Early Plays by Henrik Ibsen

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This series of SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS was published by the
American-Scandinavian Foundation in the belief that greater
familiarity with the chief literary monuments of the North will
help Americans to a better understanding of Scandinavians, and
thus serve to stimulate their sympathetic co-operation to good
ends.

* * * * *

SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS

VOLUME XVII

EARLY PLAYS

by

HENRIK IBSEN

* * * * *

EARLY PLAYS

CATILINE, THE WARRIOR'S BARROW,
OLAF LILJEKRANS

by

HENRIK IBSEN

TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY
ANDERS ORBECK, A. M.

_Assistant Professor of English in the University
of Montana_

* * * * *

_To

O. W. Firkins

Teacher and Friend
and Inspirer of
these Translations._

* * * * *

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CATILINE

THE WARRIOR'S BARROW

OLAF LILJEKRANS

LIST OF FOUNDATION PUBLICATIONS

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION

One of the most remarkable facts about Ibsen is the orderly
development of his genius. He himself repeatedly maintained that
his dramas were not mere isolated accidents. In the foreword to
the readers in the popular edition of 1898 he urges the public to
read his dramas in the same order in which he had written them,
deplores the fact that his earlier works are less known and less
understood than his later works, and insists that his writings
taken as a whole constitute an organic unity. The three of his
plays offered here for the first time in English translation will
afford those not familiar with the original Norwegian some light
on the early stages of his development.

_Catiline_, the earliest of Ibsen's plays, was written in
1849, while Ibsen was an apothecary's apprentice in Grimstad. It
appeared in Christiania in the following spring under the
pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme. The revolutionary atmosphere of
1848-49, the reading of the story of Catiline in Sallust and
Cicero in preparation for the university examinations, the
hostility which existed between the apprentice and his immediate
social environment, the fate which the play met at the hands of
the theatrical management and the publishers, his own struggles
at the time,--are all set forth clearly enough in the preface to
the second edition. The play was written in the blank verse of
Oehlenschlaeger's romantic dramas. Ibsen's portrayal of the
Roman politician is not in accord with tradition; Catiline is not
an out-and-out reprobate, but an unfortunate and highly sensitive
individual in whom idealism and licentiousness struggle for
mastery. Vasenius, in his study of the poet (_Ibsens
Dramatiska Diktning in dess Forsta Skede_, Helsingfors, 1879),
insists that Ibsen thus intuitively hit upon the real Catiline
revealed by later nineteenth century research. The poet seems
not to have heard of Duma's _Catiline_, which appeared about
the same time, nor of earlier plays on the subject by Ben Jonson
and others. The struggle in Ibsen's play is centered in the soul
of Catiline; not once do his political opponents appear on the
scene. Only one critic raised his voice in behalf of the play at
the time of its appearance, and only a few copies of the original
edition survive. Ibsen issued in 1875 a revised edition in
celebration of his twenty-fifth anniversary as an author. Since
then a third edition has been issued in 1891, and a fourth in
1913.

_The Warrior's Barrow_, Ibsen's second play, was finished in
1850 shortly after the publication of _Catiline_. Ibsen
entered upon his literary career with a gusto he seems soon to
have lost; he wrote to his friend Ole Schulerud in January, 1850,
that he was working on a play about Olaf Trygvesson, an
historical novel, and a longer poem. He had begun _The
Warrior's Barrow_ while he was still at Grimstad, but this
early version, called _The Normans_, he revised on reaching
Christiania. In style and manner and even in subject-matter the
play echoes Oehlenschlaeger. Ibsen's vikings are, however, of a
fiercer type than Oehlenschlaeger's, and this treatment of viking
character was one of the things the critics, bred to
Oehlenschlaeger's romantic conception of more civilized vikings,
found fault with in Ibsen's play. The sketch fared better than
_Catiline_: it was thrice presented on the stage in
Christiania and was on the whole favorably reviewed. When Ibsen
became associated with the Bergen theater he undertook another
revision of the play, and in this version the play was presented
on the stage in 1854 and 1856. The final version was published
in the _Bergenske Blad_ in 1854, but no copy of this issue
has survived; the play remained inaccessible to the public until
1902, when it was included in a supplementary volume (Volume X)
to Ibsen's collected works. The earlier version remained in
manuscript form until it was printed in 1917 in _Scandinavian
Studies and Notes_ (Vol. IV, pp. 309-337).

