1. IrvingSnodgrass - July 5, 1999 - 9:22 AM PT
Welcome to the Modern Drama thread. The following comes from benear's description of what this thread will be about (from the Suggestions thread):
24747. benear - June 30, 1999 - 6:42 AM PT
I have a curriculum in mind but will remain very flexible to incorporate the interests and desires of other participants. However, to get the ball rolling, I think I will start out with a discussion of "What is Modern Drama?" Sorta arrive at a consensus on definition and how modern plays are different or similar to pre-modern plays. Then launch into a play a week format. I will announce the first play on the 5th but give people a week or so to read it before discussion begins. That's the plan but, I am very open to suggestions.
See you on the 5th.
Sincerely yours,
benear
I hope you'll all join our host benear in making this an interesting and informative thread. I look forward to the discussions in this, our first-ever Fray thread devoted to the theatre.
2. cllrdr - July 5, 1999 - 5:01 PM PT
Hmmm. Thought I had an answer there for a moment, but now I'm not so sure. Modern Drama serves the same class interests as Classical Drama though the societal formations of the latter differ from the former in many significant ways. Modern Drama has been affected by the wholsale rexamination of notions of the "self" which didn't exist in previous eras -- even though "Oedipus Rex" centers around that old saw, "Who am I, really?" Modern drama is more internalized, yet it can be just as spectacularized. There's a level at which "Angels in America" would have been right at home in Belasco-era theater.
Other random thoughts: The "intimacy" of most first-person on-on-one performance pieces is generally fake (Julia Sweeney being a major exception). The new standard for "seriousness" is plays about people being horrid to each other -- "Closer," David Mamet Inc. (recently he's got in touch with his "inner Lesbian," I hear), and that Neil LaBute Mormon existentialism hootenany with Calista Flockhead. Everyone seems to forget that Albee's George and Martha actually *loved* one another.
And then there's "Waiting for Godot."
"That passed the time."
"It would have passed anyway."
3. benear - July 6, 1999 - 5:31 AM PT
Arisotle asserted there are six elements of drama. They are:
1. Plot
2. Character(s)
3. Thought (theme or what the play is about)
4. Diction
5. Song
6. Spectacle
To a large extent, drama incorporated these six elements to at least a certain extent (most of Shakespeare's play do contain songs) until the advent of the modern age. In the last quarter of the 19th century drama began to change dramatically (no pun intended). The first element to go was spectacle. This element is now relegated primarily to the movies and the stage has become a place where the drama (if you will) has become internalized, much as Celler has stated.
Song has also largely been dispensed with.
But how can you have a play without the other four elements? Plot, Characters, Theme (action) and Diction (language). To a certain extent you can't. However, Aristotle might not recognize these elements in many of the modern dramas. Authors have greatly experimented with minimizing and mutating these elements. "Waiting for Godot" it can be argued has little in the way of a traditional plot and is for the most part actionless, although it certainly has a theme.
But I digress.
4. benear - July 6, 1999 - 5:44 AM PT
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) a Norweigian is largely credited as the "Father" of modern drama. He created two of the most memorable plays ever in "A Doll's House" and "Hedda Gabler". These plays are still produced today and are revelent to our times.
Ibsen introduced realism into drama. And he changed the diction. The language of his plays is the common language spoken by the man on the street. Gone was the poetry and rhyme of earlier periods. Also gone was the elevated language of the Aristocracy. His characters were plain spoken. His characters were also middle class.
5. benear - July 6, 1999 - 5:49 AM PT
To open this discussion I offer the following distinctions that differentiate modern drama from everything that went before:
1. Realism and Expressionism
2. The characters are from the middle and lower classes of society
3. The language is the common language and is not elevated.
6. benear - July 6, 1999 - 6:04 AM PT
Drama became realistic as a result of three men who changed the way man viewed himself and the universe. Issac Newton (1642-1727) and the physicists and scientist who came after him were explaining a universe that was mechinistic rather than magical or mythical. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) began to explain the behavior of man that was based on reason and science rather than myth. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) explained the origins of man based on science rather than myth.
As a result, plays, plots, and characters became realistic and humanistic rather than mythical. Authors dispensed with monologues and declarative language in favor of dialogue which the actors directed to each other rather than to the audience. The "fourth wall" became an integral part of the stage. The play proceeded as if the audience was not present.
