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Ibsen Volume II: Four Plays |
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Pillars of
Society The Wild Duck Rosmersholm The Master Builder |
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Available for purchase through: Pillars of Society Pillars of Society, inaugurates Ibsen's creation of his metaphoric Norway': an 'archetypal' realm capable of carrying the tragic argument of the Cycle. The play both opens the huge, twelve-play Cycle and contains, often in embryo, the themes that will be developed, immensely, in the plays that follow. The social world of Karsten Bernick, like our own, is governed by rampant materialism, with morality and spirituality as mere cosmetics masking far less ideal motives: until, that is, the astonishing entry of Lona Hessel. Her name derives from Apollo, the god of the Delphic injunction, 'Know thyself', and she enters with a Dionysian circus of animals and music. With this spirited entry from the local and the archetypal Past, the careful superstructure of self deceit and hypocrisy which this moralizing community has built up over the years, ruthlessly persecuting its victims and smugly congratulating itself, collapses with devastating effect. But this collapse might lay the foundation of a spiritual renewal. The themes and metaphors
of the play are brilliantly located in stage space and time - in the
form of vivid scenes, characters, actions, and metaphors - all the elements
of a vital artwork. We are invited to enjoy this art as art,
seeing its bold metaphoric design and form, its complex counterpoint
of thematic cross-references and dialectical oppositions and conflicts.
Productions have revealed how immensely enjoyable the play can be. |
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