Misplaced Pages

#530469

43-513: Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard writes that the loss of joy of life is an underlying theme of several of Ibsen's plays, including Rosmersholm , in which "the spirit of the dead and the aristocracy of officials [lingers heavily] over the manor [and] the Rosmerian view of life ennobles man – but it kills happiness". A key theme in Rosmersholm and other plays was, according to Nygaard, "the joy of life that

86-608: A 1906 staging in Berlin, began performances at Rose Theatre Kingston in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2013, prior to an official opening on 25 September. Directed by Stephen Unwin , the cast included Patrick Drury as Pastor Manders, Florence Hall as Regina, Kelly Hunter as Mrs Alving, and Mark Quartley as Oswald. An award-winning 2013–14 London production opened at the Almeida Theatre on 26 September 2013 and transferred to

129-583: A greater focus on viewing Ibsen and his works in the context of his contemporaries rather than as a genius. Nygaard earned his PhD ( mag.art. ) at the University of Oslo in 1969, and the following year, he was appointed as a research fellow at the same university. In 1973, he became a lecturer in theater studies at the University of Trondheim and was promoted to associate professor there in 1975. From 1984 to 2016, he served as an associate professor and, from 2001, as

172-491: A professor in theater studies at the University of Oslo. His book on Henrik Ibsen 's Ibsen's wider social milieu and ancestry contributed significantly to what scholars have described as a "revolution" in historical research on Henrik Ibsen's life, that has debunked numerous myths previously taken for granted. Ghosts (play) Ghosts (Danish: Gengangere ) is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen . It

215-402: Is a 'Break Glass In Case of Emergencies' sort of a play. An alarum drama. Revive Rosmersholm for regime change." British writer Cicely Isabel Fairfield took the pen name " Rebecca West " from the character in Rosmersholm . The 2018 novel Lethal White by J. K. Rowling (under the pen name Robert Galbraith) opens each (otherwise untitled) chapter with a line from Rosmersholm . In 2019,

258-512: Is therefore Oswald's half-sister . A sub-plot involves a carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, who married Regina's mother when she was already pregnant. He regards Regina as his own daughter. He is unaware, or pretends to be, that Captain Alving was Regina's father. Having recently completed his work building Mrs. Alving's orphanage, Engstrand announces his ambition to open a hostel for seafarers . He tries to persuade Regina to leave Mrs. Alving and help him run

301-775: The Brooks Atkinson Theater in New York City, and starred Kevin Spacey as Oswald in his Broadway debut. The cast included Edward Binns , John Neville (who also directed the production) as Pastor Manders, Liv Ullmann as Mrs. Alving, and Jane Murray as Regina. The production opened originally at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center on July 19, 1982. A touring UK production, designed by Simon Higlett and inspired by Edvard Munch's original stage designs for

344-654: The Evening Standard Award for Best Director. The production also won the Olivier Award for Best Revival, and received Olivier Award nominations for Best Director and Best Lighting Design. A filmed February 2014 performance of the production screened in more than 275 UK and Irish cinemas on 26 June 2014. The entire filmed performance can be viewed online. The production was also adapted for radio by director Richard Eyre, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 15 December 2013 and re-broadcast on 26 April 2015. Eyre's production

387-581: The West End at Trafalgar Studios on 9 December, running through 22 March 2014. Adapted and directed by Richard Eyre , it featured Lesley Manville , Jack Lowden , Will Keen , Charlene McKenna , and Brian McCardie . Manville and Lowden won Olivier Awards for their performances; Manville also won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress, and Lowden also won the Ian Charleson Award . Eyre won

430-452: The "ghosts" that Mrs. Alving refers to in Ibsen's 1881 tragedy Ghosts . Ibsen selected the name of Rosmer for his protagonist in conscious echo of the Norwegian legend of Rosmer Havmand , a merman who lures a young woman to her death by drowning; it is the allure he holds for Rebecca that stirs up disaster. The original title was to have been White Horses , to reflect the significance of

