Love’s Comedy by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Henrik Ibsen

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Love’s Comedy by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ibsen includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘Love’s Comedy by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ibsen’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788775779

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright who thrived during the late nineteenth century. He began his professional career at age 15 as a pharmacist’s apprentice. He would spend his free time writing plays, publishing his first work Catilina in 1850, followed by The Burial Mound that same year. He eventually earned a position as a theatre director and began producing his own material. Ibsen’s prolific catalogue is noted for depicting modern and real topics. His major titles include Brand, Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler.

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The Complete Works of

HENRIK IBSEN

VOLUME 7 OF 29

Love’s Comedy

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2013

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘Love’s Comedy’

Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition (in 29 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 577 9

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 7 of the Delphi Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen in 29 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Love’s Comedy from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Henrik Ibsen or the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

HENRIK IBSEN

IN 29 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Plays

1, Catiline

2, The Burial Mound

3, Lady Inger of Oestraat

4, The Feast at Solhaug

5, Olaf Liljekrans

6, The Vikings at Helgeland

7, Love’s Comedy

8, The Pretenders

9, Brand

10, Peer Gynt

11, The League of Youth

12, Emperor and Galilean

13, Pillars of Society

14, A Doll’s House

15, Ghosts

16, An Enemy of the People

17, The Wild Duck

18, Rosmersholm

19, The Lady from the Sea

20, Hedda Gabler

21, The Master Builder

22, Little Eyolf

23, John Gabriel Borkman

24, When We Dead Awaken

The Poems

25, The Poetry

The Norwegian Texts (De norske tekster)

26, The Original Texts

The Non-Fiction

27, Speeches and New Letters

The Criticism

28, The Criticism

The Biography

29, The Life of Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

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Love’s Comedy

Translated by C. H. Herford

After the production of The Vikings at Helgeland in 1857, five years were to pass before a new play by Ibsen would appear, being the longest delay in his career as a writer. This was chiefly due to his obligations in the post as artistic director of Kristiania Norske Theater. The idea of Love’s Comedy originated in 1858, when themes of love and marriage were on Ibsen’s mind at that time, as on June 18, 1858 he married Suzannah Thoresen. Two central female characters in The Vikings at Helgeland and Love’s Comedy, Hjørdis and Svanhild, were said to have been modelled on Suzannah.

On June 20, 1862 Ibsen signed a contract with Jonas Lie, the new owner of the weekly literary magazine Illustreret Nyhedsblad, regarding the publication of Love’s Comedy. The play was advertised as the magazine’s New Year Gift for 1863 and delivered free to all subscribers. On New Year’s Eve it arrived at the homes of those living in Christiania, while for those living in other places it was issued with the magazine’s number of January 4th 1863.

From January 1863 Ibsen had been attached to Christiania Theatre as the aesthetic consultant. Kristiania Norske Theater had gone bankrupt in the summer of 1862, and on June 1st Ibsen had been released from his post at the theatre.  However, the first performance of the play did not take place at this theatre for another ten years. There was a small notice in the magazine Illustreret Nyhedsblad of January 25, 1863 to the effect that the play would shortly be produced at the theatre, but the book received poor reviews and the performance was cancelled. Word had spread that the play was immoral, so the theatre did not venture to challenge public opinion.

The first performance of Love’s Comedy took place on November 24, 1873 at Christiania Theatre and was a success. Josephson directed, and Sigvart and Laura Gundersen played the parts of Falk and Svanhild.

Suzannah Ibsen (1836-1914) became engaged to Ibsen in January 1856 and they were married in June 1858. Their only child, Sigurd Ibsen, was born in December, 1859.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PERSONS OF THE COMEDY

ACT FIRST

ACT SECOND

ACT THIRD.

INTRODUCTION

Koerlighedens Komedie was published at Christiania in 1862. The polite world — so far as such a thing existed at the time in the Northern capital — received it with an outburst of indignation now entirely easy to understand. It has indeed faults enough. The character-drawing is often crude, the action, though full of effective by-play, extremely slight, and the sensational climax has little relation to human nature as exhibited in Norway, or out of it, at that or any other time. But the sting lay in the unflattering veracity of the piece as a whole; in the merciless portrayal of the trivialities of persons, or classes, high in their own esteem; in the unexampled effrontery of bringing a clergyman upon the stage. All these have long since passed in Scandinavia, into the category of the things which people take with their Ibsen as a matter of course, and the play is welcomed with delight by every Scandinavian audience. But in 1862 the matter was serious, and Ibsen meant it to be so.

For they were years of ferment — those six or seven which intervened between his return to Christiania from Bergen in 1857, and his departure for Italy in 1864. As director of the newly founded Norwegian Theatre, Ibsen was a prominent member of the little knot of brilliant young writers who led the nationalist revolt against Danish literary tradition, then still dominant in well-to-do, and especially in official Christiania. Well-to-do and official Christiania met the revolt with contempt. Under such conditions, the specific literary battle of the Norwegian with the Dane easily developed into the eternal warfare of youthful idealism with respectability and convention. Ibsen had already started work upon the greatest of his Norse Histories — The Pretenders. But history was for him little more than material for the illustration of modern problems; and he turned with zest from the task of breathing his own spirit into the stubborn mould of the thirteenth century, to hold up the satiric mirror to the suburban drawing-rooms of Christiania, and to the varied phenomena current there, — and in suburban drawing-rooms elsewhere, — under the name of Love.

Yet Love’s Comedy is much more than a satire, and its exuberant humour has a bitter core; the laughter that rings through it is the harsh, implacable laughter of Carlyle. His criticism of commonplace love-making is at first sight harmless and ordinary enough. The ceremonial formalities of the continental Verlobung, the shrill raptures of aunts and cousins over the engaged pair, the satisfied smile of enterprising mater-familias as she reckons up the tale of daughters or of nieces safely married off under her auspices; or, again, the embarrassments incident to a prolonged Brautstand following a hasty wooing, the deadly effect of familiarity upon a shallow affection, and the anxious efforts to save the appearance of romance when its zest has departed — all these things had yielded such comedy as they possess to many others before Ibsen, and an Ibsen was not needed to evoke it. But if we ask what, then, is the right way from which these cosmic personages in their several fashions diverge; what is the condition which will secure courtship from ridicule, and marriage from disillusion, Ibsen abruptly parts company with all his predecessors. ‘Of course,’ reply the rest in chorus, ‘a deep and sincere love’;—’together,’ add some, ‘with prudent good sense.’ The prudent good sense Ibsen allows; but he couples with it the