THE PLAYS OF HENEIK IBSEN. 1 



BY PHILIP H. WICKSTEED. 



[Philip Henry Wicksteed, M.A., English Unitarian clergyman, and University 

 Extension Lecturer since 1887, on Dante, Ibsen, and Economics; b. in 

 Leeds, 1844; educated University College, Manchester, and New College, 

 London; entered Unitarian Ministry, 1867; officiated Little Portland Street 

 Chapel, London, 1874-97. He translated and wrote the notes of Dante's 

 Paradise, Temple edition. Author of Dante, Six Sermons; Alphabet of 

 Economic Science; the Coordination of the Laws of Distribution; and 

 Henrik Ibsen. 



11 BRAND " and " Peer Gynt " were fierce invectives against Nor- 

 way, but they were welcomed with boundless enthusiasm by the very 

 people they lashed. 



It may be doubted whether such a phenomenon has ever been par- 

 alleled. Dramas filled with scathing satire and denunciation of the 

 Norwegians have become as it were the Norwegian national epics. 

 They have given Norway an exalted sense of national, existence and 

 national significance. They have been read by high and low, are 

 known almost by heart by hundreds of Norwegians, and have en- 

 riched the thought, the proverbial wisdom, the imagination, and the 

 language of Norway. To the wanderer over fell and fiord, they are 

 ever present; their magic lines so blending with the scenery they 

 describe, that he sees them in the snow-field and ice tarn; and the 

 author of " Peer Gynt " and " Brand " is forgotten and lost absorbed 

 into the invisible and impersonal genius of the place which has be- 

 come articulate through his words. 



But Ibsen's direct polemic against his people was not yet com- 

 pleted. Brand " and " Peer Gynt " were followed by " The Youth- 

 ful League" (1869), a satire on the political parties and the political 

 motives of Norway. This brilliant play is naturally one that ill bears 

 transplanting, but English readers are in a position to form their own 

 opinion of its merits in an English dress, and it is not my purpose to 

 dwell upon it further than to point out that it is the first of Ibsen's 

 plays written in that limpid simplicity of current modern prose which 

 stamps his dialogue in all his later work with unsurpassed verisimili- 

 tude and naturalness in the original, and with the inevitable appear- 

 ance of baldness in even the best translation. 



1 Lecture originally delivered at Chelsea, England, and presented here to sup- 

 plement the lectures originally prepared for the International Congress of Arts 

 and Science. 