_Olaf Liljekrans_, which was presented on the Bergen stage
in 1857, marks the end of Ibsen's early romantic interest. The
original idea for this play, which he had begun in 1850, he found
in the folk-tale "The Grouse in Justedal," about a girl who alone
had survived the Black Death in an isolated village. Ibsen had
with many others become interested in popular folk-tales and
ballads. It was from Faye's _Norwegian Folk-Tales_ (1844)
that he took the story of "The Grouse in Justedal." His interest
was so great that he even turned collector. Twice during this
period he petitioned for and received small university grants to
enable him to travel and "collect songs and legends still current
among the people." Of the seventy or eighty "hitherto
unpublished legends" which he collected on the first of these
trips only a few have ever appeared in print; the results of his
second trip are unknown. Ibsen had great faith in the
availability of this medieval material for dramatic purposes; he
even wrote an essay, "The Heroic Ballad and Its Significance for
Artistic Poetry," urging its superior claims in contrast to that
of the saga material, to which he was himself shortly to turn.
The original play based on "The Grouse in Justedal" was left
unfinished. After the completion of _Lady Inger of Ostrat_
and _The Feast at Solhoug_ he came back to it, and taking a
suggestion from the ballad in Landstad's collection (1852-3) he
recast the whole play, substituted the ballad meter for the
iambic pentameters, and called the new version _Olaf
Liljekrans_. _Olaf Liljekrans_ indicates clearly a
decline in Ibsen's interest in pure romance. It is much more
satirical than _The Feast at Solhoug_, and marks a step in
the direction of those superb masterpieces of satire and romance,
_Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_. The play was twice presented
on the stage in Bergen with considerable success, but the critics
treated it harshly.

The relationship of the revised versions to the original versions
of Ibsen's early plays is interesting, and might, if
satisfactorily elucidated, throw considerable light on the
development of his genius. It is evident that he was in this
early period experimenting in metrical forms. He employed blank
verse in _Catiline_, in the original version of _The
Grouse in Justedal_, and even as late as 1853 in the revision
of _The Warrior's Barrow_. There can be no question but
that he was here following the Ochlenschlaeger tradition.
Unrhymed pentameter, however, did not seem to satisfy him. He
could with difficulty keep from falling into rhyme in
_Catiline_, and in the early version of _The Warrior's
Barrow_ he used rhymed pentameters. After the revision of
this play he threw aside blank verse altogether. "Iambic
pentameter," he says in the essay on the heroic ballad, "is by no
means the most suitable form for the treatment of ancient
Scandinavian material; this form of verse is altogether foreign
to our national meters, and it is surely through a national form
that the national material can find its fullest expression." The
folk-tale and the ballad gave him the suggestion he needed. In
_The Feast at Solhoug_ and the final version of _Olaf
Liljekrans_ he employed the ballad meter, and this form became
the basis for the verse in all his later metrical plays.

Six years intervened between _The Grouse in Justedal_ and
_Olaf Liljekrans_, and the revision in this case amounted
almost to the writing of a new play. Fredrik Paasche in his
study (_Olaf Liljekrans_, Christiania, 1909) discusses the
relation of _Olaf Liljekrans_ to the earlier form of the
play. Three years intervened between the first and final
versions of _The Warrior's Barrow_. Professor
A. M. Sturtevant maintains (_Journal of English and Germanic
Philology_, XII, 407 ff.) that although "the influence of
Ochlenschlaeger upon both versions of _The Warrior's Barrow_
is unmistakable," yet "the two versions differ so widely from
each other ... that it may be assumed that ... Ibsen had begun to
free himself from the thraldom of Ochlenschlaeger's romantic
conception of the viking character." He points out the influence
of Welhaven and Heiberg on the second version, elaborates upon
the superior character-delineation, and shows in considerable
detail the "inner necessity ... which brings about the change of
heart in Gandalf and his warriors."

