Play History
Playwright Bio
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, a small town in Norway. His father was a merchant, and his mother was a painter. Ibsen began writing plays when he was fifteen and moved to Christiania (now Oslo) when he was eighteen to begin university. He instead continued writing plays, and his first works appeared in 1850. Ibsen married Susannah Thorensen in 1858, and their only child Sigurd was born a year later. He received a grant from the Norwegian government in 1864 and began living abroad, primarily in Italy.
While he initially wrote verse plays, Ibsen’s work took a turn towards prose dramas full of social, political, and psychological conflicts in 1877 with Pillars of Society. This style also includes some of his more recognized work: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People. Between 1884 and 1899 he wrote eight other plays, before suffering from several strokes and dying in Norway in 1906.
Dramaturg’s Note
Henrik Ibsen initially wrote An Enemy of the People as a response to his audience’s reaction to Ghosts, which was hated by readers and theatregoers alike, who were more focused on the offense rather than the message they could take from it. In retaliation Ibsen wrote Enemy, focusing in on a society’s proclivity to fall to the whims of a mob. He throws in the audience’s face their desires to uphold self-interest rather than do what is morally right.
An Enemy of the People has always spoken to those intent on righting the wrongs in their society. The play premiered in what is now Oslo, Norway on December 28, 1883, and was immediately popular with a wide audience. Norway at the time was in a union with Sweden which united the two separate nations under a common monarch between 1814 and 1905. Beginning around 1880 there was an increase in liberalism calling for Norway to once again establish its own government. By 1905 the union was over and Norway was primarily under the control of its own parliament. When Enemy was produced at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1905, the Bolshevik revolutionaries saw Dr. Stockmann as a hero: although he believed in the individual rather than the majority, he still spoke out against the powers that be. One of the most well-known adaptations of the play is Arthur Miller’s in 1950. There are strong parallels of persecution between Miller’s Enemy and The Crucible, which both look at the effect self-interest can have on a small community.
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, a small town in Norway. His father was a merchant, and his mother was a painter. Ibsen began writing plays when he was fifteen and moved to Christiania (now Oslo) when he was eighteen to begin university. He instead continued writing plays, and his first works appeared in 1850. Ibsen married Susannah Thorensen in 1858, and their only child Sigurd was born a year later. He received a grant from the Norwegian government in 1864 and began living abroad, primarily in Italy.
While he initially wrote verse plays, Ibsen’s work took a turn towards prose dramas full of social, political, and psychological conflicts in 1877 with Pillars of Society. This style also includes some of his more recognized work: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People. Between 1884 and 1899 he wrote eight other plays, before suffering from several strokes and dying in Norway in 1906.
Dramaturg’s Note
Henrik Ibsen initially wrote An Enemy of the People as a response to his audience’s reaction to Ghosts, which was hated by readers and theatregoers alike, who were more focused on the offense rather than the message they could take from it. In retaliation Ibsen wrote Enemy, focusing in on a society’s proclivity to fall to the whims of a mob. He throws in the audience’s face their desires to uphold self-interest rather than do what is morally right.
An Enemy of the People has always spoken to those intent on righting the wrongs in their society. The play premiered in what is now Oslo, Norway on December 28, 1883, and was immediately popular with a wide audience. Norway at the time was in a union with Sweden which united the two separate nations under a common monarch between 1814 and 1905. Beginning around 1880 there was an increase in liberalism calling for Norway to once again establish its own government. By 1905 the union was over and Norway was primarily under the control of its own parliament. When Enemy was produced at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1905, the Bolshevik revolutionaries saw Dr. Stockmann as a hero: although he believed in the individual rather than the majority, he still spoke out against the powers that be. One of the most well-known adaptations of the play is Arthur Miller’s in 1950. There are strong parallels of persecution between Miller’s Enemy and The Crucible, which both look at the effect self-interest can have on a small community.
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