A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre

by Christopher Innes (ed)

  NORA. (Trembling) No mother …

  HELMER. As you have had none.

  NORA. No mother! (An internal struggle. She lets her bag fall and says) Oh, I am sinning against myself, but I cannot leave them. (She sinks down at the door.)

  HELMER. (Happy, says softly) Nora!

  (The curtain falls)

  4.3.3 Henrik Ibsen, letter to the Nationaltidende, 17 February 1880

  MUNICH, 17th February 1880.

  To the EDITOR

  SIR, – In No. 1360 of your esteemed paper I have read a letter from Flensburg, in which it is stated that A Doll’s House (in German Nora) has been acted there, and that the conclusion of the play has been changed – the alteration having been made, it is asserted, by my orders. This last statement is untrue. Immediately after the publication of Nora, I received from my translator, Mr. Wilhelm Lange, of Berlin, who is also my business manager as far as the North German theatres are concerned, the information that he had reason to fear that an “adaptation” of the play, giving it a different ending, was about to be published and that this would probably be chosen in preference to the original by several of the North German theatres.

  In order to prevent such a possibility, I sent to him, for use in case of absolute necessity, a draft of an altered last scene, according to which Nora does not leave the house, but is forcibly led by Helmer to the door of the children’s bedroom; a short dialogue takes place, Nora sinks down at the door, and the curtain falls.

  This change I myself, in the letter to my translator, stigmatise as “barbaric violence” done to the play. Those who make use of the altered scene do so entirely against my wish. But I trust that it will not be used at very many German theatres.

  As long as no literary convention exists between Germany and the Scandinavian countries, we Scandinavian authors enjoy no protection from the law here, just as the German authors enjoy none with us. Our dramatic works are, therefore, in Germany exposed to acts of violence at the hands of translators, theatrical directors, stage-managers, and actors at the smaller theatres. When my works are threatened, I prefer, taught by experience, to commit the act of violence myself, instead of leaving them to be treated and “adapted” by less careful and less skilful hands. – Yours respectfully,

  HENRIK IBSEN.

  4.3.4 Henrik Ibsen, letter to Moritz Prozor, 23 January 1891

  Translated by Mary Morrison

  MUNICH, 23rd January 1891.

  DEAR COUNT PROZOR, – Mr. Luigi Capuana has, I regret to see, given you a great deal of trouble by his proposal to alter the last scene of A Doll’s House for performance in the Italian theatres.

  I do not for a moment doubt that the alteration you suggest would be distinctly preferable to that which Mr. Capuana proposes. But the fact is that I cannot possibly directly authorise any change whatever in the ending of the drama. I may almost say that it was for the sake of the last scene that the whole play was written.

  And, besides, I believe that Mr. Capuana is mistaken in fearing that the Italian public would not be able to understand or approve of my work if it were put on the stage in its original form. The experiment ought, at any rate, to be tried. If it turns out a failure, then let Mr. Capuana, on his own responsibility, employ your adaptation of the closing scene; for I cannot formally authorise, or approve of, such a proceeding.

  I wrote to Mr. Capuana yesterday, briefly expressing my views on the subject; and I hope that he will disregard his misgivings until he has proved by experience that they are well founded.1

  At the time when A Doll’s House was quite new, I was obliged to give my consent to an alteration of the last scene for Frau Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, who was to play the part of Nora in Berlin. At that time I had no choice. I was entirely unprotected by copyright law in Germany, and could, consequently, prevent nothing. Besides, the play in its original, uncorrupted form, was accessible to the German public in a German edition which was already printed and published. With its altered ending it had only a short run. In its unchanged form it is still being played.

  The enclosed letter from Mr. Antoine I have answered, thanking him for his intention to produce The Wild Duck, and urging him to make use of your translation. Of course I cannot tell what he will decide. But as the Théâtre Libre is really of the nature of a private society, it is probably not possible to procure a legal injunction. There are, besides, reasons which would render the taking of such a step inadvisable, even if possible. However, I leave the decision of this question entirely to you, assured that you will act in the best way possible.