The revision of _Catiline_ came twenty-five years after the
original version, and consisted largely of linguistic changes.
Ibsen seems never to have completely disowned this play; it has
been included in all the complete editions, whereas _The
Warrior's Barrow_ and _Olaf Liljekrans_ appear only in
the first complete edition, and were even then relegated to a
supplementary volume. In suggesting the revision of
_Catiline_, Ibsen proposed "to make no change in the thought
and ideas, but only in the language in which these are expressed;
for the verses are, as Brandes has somewhere remarked, bad,--one
reason being that the book was printed from my first rough
uncorrected draft." He had at that time not developed his
careful craftsmanship, and sought in the revision merely to put
the drama into the form which he had originally had in mind, but
which at that time he had been unable to achieve. The changes
that were actually made are summarized by D. A. Seip (Ibsen,
_Samlede Digter Verker_, 1918, VII, 114) who quotes Halvdan
Koht and Julius Elias (Ibsen, _Efterladte Skrifter_, III):
"The two editions 'agree in the sequence of tenses, with a few
exceptions also in the sequence of speeches, and on the whole
even in the sequence of lines. The changes involve principally
the poetic expression itself; after the second act they become
more and more extensive, and the last two acts have been
augmented with 100 lines.' ... Not infrequently there appear
words and expressions which are suggestive of Ibsen's later
works."

These plays now appear for the first time in English translation.
A. Johnstone published in _Translations from the Norse, by a
B. S. S._ (Gloucester, about 1876), an English rendering of
the first act of _Catiline_ and a synopsis of the last two
acts. William Archer explains at length his omission of
_Catiline_ from his edition of Ibsen. "A great part of the
interest lies in the very crudities of its style, which it would
be a thankless task to reproduce in translation. Moreover, the
poet impaired even its biographical value by largely rewriting it
before publication. He did not make it, or attempt to make it, a
better play, but he in some measure corrected its juvenility of
expression. Which version, then, should a translator choose? To
go back to the original would seem a deliberate disregard of the
poet's wishes; while, on the other hand, the retouched version is
clearly of far inferior interest. It seems advisable, therefore,
to leave the play alone, as far as this edition is concerned."
_Olaf Liljekrans_ and _The Warrior's Barrow_ were acted
in English in London in 1911 and 1912 respectively, but the
English renderings used in these presentations have never
appeared in print.

The text of _Catiline_ in the present translation is that of
the revised version as given in the edition of 1906-07; the text
of the other two plays is that of the edition of 1898-1902. The
meters of the original have been carefully reproduced. The great
difficulty of rendering the ballad and lyrical meters of Ibsen
into adequate English verse has made some stylistic changes
necessary, such as the substitution of masculine for feminine
rhymes, and the occasional alteration of the sense in slight
measure.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge my gratitude to Professor
O. W. Firkins, now of _The Weekly Review_, who suggested the
translating of these plays and who offered from time to time
invaluable criticisms; to Professor Howard M. Jones, of the
University of Texas, Professor S. B. Hustvedt, of the University
of Minnesota, and Professor W. W. Lawrence, of Columbia
University, who read all or parts of these translations and made
many helpful suggestions; and to Professor G. P. Krapp, of
Columbia University, and my wife, who were of assistance in
various ways.

ANDERS ORBECK.

_New York, January 3, 1921._

* * * * *

CATILINE

A Drama in Three Acts

185O

* * * * *

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The drama _Catiline_, with which I entered upon my literary
career, was written during the winter of 1848-49, that is in my
twenty-first year.