Expressionism was introduced in order to make plays even more realistic in the sense of explaining man and his universe. But more about that later.
7. benear - July 6, 1999 - 6:15 AM PT
I have specific plays that I like. However, I think we should discuss authors and their work in general so that more people will wish to participate in this discussion. To start, I think we should discuss Ibsen. I prefer "Hedda Gabler" and will be discussing that play beginning this Friday. However, If you wish to read and discuss one of his other plays, I would welcome it. The following are the authors I would like to discuss in order:
1. Ibsen
2. Strindberg
3. Wilde
4. Shaw
5. Chekhov
6. Gorki
7. Synge
8. Pirandello
9. O'Neill
10. Lorca
11. Odets
12. Wilder
13. Brecht
14. Giradoux
15. Hellman
16. Williams
17. Miller
18. Beckett
19. Ionesco
20. Pinter
21. Albee
22. Jones
I am stopping in the 1960's primarily because after that I think we are in a Post-Modern period. However, Celler has already mentioned some more recent plays and I encourage discussion about them also.
8. benear - July 6, 1999 - 6:31 AM PT
Last Friday, I located the entire text of "Peer Gynt" (1867) on the internet. The link to it is not working for me today, however so I won't post it. I have found some college term papers posted on "A Doll's House" (1878-1879) but like most term papers, they are uninteresting. You may also enjoy other plays by Ibsen such as "Ghosts" (1881) and "The Master Builder" (1892). If you know of any useful information that is on the web about Ibsen or his plays, please point us to them. My search has been largely fruitless.
9. uzmakk - July 6, 1999 - 7:02 AM PT
Very interesting, benear. My eldest son, 14 years old, is heavy into drama and has taken part in a couple of professional productions in the past couple years. Your analysis , Newton, Freud, Darwin is very interesting. Drama minus the elements of a story, very interesting. Look forward to this.
10. Jenerator - July 6, 1999 - 12:08 PM PT
benear,
I never really grew up with an appreciation of drama or theatre. As I get older, I get more curious. Where do you recommend as a good place to start in order to get a good taste of the modern drama that you love? I will be moving to England in the fall, and from what I hear, the arts are fabulous there.
11. ChristinO - July 6, 1999 - 1:01 PM PT
Benear,
Thank you for opening this topic. It's also nice to know that my education in Modern Drama had the right playwrights in it. Either that or you too studied from The Masters of Modern Drama.
I was wondering if as a transition from Ibsen to Strindberg we might spend a day or two comparing Ibsen's Ghosts to Strindberg's Miss Julie. The playwrights had a long and vicious rivalry and these two plays I think show up their differences quite well.
My other request would be to add Buchner's Woyzeck to the list. There are several translations/arrangments of this play but I have a particular one in mind if I can dig it up. I ask this particularly because I'd like to be able to discuss it at the same time as Jacob's Ladder in the Movies thread. The parallels between the two are numerous, but different arrangements of Woyzeck give sometimes vastly different impressions.
I look forward to the discussions here!
12. cmboyce - July 6, 1999 - 1:04 PM PT
This already looks like a very good thread, benear. Congratulations and, more importantly, thanks!
One quibble: I don't think Freud can have exercised a tremendous influence on the earliest "modern" drama. His first important publication (_Interpretation of Dreams_) was only published in 1900 (after virtually all of Ibsen and most of Strindberg and Chekhov, in the year of Wilde's death, only two years before "The Lower Depths", Gorki's only important play, and after a fair deal of Shaw's work, which seems more influenced by socialism than psychiatry, even thereafter). Aside from Shaw, the first of your list (which seems exemplary) to have even had theoretical access to Freud is Synge, who certainly shows no sign of having read him.
I think that Freud's influence outside his own bailiwick only commences around 1910 and that he was only widely appreciated after the War.
But no real matter. I'd say Freud was himself informed, in at least some degree, by that characteristically modern notion of "individualism" (especially in its political aspect), so he and, say, Ibsen or Wilde, may fairly be said to have had common influences.
13. benear - July 6, 1999 - 1:13 PM PT
Jen: I suggest you start right here. You should be able to find the plays we have mentioned in most any library. All of the ones that I plan to discuss are still in print and many are still performed in college productions. Our discussion should enlighten you not only about the plots and characters but also about the context of the play.