  *

  In a sense even such extreme adaptations as Breaking a Butterfly were simply an attempt to make sense of an action – not only Nora’s exit from her marriage, but abandoning her children – which denied accepted attitudes and expectations of the time to such an extent that Nora’s motivation appeared incomprehensible. Even in Germany, the country most open to Ibsen’s naturalistic drama, critical response was initially unfavorable. For instance, the reviewers of Die Gegenwart (18, 1880) and Deutsche Rundschau (26, 1881) saw the play as clearly didactic, dealing with a serious subject, but were confused about the actual message, and attacked the character development of Nora, finding the woman of the final act incompatible with the child-mother of the opening. However, attitudes changed in Germany after the publication of a monograph on Ibsen – by L, Passarge in 1883, the very first to appear, predating Shaw’s study by almost a decade. Indeed it was only when more extensive analyses of Ibsen’s work were published that the integrity of the original ending was recognized, and then became the standard staging.

  In England William Archer’s production of A Doll’s House in his own translation preceded Shaw’s lectures on The Quintessence of Ibsenism. It was a popular success, and although the play itself was heavily attacked by all the critics, even unsympathetic reviews praised the performance:

  The interest was so intense last night that a pin might have been heard to drop. Miss Janet Achurch received the enthusiastic congratulations she so well deserved, and when the curtain fell there was such cheering that Mr. Charrington promised to telegraph the happy result to Henrik Ibsen. We cannot doubt that all who desire to become better acquainted with the author’s new-fangled theories, and to see them put into practice in the most satisfactory manner, will crowd the Novelty Theatre for the next few evenings. If they cannot agree with the author, they will, at any rate, see some admirable acting.

  (Sunday Times, 7 June 1889)

  The play had already become a “vehicle” for star actresses, such as Helena Modjeska – as reviews of her 1883 performance indicate:

  The production last evening was a novelty, curiosity to see Modjeska in a new role, as well as admiration for the great actress arousing more than ordinary interest in the performance … Her portrayal of the innocent, gay, true-hearted Thora is full of beauty and varying charm, reaching in the second act a nervous intensity and strength and yet maintaining a rare delicacy and grace which seem in the power of none so well as this actress … The character, indeed, is a beautiful one, and in that pure womanliness, that exquisite art necessary for its interpretation, where is the actress so gifted as Modjeska? Modjeska, in truth, was the performance.

  (Louisville Courier-Journal, 8 December 1883)

  Indeed it was A Doll’s House that made Janet Achurch a star, attracting the attention of Bernard Shaw, who wrote Candida (his “counterblast” to Ibsen, showing that in the typical doll’s house “it is the man who is the doll”) for her.

  Among others who saw Janet Achurch’s performance in 1889 was the actress/producer Elizabeth Robins, who was inspired by this to become the leading interpreter of Ibsen in America; and Achurch’s rendering of Nora remained the standard against which English critics measured other actresses who took up the role – notably Eleonora Duse. But if A Doll’s House became a star vehicle, it was because, like Ibsen’s other naturalistic plays, this was one of the few challenging leading roles for women in contemporary drama. />
  Ibsen was not only an advocate of woman’s rights (despite his own disclaimers). His plays also reversed gender stereotypes by making the actress the central figure in performance; and, as Archer argued, A Doll’s House was the play that had the most impact of all Ibsen’s work, especially in spreading the new drama to England and North America.

