893. See also Mr. Bernard Shaw’s Quintessence of Ibsenism, p. 89, and my introduction to Ghosts in the single-volume edition.] placed upon record some of the amazing feats of vituperation achieved of the critics, and will not here recall them. It is sufficient to say that if the play had been a tenth part as nauseous as the epithets hurled at it and its author, the Censor’s veto would have been amply justified. That veto is still (1906) in force. England enjoys the proud distinction of being the one country in the world where Ghosts may not be publicly acted. In the United States, the first performance of the play in English took place at the Berkeley Lyceum, New York City, on January 5, 1894. The production was described by Mr. W. D. Howells as “a great theatrical event—the very greatest I have ever known.” Other leading men of letters were equally impressed by it. Five years later, a second production took place at the Carnegie Lyceum; and an adventurous manager has even taken the play on tour in the United States. The Italian version of the tragedy, Gli Spettri, has ever since 1892 taken a prominent place in the repertory of the great actors Zaccone and Novelli, who have acted it, not only throughout Italy, but in Austria, Germany, Russia, Spain, and South America.

In an interview, published immediately after Ibsen’s death, Björnstjerne Björnson, questioned as to what he held to be his brother-poet’s greatest work, replied, without a moment’s hesitation, Gengangere. This dictum can scarcely, I think, be accepted without some qualification. Even confining our attention to the modern plays, and leaving out of comparison The Pretenders, Brand, and Peer Gynt, we can scarcely call Ghosts Ibsen’s richest or most human play, and certainly not his profoundest or most poetical. If some omnipotent Censorship decreed the annihilation of all his works save one, few people, I imagine, would vote that that one should be Ghosts. Even if half a dozen works were to be saved from the wreck, I doubt whether I, for my part, would include Ghosts in the list. It is, in my judgment, a little bare, hard, austere. It is the first work in which Ibsen applies his new technical method—evolved, as I have suggested, during the composition of A Doll’s House—and he applies it with something of fanaticism. He is under the sway of a prosaic ideal— confessed in the phrase, “My object was to make the reader feel that he was going through a piece of real experience”—and he is putting some constraint upon the poet within him. The action moves a little stiffly, and all in one rhythm. It lacks variety and suppleness. Moreover, the play affords some slight excuse for the criticism which persists in regarding Ibsen as a preacher rather than as a creator—an author who cares more for ideas and doctrines than for human beings. Though Mrs. Alving, Engstrand and Regina are rounded and breathing characters, it cannot be denied that Manders strikes one as a clerical type rather than an individual, while even Oswald might not quite unfairly be described as simply and solely his father’s son, an object-lesson in heredity. We cannot be said to know him, individually and intimately, as we know Helmer or Stockmann, Hialmar Ekdal or Gregors Werle. Then, again, there are one or two curious flaws in the play. The question whether Oswald’s “case” is one which actually presents itself in the medical books seems to me of very trifling moment. It is typically true, even if it be not true in detail. The suddenness of the catastrophe may possibly be exaggerated, its premonitions and even its essential nature may be misdescribed. On the other hand, I conceive it, probable that the poet had documents to found upon, which may be unknown to his critics. I have never taken any pains to satisfy myself upon the point, which seems to me quite immaterial. There is not the slightest doubt that the life-history of a Captain Alving may, and often does, entail upon posterity consequences quite as tragic as those which ensue in Oswald’s case, and far more wide-spreading. That being so, the artistic justification of the poet’s presentment of the case is certainly not dependent on its absolute scientific accuracy. The flaws above alluded to are of another nature. One of them is the prominence given to the fact that the Asylum is uninsured. No doubt there is some symbolical purport in the circumstance; but I cannot think that it is either sufficiently clear or sufficiently important to justify the emphasis thrown upon it at the end of the second act. Another dubious point is Oswald’s argument in the first act as to the expensiveness of marriage as compared with free union. Since the parties to free union, as he describes it, accept all the responsibilities of marriage, and only pretermit the ceremony, the difference of expense, one would suppose, must be neither more nor less than the actual marriage fee. I have never seen this remark of Oswald’s adequately explained, either as a matter of economic fact, or as a trait of character. Another blemish, of somewhat greater moment, is the inconceivable facility with which, in the third act, Manders suffers himself to be victimised by Engstrand. All these little things, taken together, detract, as it seems to me, from the artistic completeness of the play, and impair its claim to rank as the poet’s masterpiece. Even in prose drama, his greatest and most consummate achievements were yet to come.

Must we, then, wholly dissent from Björnson’s judgment? I think not. In a historical, if not in an aesthetic, sense, Ghosts may well rank as Ibsen’s greatest work. It was the play which first gave the full measure of his technical and spiritual originality and daring. It has done far more than any other of his plays to “move boundary-posts.” It has advanced the frontiers of dramatic art and implanted new ideals, both technical and intellectual, in the minds of a whole generation of playwrights. It ranks with Hernani and La Dame aux Camélias among the epoch-making plays of the nineteenth century, while in point of essential originality it towers above them. We cannot, I think, get nearer to the truth than Georg Brandes did in the above-quoted phrase from his first notice of the play, describing it as not, perhaps, the poet’s greatest work, but certainly his noblest deed. In another essay, Brandes has pointed to it, with equal justice, as marking Ibsen’s final breach with his early-one might almost say his hereditary romanticism. He here becomes, at last, “the most modern of the moderns.” “This, I am convinced,” says the Danish critic, “is his imperishable glory, and will give lasting life to his works.”