I highly recommend starting with "Hedda Gabler". It is fast paced and a quick read. I will begin to discuss it Friday morning.
14. Jenerator - July 6, 1999 - 1:15 PM PT
Thanks benear!;-)
15. benear - July 6, 1999 - 1:19 PM PT
Christin: You are correct about Ibsen and Strindberg. I had planned to move from Hedda Gabler to Strindberg's "Dream Play". Please feel free to substitute your plays for mine. Even though we won't be discussing the same plays, you can make your comments about "Ghosts" and "Miss Julie" and our joint discussion of all four plays will shed much light on both authors for all.
I am not familiar with Buchner. I will try to find it. Where on my list (which is primarily chronological) would you place him?
16. benear - July 6, 1999 - 1:23 PM PT
Btw: Christin, the text I have is "A Treasury of the Theatre", ed., John Gassner and Bernard F. Dukore. Holt, Rinehart, Winston (New York, 1970). Another reason I am planning to stop in the '60's. I run out of book at about that time.
17. benear - July 6, 1999 - 1:27 PM PT
cmboyce: You are totally correct. Freud had no influence on Ibsen's realism. As we get to the later more expressionistic plays, I was planning to discuss Freud and the psycholocial aspects of drama.
18. ChristinO - July 6, 1999 - 1:29 PM PT
Benear,
Buchner was born in 1813 and died in 1837 while in the process of finishing his play Woyzeck. The play actually IS complete, but there are several different arrangements. It will take me a couple of days to track down the one I'm thinking of which I feel is the most coherent and moving.
I don't know for sure but would doubt that the following link is the translation I'm looking for since the most popular is not actually the best.
Buchner & Woyzeck
19. cmboyce - July 6, 1999 - 1:33 PM PT
I have long wanted to get to know Buchner (1813-1837, incidentally, a _very_ early modern) but haven't gotten to it. What is the translation you refer to ChristinO? I have in the house (having read "Danton's Death" many years ago—and subsequently forgotten it entirely) a Complete Plays, tr. Carl Richard Mueller, but I'd be pleased to get another if there is one widely considered superior.
20. cmboyce - July 6, 1999 - 1:39 PM PT
ChristinO,
My #19 was begun before your #18 appeared. Keep hunting for a good translation (but I can't check your lesser one, since the link didn't work ("Error 404").
21. ChristinO - July 6, 1999 - 1:39 PM PT
Benear,
It's almost the exact same line-up as 'Masters' only ours went for the total sausage-fest and excluded Hellman in favor of Osborne's Look Back In Anger.
cmboyce,
I have to go by Samuel French and find it because I don't remember off the top of my head. All I know is that it is NOT the one with the dark green/gray cover. I'll let you know as soon as possible. I've got a meeting up on Sunset this evening anyway so I should be able to get by SF and let you know tomorrow.
22. ChristinO - July 6, 1999 - 1:40 PM PT
dang! I hate it when that happens.
Nevermind the link for now. I'll get the goods tonight and let you know for sure.
23. benear - July 6, 1999 - 3:28 PM PT
Christin: I have reviewed my text and there is no mention of Buchner. There is some discussion of the use of realism prior to Ibsen but it is treated as isolated anomolies. Gassner makes the statement, "Up to the eighteen-seventies, most of the plays clung to the conventions of a decadent romanticism, even when they dealt with contemporary characters and problems."
Please feel free to discuss Woyseck. I would be interested to know if Buchner pioneered in the three areas I have described as differentiating Modern Drama.
1. The use of realism or expressionism vs. romanticism
2. Protagonists from the middle and lower classes as oppossed to Aristocracy and royalty. To this I will add themes of contemporary problems as oppossed to grand politics and matters of State.
3. The use of common everyday language as oppossed to elevated and formal language.
24. benear - July 6, 1999 - 3:36 PM PT
Some clarification with regard to Freud:
Gassner states, "No one familiar with the drama since Sophocles would maintain that "psychological drama" was invented by realists and naturalists. Not even in the clinical sense of the term was psychology unknown in the theatre until the advent of modern playwrights such as Strindberg and O'Neill. The intuitions of Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare were just as valid and penetrating as O'Neill's schematizations, if not indeed more so. (As Freud himself pointed out, the world's artists had discovered the "unconscious" long before clinicians, including himself, found a place for it in their case reports.) But the realistic dramatists were the first to represent psychological deviations or complexities directly rather than suggestively or symbolically and to locate them in familiar, contemporary backgrounds rather than to imply them in the context of myth or history."