  4.3.5 William Archer, Producing A Doll’s House (Letter to Charles Archer)

  13 June, ’89

  We have fought a good fight for the Old Min [pet name for Ibsen], and have won a really glorious victory. It would take me a day’s hard writing to give you full details, but I shall send along with this a budget of press notices. Of course most of them are silliness itself; but still the play has been the great event of the week-almost of the season. It has been more talked about and written about than even The Profligate. It holds the B.P. like a vice – and what’s more, they pay to see it. The receipts are not large – between £35 and £45 a performance – but that, for an out-of-the-way house, is by no means bad, especially as it is scarcely advertised at all. Of course Miss Achurch has the lioness’s share in the success. She is really a delightful Nora – not ideal; her voice and tricks of utterance forbid that – but she feels the part right through, and is often very fine and even noble. In short she is a Nora and a very beautiful one, though not quite the Nora. It is by far the biggest thing she has ever done; compliments and offers of engagements have poured in upon her; no actress for years has made such a success. She varies rather from night to night. I always go to see the last scene, which is to me the great thing of the piece and one of the Old Min’s biggest achievements; and once or twice I have seen her play it perfectly. At other times she goes in for motiveless fortes and pianos which mar the smoothness of it. On the first night Waring (Helmer) got a little wrong in his lines and didn’t say the speech: “I would work for you, etc.; but no man sacrifices his honour even for one he loves” – so that of course she couldn’t get in her Millions of women have done that. I was mad at that, for she speaks it beautifully – it was almost the one misfortune of a glorious evening. Since then we have of course got the passage put right, and the B.P. now rises to the occasion unfailingly …. But what a scene that is! Every speech in it rings like a clarion. They may call it pure logic if they like, but it is logic saturated with emotion. I cry over it every night. It’s very curious, the first time I saw Miss A. rehearse it she was deadly – querulous, whimpering, wretched. I arranged to meet her half an hour before the next rehearsal and go through the scene with her; but that day she was ill and didn’t come to rehearsal at all; so I told Charrington what I thought was wrong, and he said he would go through it with her. The next rehearsal I sat in the stalls and listened to it – the thing was totally different. It gripped me line by line and simply thrilled me with intellectual pleasure and intense emotion. At the end she came to the footlights and said: “How was that?” I said: “If that scene moves the audience half as much as it has moved me to-day, the play’s all right” – and it was! There was another rather amusing thing about that scene. X. Y, the acting manager, a Philistine of the Philistines, happened to see it one day at rehearsal. At the end he said: “You’ll excuse me, Miss Achurch, it’s no business of mine, but I can’t help saying that that scene’s splendid – most interesting – certain to go.” She rushed across the stage and almost embraced him, and we were all delighted to have conquered the doughty Y. But next day he came to me and said: “It was rather good, my going into raptures over that scene. I had no idea it was the last act. I thought it was the first act, and it was all going to be cleared up … .”

  Fru Gundersen of the Xiania Theatre, who is over here just now, told me Miss A. was the best Nora she had ever seen, and she had no reason to put it as strongly as that if she didn’t think so. In short we have had a splendid week, and whatever else comes of it, Ibsen has triumphed.

  4.3.6 Elizabeth Robins, Ibsen and the Actress

  In dealing with Ibsen’s significance to the acting profession, I naturally think of one actress in particular whose view would have been immensely interesting. I mean, of course, the woman to whom belongs the lasting honour of being the first person to play a great Ibsen part in England – Janet Achurch. As she is not here, I was going to say – but in a sense she is here, vivid in the consciousness of all who ever saw her act. As she cannot, however, speak to you, I think the makeshift-best I can do in this direction is to tell you about my own recollection of the first production of A Doll’s House, for that occasion, in addition to so much else, stood for Ibsen and at least three actresses: Janet Achurch, Marion Lea, and myself, plus I don’t know how many more, who were to be affected by that day’s happening. I do not know whether I had ever heard Ibsen’s name till the afternoon when I went with my friend Marion Lea to see her friend act A Doll’s House.

  I cannot think such an experience was ever ushered in with so little warning. There was not a hint in the pokey, dingy theatre, in the sparse, rather dingy audience, that we were on the threshold of an event that was to change lives and literatures. The Nora of that day must have been one of the earliest exceptions – she was the first I ever saw – to the rule that an actress invariably comes on in new clothes, unless she is playing a beggar. This Nora, with her home-made fur cap on her fair hair, wore the clothes of Ibsen’s Nora, almost shabby, with a touch of prettiness.

  I never knew before or since anybody strike so surely the note of gaiety and homeliness as Janet Achurch did in that first scene. You saw her biting into one of the forbidden macaroons, white teeth flashing, blue eyes full of roguery, her entire Wesen inviting you to share that confidence in life that was so near shipwreck. The unstagey effect of the whole play (and that must have owed much to Charles Charrington) made it, to eyes that first saw it in ‘89, less like a play than like a personal meeting – with people and issues that seized us and held us, and wouldn’t let us go.

  I remember Marion Lea wanted desperately to play Nora – in the provinces, in America, anywhere. Strangely, it didn’t take me like that. Janet Achurch’s acting had carried me clean out of myself. I didn’t even feel on that first occasion, as I did later, that the Tarantella dance was, from the point of view of the theatre, somehow a mistake. But the famous lines: “Millions of women have done so” and “ … it burst upon me that I had been living here these eight years with a strange man, and had borne him three children” – for all time they should be said just as they were first said, and by just that person.