473-807: The 10,000 copies did not sell, which was financially a severe blow for Ibsen. A subsequent print run of the text was not published until 1894. The play was initially sent to a number of Nordic theaters, including the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, the Nya Teatern and Dramaten in Stockholm, and the Christiania Theater, but all of them rejected the play. In the early 1880s, the play was generally rejected by all major European playhouses, including those in Norway. Upon

SECTION 10

#1732855558531

516-533: The English translator William Archer 's use of the word "Ghosts" as the play's title, as the Danish or Norwegian Gengangere would be more accurately translated as "The Revenants", which literally means "The Ones Who Return". Helen Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in memory of her late husband, Captain Alving. Despite her husband's affairs, Mrs. Alving stayed with him to protect her son Oswald from

559-615: The Italian production company Milano Films released an adaptation titled Gli spettri  [ it ] , starring Ermete Zacconi and his wife Ines Cristina Zacconi  [ it ] . In 1987 it was televised on the BBC , directed by Elijah Moshinsky and featuring Judi Dench as Mrs. Alving, Kenneth Branagh as Oswald, Michael Gambon as Pastor Manders, and Natasha Richardson as Regina. In 2014 Richard Eyre's award-winning London stage adaptation starring Lesley Manville and Jack Lowden

602-591: The New York Independent Theatre with Mary Shaw as Mrs. Alving. Russian actress Alla Nazimova , with Paul Orleneff, gave a notable production of Ghosts in a small room on the Lower East Side in 1895–96. When Nazimova had been a student in Russia, she had wanted to "play Regina for my graduation piece at the dramatic school at Moscow, but they would not let me. Ghosts was at that time prohibited by

645-569: The Rosmer family's manor, Rosmersholm, as a friend of Beata, and she lives there still. It becomes plain that she and Rosmer are in love, but he insists throughout the play that their relationship is completely platonic. A highly respected member of his community, both by virtue of his position as a clergyman and his aristocratic family , Rosmer intends to support the newly elected government and its reformist, if not revolutionary, agenda. However, when he announces this to his friend and brother-in-law Kroll,

688-552: The blame, which Manders readily accepts. Manders in turn offers to support Engstrand's hostel. When Regina and Oswald's sibling relationship is exposed, Regina departs, leaving Oswald in anguish. He asks his mother to help him avoid the late stages of syphilis with a fatal morphine overdose. She agrees, but only if it becomes necessary. The play concludes with Mrs. Alving having to confront the decision of whether or not to euthanize her son in accordance with his wishes. As with his other plays, Henrik Ibsen wrote Ghosts in Danish,

731-637: The censor, because it reflects on the Church." The play later received many European performances. In its 1906 production in Berlin, the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was commissioned to create the original stage designs. On 4 May 1962, the play was performed in the Theatre Sala Chopin in Mexico City with Mexican actress and Hollywood star Dolores del Río in the role of Mrs. Alving. A Broadway revival of Ghosts ran from 30 August to 2 October 1982 at

774-469: The common written language of Denmark and Norway at the time. The original title, in both Danish and Norwegian, is Gengangere , which can be literally translated as "again walkers", "ones who return", or " revenants ". It has a double meaning of both "ghosts" and "events that repeat themselves" which the English title Ghosts fails to capture. Ibsen wrote Ghosts during the autumn of 1881 and published it that December. As early as November 1880, when he

817-421: The critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works." Matt Trueman argued that " Rosmersholm is hungry — no, ravenous — for change and yet, at the same time, incapable of it. Its characters are desperate to throw off the past to which they are inextricably shackled. It weighs them down even as they try to swim away: concrete shoes that just won’t come off". He concluded: "it

860-492: The guilt by erasing the memory of his wife and proposing marriage to Rebecca. But she rejects him outright. Kroll accuses her of using Rosmer as a tool to work her own political agenda. She admits that it was she who drove Mrs. Rosmer to deeper depths of despair and in a way even encouraged her suicide—initially to increase her power over Rosmer, but later because she actually fell in love with him. Because of her guilty past she cannot accept Rosmer's marriage proposal. This leads to

903-411: The hostel, but she refuses. The night before the orphanage is due to open, Engstrand asks Pastor Manders to hold a prayer-meeting there. Later that night, the orphanage burns down. Earlier, Manders had persuaded Mrs. Alving not to insure the orphanage, as to do so would imply a lack of faith in divine providence. Engstrand says the blaze was caused by Manders' carelessness with a candle and offers to take