25. ChristinO - July 6, 1999 - 3:42 PM PT
Benear,
I think Woyzeck will qualify. It is definitely a story of the middle and lower class and it's certainly expressionistic. The language can be poetic, but not in a metered classical style. Also compelling are the psychological elements.
I'll hold off here for a bit as I need to re-read the play----it's been about 6 years since I first read it. I don't recall if Buchner was specifically included as a "before his time" modernist or if he is considered an anomally in damatic history without a niche.
26. cllrdr - July 6, 1999 - 6:37 PM PT
And Buchner is central to Brecht -- who basically ripped him off for years.
27. cmboyce - July 6, 1999 - 9:00 PM PT
Message #24
benear: good quote. That does indeed seem to fit the bill. One of the features of modern drama that we can watch for, I guess, is the increasing involvement of the playwrights in the modern, psychological (clinically-informed), take on human nature.
ChristinO, I think that Buchner, writing in the 1830s, must surely be in some sense a "Romantic", doubtless influenced by Goethe and Schiller, the Romantic cult of Shakespeare (as, among other things, a rare presenter of common folk's lives) and, probably, English romantic poetry with its insistence on a focus on common life (even if that insistence was often honored in the breach). Thus, he is not "without a niche". However, the reason I've known of him and wanted to read him is precisely that he seems to be considered a "modernist" avant la lettre, in his expressionism and his concern with social questions.
All of which sounds pretty cool! And the late 18th-early 19th century that was his world (in life and proximate influences) is where the modern, in art and thought, first gets rolling. Let's read him.
28. cmboyce - July 6, 1999 - 10:22 PM PT
ChristinO, I've been browsing in the Introduction to the Buchner book I have (I think it _is_ the apparantly lamentable gray-green one) and have found the following:
"...wrote three plays [that's the total], two of them so extraordinary that they have served as the impetus for literary movements down to the present day's [ie, "All Saint's Day, 1962"] Theatre of the Absurd. Theodore Hoffman has recently listed them as: Naturalism, Social Realism, Psychological Irrationalism, Expressionism, and Existential Theatre. He is the seemingly inexhaustible source of modern drama and has been universally extolled by the leaders of the aforementioned movements. And yet, though he was far ahead of his own time, and though he sank into virtual oblivion after his death, until his rediscovery by the first of the great Naturalist playwrights, Gerhart Hauptmann, he is still in advance of our own age. Only time will demonstrate what new movements he will father for future generations."
Hotcha! Hotcha!
29. cmboyce - July 7, 1999 - 9:12 PM PT
ChristinO, if you look in,
if you've determined on a Buchner translation (though of course there's no pressing need to hurry), could you post it by tomorrow morning? I'll be leaving town in the afternoon for a weekend of wedding (and so, to my dismay, will miss the opening remarks on Hedda G.), and I can get to the Drama Bookshop, which will pretty certainly have it, before I go. It would be good hotel reading.
But if not, of course, next week will do fine. I may well find the celebration and its attendent spirituous waters sufficient entertainment in any case.
30. ChristinO - July 8, 1999 - 5:20 PM PT
Well, I haven't spent the entire two days looking for this translation, but a good few hours. I've checked Amazon and B&N and Samuel French and three local libraries as well as my old university library and then I finally broke down and tracked down my former professor to see if she remembered.
Turns out it's part of Methuen's Drama Classics series and it is out of print. The translation is by Michael Patterson.
It is NOT necessary, however, to have this one translation, it's just the one that I prefer and think makes the most sense. There's nothing at all wrong with the others so far as I know. This one just appeals to my brain's sense of organization.
I did find a Methuen edition at Amazon, but it's by another translator---Gregory Motton.
The one I'm holding in my hot little hand having driven all over LA to find is published by Samuel French, Inc. and the translator is one Eric Bentley. I'm hoping he's not too terribly British since there are some rather raw bits of Woyzeck that do not need to be prettied up as often happens with Brecht.