I was at the time in Grimstad, under the necessity of earning
with my hands the wherewithal of life and the means for
instruction preparatory to my taking the entrance examinations to
the university. The age was one of great stress. The February
revolution, the uprisings in Hungary and elsewhere, the Slesvig
war,--all this had a great effect upon and hastened my
development, however immature it may have remained for some time
after. I wrote ringing poems of encouragement to the Magyars,
urging them for the sake of liberty and humanity to hold out in
the righteous struggle against the "tyrants"; I wrote a long
series of sonnets to King Oscar, containing particularly, as far
as I can remember, an appeal to set aside all petty
considerations and to march forthwith at the head of his army to
the aid of our brothers on the outermost borders of Slesvig.
Inasmuch as I now, in contrast to those times, doubt that my
winged appeals would in any material degree have helped the cause
of the Magyars or the Scandinavians, I consider it fortunate that
they remained within the more private sphere of the manuscript.
I could not, however, on more formal occasions keep from
expressing myself in the impassioned spirit of my poetic
effusions, which meanwhile brought me nothing--from friends or
non-friends--but a questionable reward; the former greeted me as
peculiarly fitted for the unintentionally droll, and the latter
thought it in the highest degree strange that a young person in
my subordinate position could undertake to inquire into affairs
concerning which not even they themselves dared to entertain an
opinion. I owe it to truth to add that my conduct at various
times did not justify any great hope that society might count on
an increase in me of civic virtue, inasmuch as I also, with
epigrams and caricatures, fell out with many who had deserved
better of me and whose friendship I in reality prized.
Altogether,--while a great struggle raged on the outside, I
found myself on a war-footing with the little society where I
lived cramped by conditions and circumstances of life.

Such was the situation when amid the preparations for my
examinations I read through Sallust's _Catiline_ together
with Cicero's Catilinarian orations. I swallowed these
documents, and a few months later my drama was complete. As will
be seen from my book, I did not share at that time the conception
of the two ancient Roman writers respecting the character and
conduct of Catiline, and I am even now prone to believe that
there must after all have been something great and consequential
in a man whom Cicero, the assiduous counsel of the majority, did
not find it expedient to engage until affairs had taken such a
turn that there was no longer any danger involved in the attack.
It should also be remembered that there are few individuals in
history whose renown has been more completely in the hands of
enemies than that of Catiline.

My drama was written during the hours of the night. The leisure
hours for my study I practically had to steal from my employer, a
good and respectable man, occupied however heart and soul with
his business, and from those stolen study hours I again stole
moments for writing verse. There was consequently scarcely
anything else to resort to but the night. I believe this is the
unconscious reason that almost the entire action of the piece
transpires at night.

Naturally a fact so incomprehensible to my associates as that I
busied myself with the writing of plays had to be kept secret;
but a twenty-year old poet can hardly continue thus without
anybody being privy to it, and I confided therefore to two
friends of my own age what I was secretly engaged upon.

The three of us pinned great expectations on _Catiline_ when
it had been completed. First and foremost it was now to be
copied in order to be submitted under an assumed name to the
theater in Christiania, and furthermore it was of course to be
published. One of my faithful and trusting friends undertook to
prepare a handsome and legible copy of my uncorrected draft, a
task which he performed with such a degree of conscientiousness
that he did not omit even a single one of the innumerable dashes
which I in the heat of composition had liberally interspersed
throughout wherever the exact phrase did not for the moment occur
to me. The second of my friends, whose name I here mention since
he is no longer among the living, Ole C. Schulerud, at that time
a student, later a lawyer, went to Christiania with the
transcript. I still remember one of his letters in which he
informed me that _Catiline_ had now been submitted to the
theater; that it would soon be given a performance,--about that
there could naturally be no doubt inasmuch as the management
consisted of very discriminating men; and that there could be as
little doubt that the booksellers of the town would one and all
gladly pay a round fee for the first edition, the main point
being, he thought, only to discover the one who would make the
highest bid.

After a long and tense period of waiting there began to appear in
the meantime a few difficulties. My friend had the piece
returned from the management with a particularly polite but
equally peremptory rejection. He now took the manuscript from
bookseller to bookseller; but all to a man expressed themselves
to the same effect as the theatrical management. The highest
bidder demanded so and so much to publish the piece without any
fee.

