Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen invented modern drama by putting ordinary middle-class rooms and unresolvable moral problems on stage. Born in Skien in Norway in 1828, he was the son of a merchant who went bankrupt when Ibsen was seven, dropping the family from comfort into humiliation — a fall that recurs throughout his work. He was apprenticed to an apothecary at fifteen, fathered a child by a servant at eighteen and paid support for fourteen years, and failed his university entrance. He worked in theatres at Bergen and Christiania for a decade, staging over a hundred plays, which taught him stagecraft. He left Norway in 1864, disgusted by its refusal to help Denmark against Prussia, and lived abroad for twenty-seven years in Italy and Germany. Brand and Peer Gynt made his name in verse. Then, from The Pillars of Society in 1877, he switched to prose and to contemporary settings. A Doll's House in 1879 ends with Nora leaving her husband and children to find out who she is, and the door slam was reported across Europe as a scandal; German theatres demanded an alternative ending, which he wrote under protest and called a barbaric outrage. Ghosts followed, dealing with inherited syphilis and incest, and was refused by every theatre. An Enemy of the People answered the critics. Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder are the late plays, increasingly symbolic. His method was to give both sides a genuine case and refuse a resolution, which is what made the plays feel like life rather than theatre. He returned to Norway in 1891, had a stroke in 1900, and died in 1906.

• Lived: 1828 CE – 1906 CE
• Nationality: Norwegian
• Roles: playwright