According to my professor who is one of the movers and shakers in the International Brecht Society the definitive word on Buchner is by John Reddick who just published a lenghty (and expensive) tome on the playwright:
Georg Buchner: The Shattered Whole
31. RustlerPike - July 8, 1999 - 11:04 PM PT
ChristinO:
1. When did you realize you were thespian?
2. Where's that e-mail you promised me a week ago?
32. benear - July 9, 1999 - 4:39 AM PT
Ibsen flouted middle class convention in his writing. He was deeply middle class himself. He injected realism into his early romantic dramas and symbolism into his late realistic ones. Ibsen's work falls into three categories and three periods of his life.
1. Romantic drama starting with his first play in 1850, "Cataline", a verse drama and ending with "Emperor and Galilian" in 1873.
2. Realistic drama beginning with "The Pillars of Society" in 1877 and ending with "Hedda Gabler" in 1890.
3. Symbolist drama beginning with "The Lady From The Sea" in 1888 and ending with "When We Dead Awaken" in 1899.
The realistic period is the most interesting and contains his greatest plays. In addition to the two mentioned above, this period saw "A Doll's House", "Ghosts", and "An Enemy Of The People". Ibsen's innovation was to present social problems of importance to their day in an unorthodox manner. As a result, he became a hero to progressives and the Antichrist to conservatives.
33. benear - July 9, 1999 - 4:48 AM PT
Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skien in S.E. Norway into a wealthy merchant family. His father lost his fortune when Ibsen was 8. Socially ostracized, Ibsen was sent to a "poor people's" school and received an inferior education.
In his teens, Ibsen was apprenticed to a pharmacist and in his late teens got involved in radical politics, drinking and carrousing. He fathered an illigitimate child that he supported for 14 years.
In his early 20's he signed political protests and joined a secret revolutionary society. The leaders of the organization were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms within a year. Ibsen was shocked and, thereafter, refrained from any political activities.
In 1850, "The Warrior's Bow" was published to some acclaim and launched his career as a playwright. He became a theater poet and the stage manager of the national theater in Bergen. He also studied the stage in Copenhagen and Dresden.
In 1857 he became the Director of the Norweigian Theater in Christiania (Oslo). In 1858 he married the daughter of the dean of a church in Bergen and fathered a son. His marriage lasted the rest of his life.
In 1864, Ibsen left Norway and lived in voluntary exile for the next 27 years, starting first in Rome.
34. benear - July 9, 1999 - 4:57 AM PT
In 1867, Ibsen published "Peer Gynt", a reverse treatment of the theme of heroism. The hero never commits himself to anything and is deficient in integrity. This careless hero became the incarnation of the spinelessness and opportunism that Ibsen deplored in his country. "Peer Gynt" is a classic indictment of the antiheroic modern man. For a romantic drama, it was an unusually devastating social expose' and remains a modern masterpiece.
In 1869, Ibsen left romanticism for realism. His "The League of Youth" caused riots when it was performed in Norway. League was a prose satire of political opportunism and pseudo liberalism.
In 1879 came "A Doll's House", the fruit of Ibsen's reflection on women's dependent status in society and a response to the growing clamor for women's rights. It's production in Christiania drew a storm of protest against the heroine Nora's leaving her husband in search of self realization.
To the opposition, Nora (and Ibsen) took an ax not merely to the "doll's house" Nora abandoned but to the very foundations of church and state. Nora left her home after discovering that she was the useless property of her husband. Doll's House was universally denounced as "unnatural".
35. benear - July 9, 1999 - 5:02 AM PT
Ibsen reversed the situation with "Ghosts" in 1881. Mrs. Alving heeds her minister's advice and doesn't leave her husband. The resulting tragic consequences are very unnatural. In "Ghosts" Ibsen incorporated environment and heredity as decisive factors in his drama. He went so far toward abolishing plot that he eliminated all events antecedent to the critical situation.
Needless to say, "Ghosts" was an even bigger scandal than Doll's House and to many critics remains Ibsen's greatest play.
36. benear - July 9, 1999 - 5:07 AM PT
After "Ghosts", Ibsen replied to his critics with a vehement polemic, "An Enemy Of The People" (1883). In 1884, he published "The Wild Duck" which marked an important change in direction. Ibsen began to concentrate on characters rather than social ideas. He locates the conflict in the characters. The internalization that defines Modern Drama.
