The plays of Henrik Ibsen

The plays of Henrik Ibsen have a strong social content, indicating the views of the playwright on some matters, and more directly showing the way different social issues were developing in the society of his time and the way those issues were in turn shaping that society. He wrote about women's rights, the plight of "whistleblowers," the meaning of social responsibility, the effects of corruption. Ibsen's views and his challenging dramatic methods made him something of a social outcast even as he was becoming one of the world's major playwrights, a voice that would speak to subsequent generations perhaps even more strongly than he did to his own.

Eric Bentley states that Ibsen's place in the eyes of the world has changed over the years, passing through two phases. The first phase was that of the late nineteenth century, of Ibsen's own time, and in that phase one either expressed one's admiration for Ibsen or one's detestation of his iconoclasm. The second phase came in this century with the acceptance of Ibsen by society at large, but this had a price as well:

In the nineteenth century, playwrights were warned against Ibsen by the diehard, older critics; in the twentieth century they began to be warned against him by the advanced young spirits (Bentley 11).

In this century, in addition to revolts against Ibsen's technique, there were revolts against his ideology, notably by Bertolt Brecht with his Epic Theater, the purest example of collectivism in drama in this centu

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There were a number of influences on Ibsen's work which helped shape his point of view and his technique for presenting that point of view. He was influenced by the major political events of his time, for instance, events which illuminated the conflict ridden nature of Norwegian class-society. Ibsen's national-historical plays revolve around leadership and the idea of unity. In some plays, Ibsen creates characters, businessmen, who seem to be pillars of society but who are in reality denying the liberal ideals they seem to represent. Ibsen's women and intellectuals often hold these same ideals high. Ibsen comments on both the good and bad he sees in his society: . . . both the conflicts described and the image of society presented express a critical attitude to the whole capitalist system, in which human values such as truth, freedom and love are made into objects which can be bought and sold. . . Thus Ibsen exposes contradictions and distortions in society: at the same time his noblest characters have an ethical consciousness and desire for truth which gives hope for "the ability of ideals to propagate themselves" and for their "evolutionary capability" (Beyer 196-197). In Ibsen, the modern tragic hero and the modern trag

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