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The Ibsen Cycle

  The Design of Plays from
  Pillars of Society to
  When We Dead Awaken
  (read online at Google Books)

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The 12-Play Cycle
In THE IBSEN CYCLE, I follow Ibsen's own account of his plays as a "Cycle" with "mutual connections between the plays" which, as he further insisted, should be read in the order in which they were created. Pillars of Society inaugurates the Cycle and is pregnant with themes, images, archetypes and characters that will evolve throughout the Cycle, somewhat as Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold establishes the themes and leitmotifs that will evolve throughout Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The twelve plays thus form a single, aesthetically ambitious artwork, a tripartite unity with four plays to each group. Each group has its own design, as distinct as the tripartite division of Dante's COMMEDIA. ('Divine Comedy') while the Cycle as a whole reveals a dialectical evolution from the first play, Pillars of Society, to the last, When We Dead Awaken.

Pillars of Society
A Doll House
Ghosts
An Enemy of the People

The Wild Duck
Rosmersholm
The Lady from the Sea
Hedda Gabler

The Master Builder
Little Eyolf
John Gabriel Borkman
When We Dead Awaken

The First Group: Pillars of Society; A Doll House; Ghosts; An Enemy of the People
The first group sets out a structure of symmetrical parallels and contrasts that will be the procedure, also, of the second and third groups. For a more complete account of this procedure see 'The Structure of the Cycle' in THE IBSEN CYCLE, (pp. 98 - 186). The design of the whole Cycle can be gauged by looking at that of the first group.

There are two 'outer' plays that open and close the group and prepare for the evolution to the second group; and two 'inner plays that explore other dimensions of the dialectic. The two 'outer plays, Pillars of Society and An Enemy of the People show striking parallels.

In both plays the clearly contrasting leading figures are male: the 'pillar of society', KARSTEN BERNICK and the rebel or 'enemy of society', THOMAS STOCKMAN. In both plays there are notable crowd scenes of public occasion. Both plays focus on our humanity in its public and social aspect and are noisy and confrontational. Both end with a tableau of the hero flanked by his family.

The two 'inner' plays show a similar symmetry. Here, the leading figures are female - NORAL HELMER and HELENE ALVING; and both plays are notably domestic and 'interior' in imagery and subject matter, focusing on the themes of marriage and the family. 'Nora' is a diminutive of 'Eleanora' - an alternative form of "Helen', suggesting a link between the two heroines.

The final play of this group, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, concludes this tetralogy with its predominantly 'Greek' dialectic, themes and imagery and, in the last Act, introduces the 'Christian' dialectic, themes and imagery of the second group.

The Second Group: The Wild Duck; Rosmersholm; The Lady from the Sea; Hedda Gabler
The two opening and closing plays of this second group, The Wild Duck; Hedda Gabler, also reveal striking parallels. In both we find interior scenes divided between a foreground room associated with work and everyday reality, and a more secretive and escapist background room: a visual dualism that is extended into a wide-ranging psychological, social, and metaphysical dualism. There are many other curious parallels: both plays, uniquely in the cycle, are punctuated by two pistol shots, and in both, the similarly names heroines, HEDVIG-HEDDA, retreat to the background room to shoot themselves. Lieutenant Ekdal dons full dress uniform to stand over the body of Hedvig, and Hedda is discovered beneath the portrait of her uniformed father, General Gabler. In both plays the somewhat similar Hjalmar Ekdal and Jørgen Tesman have been brought up by two maiden aunts; in both households there is a cynical and controlling (and 'satanic') neighbor, Relling and Judge Brack.

The two inner plays, Rosmersholm; The Lady from the Sea also have themes and imagery in common. In a first draft of the play, the priest, Rosmer was given the two daughters now transferred to Wangel; both male characters have a deceased wife in the background and a wayward and somewhat mysterious partner in the present. Rebecca West, from northern Finnmark is termed a 'mermaid', 'sea troll', and 'witch', while the mermaid-like Ellida Wangel was referred to as "the pagan' by 'an old priest'.

This second group opens and closes in a condition of entrapment and unfreedom.
Hedda Gabler retreats to her inner room, curtained off from the curtained living room, to shoot herself to escape the loss of freedom threatened by Judge Brack. The time of year is the Fall - the time of year in which the first play of the third group opens. The Master Builder begins in the same condition of entrapment, loss of freedom as Hedda Gabler, and the stage set is again divided between foreground and background rooms. But this is only the precondition for a dynamic of liberation from intolerable confinement that will govern the entire third group.

The Third Group The Master Builder: Little Eyolf; John Gabriel Borkman; When We Dead Awaken
The opening and closing plays, The Master Builder; When We Dead Awaken dramatize the agons of the leading characters as artists (master builder Solness; sculptor Rubek) burdened and constrained by past guilt and finally breaking free for exultantly assertive but fatal actions of ascent and fall. The actions of each play are instigated by 'unexpected visitors from the past' to whom promises were made, and who lure the artists 'upward' to their deaths.

The two inner plays, Little Eyolf; John Gabriel Borkman portray marriages torn apart by conflict over the possession of the younger generation.

The following diagram can best set out the structure and design of this last group:

The four plays in succession form a distinct evolutionary sequence. The last act endings show a clear progression from evening to dawn while the scenography reveals an equally clear pattern of ascent within an expanding natural scene. As Ibsen is a meticulous artist, our interpretation of the individual plays and of the Cycle as a whole cannot begin to be adequate - or serious - until we engage with this huge structural dimension of his art.