Which brings us to "Hedda Gabler". Ibsen expressed his aims as presenting characters, emotions and human destinies "upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day."
37. benear - July 9, 1999 - 5:11 AM PT
Hedda Gabler
Characters:
George Tesman
Hedda Tesman, his wife.
Miss Juliana Tesman, his aunt (Aunt Julia)
Mrs. Elvsted (Thea)
Judge Brack
Eilert Lovborg (I apologize, I don't do umlauts)
Berta, servent to the Tesman's
The scene: Tesman's villa in the West end of Christiania. It is autumn.
38. benear - July 9, 1999 - 5:48 AM PT
Act I
Aunt Julia comes to visit the Tesmans and finds them not yet up. She has a conversation with Berta in which we learn the Tesmans have just returned late the previous evening from a 6 month honeymoon abroad. They also discuss Berta's recent transition and new mistress (Hedda). Berta is a long time family servant who has taken care of Tesman since he was a little boy.
Hedda has returned from the trip with numerous boxes from her shopping abroad. It is revealed that Hedda is the daughter of General Gabler, she is beautiful and was beset by admirers. It becomes very clear that Hedda is used to the finer things in life and the Tesmans are rather plain folk who have chintz covers on their furniture. (The furniture in the Tesman house has been provided by Julia). These covers had been removed at the direction of Hedda the previous evening.
Tesman was conferred a Ph.D at a foriegn university while he was abroad on his honeymoon. Tesman's father died when he was a boy and he was raised by his two maiden aunts, Julia and Aunt Rina, his father's sisters. Rina is now an invalid and is cared for by Julia.
Julia has bought a new bonnet "so Hedda needn't be ashamed of me if we happened to go out together."
39. benear - July 9, 1999 - 5:56 AM PT
Tesman enters and converses with Aunt Julia. It is revealed he is more than a little dense. Julia quizes him about "expectations" clearly trying to determine if Hedda is pregnant. Tesman responds that he has an "expectation of being a professor one of these days."
There are two empty rooms in the house. Julia say they'll "find some use for them." implying as a nursery. Tesman responds that the rooms will become useful as a library as his book collection expands.
It becomes clear that Hedda gets what Hedda wants. The trip abroad was for her and the house too. The house is beyond Tesman's means but he has secured it for Hedda on the expectation of becoming a professor at the university. The house and its furnishings was arranged for by Judge Brack who obtained "favorable terms" for the mortgaging of Aunt Julia and Aunt Rina's annuity.
Tesman is writing a bok about domestic industries of Brabant during the Middle Ages. Tesman is in his early 30's, Hedda is 29.
40. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:04 AM PT
Hedda enters.
"Her face and figure show refinement and distinction. Her complexion is pale and opaque. Her steel-grey eyes express a cold, unruffled repose. Her hair is of an agreeable medium brown, but not particularly abundant. She is dressed in a tasteful, somewhat loose-fitting morning gown." (Ibsen's direction)
Aunt Julia prepares to leave but gives Tesman his "old morning-shoes" which were lovingly embroidered by his ill Aunt Rina. It soon becomes apparent there are other things cold about Hedda other than her eyes.
Hedda states that they shall never get on with Berta. Tesman asks why. Hedda replys that Berta has "left her old bonnet lying about on a chair" pointing to Julia's new bonnet.
Julia begins to leave in a huff when Tesman trying to smooth things over points out that Hedda has "filled out" during their trip. Hedda denies anything has changed. Julia kisses her and tells her how lovely she is, then leaves. Tesman walks her out. "Hedda walks about the room raising her arms and clenching her hands as if in desperation." (Ibsen's direction)
41. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:11 AM PT
Mrs. Elvsted (Thea) visits. She is the sheriff's wife and is 2 years younger than Hedda. They were in school together. She lives in the sticks and her husband travels frequently, leaving her alone with Lovborg, the tutor to Thea's stepchildren. Thea was Elvsted's governess while the former Mrs. Elvsted was an invalid. After she died, Thea married Elvsted when she was 22 and he was in his 40's. He is "repellant" to her and she has left him to follow Lovborg to the city. She is very concerned for Lovborg's well-being.