All this, however, was far from lessening my friend's belief in
victory. He wrote to the contrary that it was best even so; I
should come forward myself as the publisher of my drama; the
necessary funds he would advance me; the profits we should divide
in consideration of his undertaking the business end of the deal,
except the proof-reading, which he regarded as superfluous in
view of the handsome and legible manuscript the printers had to
follow. In a later letter he declared that, considering these
promising prospects for the future, he contemplated abandoning
his studies in order to consecrate himself completely to the
publishing of my works; two or three plays a year, he thought, I
should with ease be able to write, and according to a calculation
of probabilities he had made he had discovered that with our
surplus we should at no distant time be able to undertake the
journey so often agreed upon or discussed, through Europe and the
Orient.

My journey was for the time being limited to Christiania. I
arrived there in the beginning of the spring of 1850 and just
previous to my arrival _Catiline_ had appeared in the
bookstalls. The drama created a stir and awakened considerable
interest among the students, but the critics dwelt largely on the
faulty verses and thought the book in other respects immature. A
more appreciative judgment was uttered from but one single
quarter, but this expression came from a man whose appreciation
has always been dear to me and weighty and whom I herewith offer
my renewed gratitude. Not very many copies of the limited
edition were sold; my friend had a good share of them in his
custody, and I remember that one evening when our domestic
arrangements heaped up for us insurmountable difficulties, this
pile of printed matter was fortunately disposed of as waste paper
to a huckster. During the days immediately following we lacked
none of the prime necessities of life.

During my sojourn at home last summer and particularly since my
return here there loomed up before me more clearly and more
sharply than ever before the kaleidoscopic scenes of my literary
life. Among other things I also brought out _Catiline_.
The contents of the book as regards details I had almost
forgotten; but by reading it through anew I found that it
nevertheless contained a great deal which I could still
acknowledge, particularly if it be remembered that it is my first
undertaking. Much, around which my later writings center, the
contradiction between ability and desire, between will and
possibility, the intermingled tragedy and comedy in humanity and
in the individual,--appeared already here in vague
foreshadowings, and I conceived therefore the plan of preparing a
new edition, a kind of jubilee-edition,--a plan to which my
publisher with his usual readiness gave his approval.

But it was naturally not enough simply to reprint without further
ado the old original edition, for this is, as already pointed
out, nothing but a copy of my imperfect and uncorrected concept
or of the very first rough draft. In the rereading of it I
remembered clearly what I originally had had in mind, and I saw
moreover that the form practically nowhere gave a satisfactory
rendering of what I had wished.

I determined therefore to revise this drama of my youth in a way
in which I believe even at that time I should have been able to
do it had the time been at my disposal and the circumstances more
favorable for me. The ideas, the conceptions, and the
development of the whole, I have not on the other hand altered.
The book has remained the original; only now it appears in a
complete form.

With this in mind I pray that my friends in Scandinavia and
elsewhere will receive it; I pray that they will receive it as a
greeting from me at the close of a period which to me has been
full of changes and rich in contradictions. Much of what I
twenty-five years ago dreamed has been realized, even though not
in the manner nor as soon as I then hoped. Yet I believe now
that it was best for me thus; I do not wish that any of that
which lies between should have been untried, and if I look back
upon what I have lived through I do so with thanks for everything
and thanks to all.

HENRIK IBSEN.

_Dresden, February, 1875._

* * * * *

DRAMATIS PERSONA

LUCIUS CATILINE A noble Roman.

AURELIA His wife.

FURIA A vestal.

CURIUS A youth related to Catiline.

MANLIUS An old warrior.

LENTULUS Young and noble Roman.

GABINIUS " " " "

STATILIUS " " " "

COEPARIUS " " " "

CETHEGUS " " " "

AMBIORIX Ambassador of the Allobroges.

OLLOVICO " " " "

An old MAN.

PRIESTESSES and SERVANTS in the Temple of
Vesta.

GLADIATORS and WARRIORS.

ESCORT of the Allobroges.

Sulla's GHOST.

* * * * *

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