 

GHOSTS

(1881)

 

CHARACTERS.

MRS. HELEN ALVING, widow of Captain Alving, late Chamberlain to the King. [Note: Chamberlain (Kammerherre) is the only title of honour now existing in Norway. It is a distinction conferred by the King on men of wealth and position, and is not hereditary.] OSWALD ALVING, her son, a painter. PASTOR MANDERS. JACOB ENGSTRAND, a carpenter. REGINA ENGSTRAND, Mrs. Alving’s maid.

The action takes place at Mrs. Alving’s country house, beside one of the large fjords in Western Norway.

 

GHOSTS

A FAMILY-DRAMA IN THREE ACTS.

 

ACT FIRST.

[A spacious garden-room, with one door to the left, and two doors to the right. In the middle of the room a round table, with chairs about it. On the table lie books, periodicals, and newspapers. In the foreground to the left a window, and by it a small sofa, with a worktable in front of it. In the background, the room is continued into a somewhat narrower conservatory, the walls of which are formed by large panes of glass. In the right-hand wall of the conservatory is a door leading down into the garden. Through the glass wall a gloomy fjord landscape is faintly visible, veiled by steady rain.]

[ENGSTRAND, the carpenter, stands by the garden door. His left leg is somewhat bent; he has a clump of wood under the sole of his boot. REGINA, with an empty garden syringe in her hand, hinders him from advancing.]

REGINA. [In a low voice.] What do you want? Stop where you are. You’re positively dripping.

ENGSTRAND. It’s the Lord’s own rain, my girl.

REGINA. It’s the devil’s rain, I say.

ENGSTRAND. Lord, how you talk, Regina. [Limps a step or two forward into the room.] It’s just this as I wanted to say—

REGINA. Don’t clatter so with that foot of yours, I tell you! The young master’s asleep upstairs.

ENGSTRAND. Asleep? In the middle of the day?

REGINA. It’s no business of yours.

ENGSTRAND. I was out on the loose last night—

REGINA. I can quite believe that.

ENGSTRAND. Yes, we’re weak vessels, we poor mortals, my girl—

REGINA. So it seems.

ENGSTRAND. —and temptations are manifold in this world, you see. But all the same, I was hard at work, God knows, at half-past five this morning.

REGINA. Very well; only be off now. I won’t stop here and have rendezvous’s [Note: This and other French words by Regina are in that language in the original] with you.

ENGSTRAND. What do you say you won’t have?

REGINA. I won’t have any one find you here; so just you go about your business.

ENGSTRAND. [Advances a step or two.] Blest if I go before I’ve had a talk with you. This afternoon I shall have finished my work at the school house, and then I shall take to-night’s boat and be off home to the town.

REGINA. [Mutters.] Pleasant journey to you!

ENGSTRAND. Thank you, my child. To-morrow the Orphanage is to be opened, and then there’ll be fine doings, no doubt, and plenty of intoxicating drink going, you know. And nobody shall say of Jacob Engstrand that he can’t keep out of temptation’s way.

REGINA. Oh!

ENGSTRAND. You see, there’s to be heaps of grand folks here to-morrow. Pastor Manders is expected from town, too.

REGINA. He’s coming to-day.

ENGSTRAND. There, you see! And I should be cursedly sorry if he found out anything against me, don’t you understand?

REGINA. Oho! is that your game?

ENGSTRAND. Is what my game?

REGINA. [Looking hard at him.] What are you going to fool Pastor Manders into doing, this time?

ENGSTRAND. Sh! sh! Are you crazy? Do I want to fool Pastor Manders? Oh no! Pastor Manders has been far too good a friend to me for that. But I just wanted to say, you know—that I mean to be off home again to-night.

REGINA. The sooner the better, say I.

ENGSTRAND. Yes, but I want you with me, Regina.

REGINA. [Open-mouthed.] You want me—? What are you talking about?

ENGSTRAND. I want you to come home with me, I say.

REGINA. [Scornfully.] Never in this world shall you get me home with you.

ENGSTRAND. Oh, we’ll see about that.

REGINA. Yes, you may be sure we’ll see about it! Me, that have been brought up by a lady like Mrs Alving! Me, that am treated almost as a daughter here! Is it me you want to go home with you?—to a house like yours? For shame!

ENGSTRAND. What the devil do you mean? Do you set yourself up against your father, you hussy?

REGINA. [Mutters without looking at him.] You’ve sail often enough I was no concern of yours.

ENGSTRAND. Pooh! Why should you bother about that—

REGINA. Haven’t you many a time sworn at me and called me a—? Fi donc!

ENGSTRAND. Curse me, now, if ever I used such an ugly word.

REGINA. Oh, I remember very well what word you used.

ENGSTRAND. Well, but that