SECTION 20

#1732855558531

946-423: The local schoolmaster, the latter becomes enraged at what he sees as his friend's betrayal of his ruling-class roots. Kroll begins to sabotage Rosmer's plans, confronting him about his relationship with Rebecca and denouncing the pair, initially in guarded terms, in the local newspaper. Rosmer becomes consumed by his guilt, now believing he, rather than mental illness, caused his wife's suicide. He attempts to escape

989-459: The manor [and] the Rosmerian view of life ennobles man – but it kills happiness". A key theme in Rosmersholm and other plays was, according to Nygaard, "the joy of life that was lost – and the new Puritan Civil Servant State that was coming. It was the spirit of civil servants from Upper Telemark , the Paus family ," Ibsen's relatives on both his parents' sides. A major influence on Ibsen, particularly in

1032-402: The play Rosmersholm , was his collaboration with the early Realist poet Carl Snoilsky . A radio adaptation, translated by Frank McGuinness and directed by Peter Kavanagh, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 15 January 2017. Rosmersholm has been described as one of Ibsen's most complex, subtle, multilayered and ambiguous plays; Rosmersholm and The Wild Duck are "often to be observed in

1075-423: The play has come to be considered a "great play" that historically holds a position of "immense importance". Theater critic Maurice Valency wrote in 1963, "From the standpoint of modern tragedy Ghosts strikes off in a new direction.... Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code. Ghosts , on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it." Ibsen disliked

1118-509: The play is the White Horse of Rosmersholm, the "family ghost" in Rebecca's phrase. It is seen, or rumored to be seen, by the characters after the suicide of Beata. The horse symbolizes the past that revolves around Rosmer's dead wife, and haunts the survivors. The presence of the horse at their death represents their incapacity to "deal with" the memories that haunt them. The white horse is similar to

1161-594: The play was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre in London in a new adaption by Duncan Macmillan under the direction of Ian Rickson , starring Tom Burke , Hayley Atwell and Giles Terera . Jon Nygaard Jon Nygaard (born 1946) is a Norwegian Ibsen scholar and professor emeritus at the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo . He represents the "aesthetic-historical" approach to Ibsen research and has advocated for

1204-502: The play. Its members included playwright George Bernard Shaw and authors Thomas Hardy and Henry James . The play was reviled in the press. In a typical review at the time, The Daily Telegraph referred to it as "Ibsen's positively abominable play entitled Ghosts .... An open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly.... A lazar house with all its doors and windows open ... Gross, almost putrid indecorum.... Literary carrion.... Crapulous stuff". In 1898 when Ibsen

1247-449: The plot forward, although Mortensgaard reveals to Rosmer that Beata sent his newspaper a letter denying any rumors that her husband was unfaithful with Rebecca: the suggestion that his wife even considered such unfounded suspicion, which may have contributed to her decision to kill herself, upsets Rosmer greatly. Brendel, returning for the first time in many years, calls at Rosmersholm before going on to preach political freedom and reform in

1290-401: The publication of the text, Ibsen's contemporaries found the play shocking and indecent and disliked its frank treatment of the forbidden topic of venereal disease . At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, and to show that a person who followed society's ideals of morality was at risk from her own husband was considered beyond the pale. According to Richard Eyre, "There

1333-405: The recovery of her body from the water, Rosmer says he will join her. He is still in love with her and, since he cannot conceive of a way in which they can live together, they will die together. The play concludes with both characters jumping into the mill-race and the housekeeper, Mrs. Helseth, screaming in terror: "The dead woman has taken them." The actions of Brendel and Mortensgaard do not take

Rosmersholm - Misplaced Pages Continue

1376-445: The stage, giving the audience different perspectives. Ghosts has been filmed, and adapted for film and television, numerous times in various languages. It was adapted at least three times for silent films . In 1915, George Nichols directed a film of the same name for producer D. W. Griffith . Mary Alden and Henry B. Walthall starred. Also in 1915, it was filmed in Russia, directed and adapted by Vladimir Gardin . In 1918,

