Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen (March 20, 1828 - May 23, 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theater director. As one of the founders of modernism in the theater, Ibsen is often called the “father of realism” and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His main works include Brand, Per Gunt, “Enemy of the People”, “Emperor and Galileo”, “Doll House”, Hedda Gubler, “Ghosts”, “Wild Duck”, “When We Wake Up Dead,” Rosmersholm and the Master Builder. After Shakespeare, he is the most frequently performed playwright in the world, and Doll House became the most popular play in the world in 2006. Ibsen’s early poetic and cinematic play, Peer Gynt, has strong surreal elements. After Peer Gynt, Ibsen left the verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous for many of his eras when the European theater was to model the strict morals of family life and decency. In a later work by Ibsen, the realities that lay behind the facades were examined, and much was revealed to many of his contemporaries. He had a critical eye and conducted a free investigation of living conditions and moral issues. According to many critics, Wild Duck and Rosmersholm “compete with each other as rivals for first place among Ibsen’s works”; Ibsen himself considered the emperor and Galilean his masterpiece. Ibsen is often considered one of the most outstanding playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a deep poetic playwright - the best since Shakespeare." He is widely considered the main playwright of the nineteenth century. He influenced other playwrights and writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krlezh. Ibsen was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904. Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime), and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays take place in Norway, often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port city where he grew up, Ibsen lived 27 years in Italy and Germany and rarely visited Norway in the most productive years. Born into a family of patrician merchants intertwined in the family of Ibsen and Paus, Ibsen shaped his dramas in accordance with his family's past and often modeled characters after family members. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas have had a strong influence on contemporary culture.