  4.3.7 William Archer, A Doll’s House and the Ibsen Revolution

  If we may measure fame by mileage of newspaper comment, Henrik Ibsen has for the past month been the most famous man in the English literary world. Since Robert Elsmere left the Church, no event in ‘coëval fictive art’ (to quote a modern stylist) has exercised men’s, and women’s, minds so much as Nora Helmer’s departure from her Doll’s House. Indeed the latter exit may be said to have awakened even more vibrant echoes than the former; for, while Robert made as littie noise as possible Nora slammed the door behind her. Nothing could be more trenchant than her action, unless it be her speech. Whatever its merits or defects, A Doll’s House has certainly the property of stimulating discussion. We are at present bandying the very arguments which hurded around it in Scandinavia and in Germany nine years ago. When the play was first produced in Copenhagen, some one wrote a charming little satire upon it in the shape of a debate as to its tendency between a party of little girls around a nursery tea-table. It ended in the hostess, aged ten, gravely declaring that had the case been hers, she would have done exactly as Nora did. I do not know whether the fame of A Doll’s House has reached the British nursery, but I have certainly read some comments on it which might very well have emanated from that abode of innocence.

  Puerilities and irrelevances apart, the adult and intelligent criticism of Ibsen as represented in A Doll’s House, seems to run on three main lines. It is said, in the first place, that he is not an artist but a preacher; sec
ondly, that his doctrine is neither new nor true; thirdly, that in order to enforce it, he oversteps the limits of artistic propriety.

  […]

  For my part, looking at his dramatic production all round, and excepting only the two great dramas in verse, Brand and Peer Gynt, I am willing to admit that his teaching does now and then, in perfectly trifling details, affect his art for the worse. Not his direct teaching – that, as it seems to me, he always inspires with the breath of life – but his proclivity to what I may perhaps call symbolic side-issues. In the aforesaid dramas in verse this symbolism is eminently in place; not so, it seems to me, in the realistic plays. I once asked him how he justified this tendency in his art; he replied that life is one tissue of symbols. ‘Certainly,’ I might have answered; ‘but when we have its symbolic side too persistently obtruded upon us, we lose the sense of reality, which, according to your own theory, the modern dramatist should above all things aim at.’ There may be some excellent answer to this criticism; I give it for what it is worth. Apart from these symbolic details, it seems to me that Ibsen is singularly successful in vitalising his work; in reproducing the forms, the phenomena of life, as well as its deeper meanings. Let us take the example nearest at hand – A Doll’s House. I venture to say – for this is a matter of fact rather than of opinion – that in the minds of thousands in Scandinavia and Germany, Nora Helmer lives with an intense and palpitating life such as belongs to few fictitious characters. Habitually and instinctively men pay Ibsen the compliment (so often paid to Shakespeare) of discussing her as though she were a real woman, living a life of her own, quite apart from the poet’s creative intelligence. The very critics who begin by railing at her as a puppet end by denouncing her as a woman. She irritates, troubles, fascinates them as no puppet ever could. Moreover, the triumph of the actress is the dramatist’s best defence. Miss Achurch might have the genius of Rachel and Desclée in one, yet she could not transmute into flesh and blood the doctrinary doll, stuffed with sawdust and sophistry, whom some people declare Nora to be. Men do not shudder at the agony or weep over the woes of an intellectual abstraction. As for Helmer, I am not aware that any one has accused him of unreality. He is too real for most people – is commonplace, unpleasant, objectionable. The truth is, he touches us too nearly; he is the typical husband of what may be called chattel matrimony. If there are few Doll’s-Houses in England, it is certainly for lack of Noras, not for lack of Helmers. I admit that in my opinion Ibsen has treated Helmer somewhat unfairly. He has not exactly disguised, but has omitted to emphasize, the fact that if Helmer helped to make Nora a doll, Nora helped to make Helmer a prig. By giving Nora all the logic in the last scene (and she is not a scrupulous dialectician) he has left the casual observer to conclude that he lays the whole responsibility on Helmer. This conclusion is not just, but it is specious; and so far, and so far only, I grant that the play has somewhat the air of a piece of special pleading. I shall presendy discuss the last scene in greater detail; but even admitting for the moment that the polemist here gets the better of the poet, can we call the poet, who has moved freely through two acts and two-thirds, nothing but a doctrinary polemist?