1419-437: The supernatural element in the play. Ibsen often used his childhood environment and relatives as models for people, environments, motives and events in his plays, and this also applied to Rosmersholm . Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard writes that the loss of joy of life is an underlying theme of several of Ibsen's plays, including Rosmersholm , in which "the spirit of the dead and the aristocracy of officials [lingers heavily] over

1462-421: The taint of scandal and for fear of being shunned by the community. In the course of the play, she discovers that Oswald (whom she had sent away to avoid his being corrupted by his father) is suffering from syphilis that she believes he inherited from his father. She also discovers that Oswald has fallen in love with her maid Regina Engstrand, who is revealed to be the illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving and

1505-586: The town, but his audience, somewhat drunk, beats him up and leaves him in the gutter. Returning to the house after the incident, he acknowledges that his ideals have not survived the encounter. He now recommends the approach of the pragmatic Mortensgaard, who demonstrates his own lack of ideals by urging Rosmer to support the reform movement while still professing to be Christian, though in reality Rosmer has lost his faith. Mortensgaard needs Rosmer's public support to show that there are prominent, respectable, pious citizens who agree with his policies. The central image of

1548-418: The ultimate breakdown in the play where neither Rosmer nor Rebecca can cast off moral guilt. She has acknowledged her part in the destruction of Beata. They can now no longer trust each other, or even themselves. Rosmer then asks Rebecca to prove her devotion to him by committing suicide the same way his former wife did—by jumping into the mill-race . As Rebecca calmly seems to agree, issuing instructions about

1591-770: Was an outcry of indignation against the attack on religion, the defence of free love, the mention of incest and syphilis." Ghosts premiered in May 1882 in the United States, produced in Danish for Scandinavian immigrants by a Danish-Norwegian cast in Chicago , at the Aurora Turner Hall. The first performance in Sweden was at Helsingborg on 22 August 1883. Ghosts was produced in Norway in October 1883, and it received good reviews. It

1634-511: Was living in Rome, Ibsen had been meditating on a new play to follow A Doll's House . When he went to Sorrento , in the summer of 1881, he was hard at work upon it. He finished it by the end of November 1881 and published it in Copenhagen on 13 December 1881. Ghosts was published in Copenhagen on 13 December 1881 in an edition of 10,000 copies. It caused a firestorm of public outcry, and most of

1677-473: Was lost – and the new Puritan Civil Servant State that was coming. It was the spirit of civil servants from Upper Telemark , the Paus family ." The play was written in Danish —the common written language of Denmark and Norway at the time—and originally published in Copenhagen by the Danish publisher Gyldendal . The play opens one year after the suicide of Rosmer's wife, Beata. Rebecca had previously moved into

1720-720: Was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Spring 2015, where Ben Brantley in The New York Times called it "possibly the best Ghosts you'll ever see". In 2014 a Chinese-Norwegian co-production entitled Ghosts 2.0 was produced in Beijing, commissioned by Ibsen International and directed by Wang Chong , who had started the Chinese New Wave Theater Movement. The multimedia performance used four cameras on

1763-535: Was presented to King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, at a dinner in Ibsen's honour, the King told Ibsen that Ghosts was not a good play. After a pause, Ibsen exploded, "Your Majesty, I had to write Ghosts !" Ghosts had its first New York City production, and its first English-language production in the U.S., on Broadway on 5 January 1894 at the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre. It was produced again in 1899 by

Rosmersholm - Misplaced Pages Continue

1806-561: Was produced independently in September 1889 at Berlin's Die Freie Bühne . The play achieved a single private London performance on 13 March 1891 at the Royalty Theatre , which was its English-language premiere. The issue of Lord Chamberlain's Office censorship, because of the subject matter of illegitimate children and sexually transmitted disease, was avoided by the formation of a subscription-only Independent Theatre Society to produce

1849-401: Was written in Danish and published in 1881, and first staged in 1882 in Chicago , Illinois , US, performed in Danish. Like many of Ibsen's plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease , incest , and euthanasia , it immediately generated strong controversy and negative criticism. Since then,

#530469