Lovborg is a rival of Tesman and has already published a book which has received some acclaim. Lovborg was "going to ruin" until Thea had a positive influence over him and began helping him with his writing.
42. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:14 AM PT
Thea is aware Lovborg has a past love but doesn't know who the other woman is. It becomes obvious to the audience that it is Hedda.
Hedda: What has he told you about----about this?
Thea: He has only once---quite vaguely---alluded to it.
Hedda: Well! And what did he say?
Thea: He said that when they parted, she threatened to shoot him with a pistol.
43. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:22 AM PT
Brack enters. He is 45 but tries to appear more youthful.
Brack informs Tesman that his appointment to the university may be delayed and his nomination may be conditioned on a competition with Lovborg. (Tesman has been living beyond his means in anticipation of the appointment). He and Hedda married on "the strength of these prospects" and Tesman has run deep into debt.
Brack advises Hedda to be more frugal (Hedda intends to buy a new piano and saddle horse). Hedda replys, "This can make no difference."
The act closes with Hedda and Tesman discussing deferring the piano, horse and footman.
Hedda: Well, I shall have one thing at least to kill time with in the meanwhile.
Tesman: Oh thank heaven for that! What is it, Hedda? Eh?
Hedda: My pistols, George.
Tesman: [In alarm] Your pistols!
Hedda: [With cold eyes] General Gabler's pistols.
Tesman: No, for heaven's sake, Hedda darling----don't touch those dangerous things! For my sake, Hedda! Eh?
44. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:31 AM PT
Act II opens with Hedda dressed to receive callers. She stands alone loading a revolver. Brack enters through the garden.
As he approaches, Hedda raises the pistol and points it at him and says she will shoot him for "sneaking in by the back way." She fires but misses him. It is a prank.
("back way" = bagveje which means both "back ways" and "underhand courses".)
Brack and Hedda discuss how bored she is. Tesman is out visiting his aunts. Brack says if he had known that Tesman was out, he would have come sooner. Hedda replies there would have been no one to receive him as she was dressing.
Brack: And is there no sort of little chink that we could hold a parlay through?
Hedda: You have forgotten to arrange one.
Brack: That was another piece of stupidity.
They have a conversation with many double entendres. Brack refers to her "love" for Tesman. She replies "don't use that sickening word."
It is revealed that Hedda married Tesman because of his "correctness and respectability." Also Tesman proposed to take care of her. She says, "It was more than my other adorers were prepared to do for me."
Brack proposes a "triangular friendship"
45. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:40 AM PT
Tesman enters with an armload of books including Lovborg's.
He tells Hedda Aunt Julia will not visit that evening. Hedda asks if it is because of the crack about the bonnet. Tesman says, no it is because Aunt Rina has taken a turn for the worse. Tesman leaves.
Hedda tells Brack she pretended the bonnet was Berta's knowing it was Julia's all along.
Hedda: Well you see---these impulses come over me all of a sudden; and I cannot resist them. Oh, I don't know how to explain it.
Hedda relates that she didn't really want the house but told Tesman she did while they were walking past it one evening. Tesman was tongue tied and Hedda remarked on the house as a way to make conversation. This idle remark led to their engagement and marriage.
Hedda talks more of how bored she will be. Brack suggests she will soon be busy (implying children). in response,
Hedda: [Angrily] Be quiet! Nothing of that sort will ever happen!
46. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:51 AM PT
Enter Lovborg (by invitation from Tesman in response to Thea's pleas to Tesman that she was concerned Lovborg would revert to his old ways while in the city).
Brack, Tesman and Lovborg discuss Lovborg's book. Lovborg reveals he is at work on a second book, "the real book". Brack invites Lovborg to a batchelor party he has arranged that evening in honor of Tesman.
Hedda insists Lovborg remain for supper with her and Thea and tells him he is "bound" in order to escort Thea home. Lovborg chooses to remain with Hedda.
Lovborg says he will not compete with Tesman for the university position. Tesman is relieved. Hedda offers the men "cold punch". Lovborg declines.
Brack: Why bless me---cold punch is surely not poison.
Lovborg: Perhaps not for every one.
Brack and Tesman go for punch and cigarettes leaving Lovborg and Hedda alone. Loveborg addresses Hedda with the familiar "du" instead of the formal "de". Lovborg asks, "Oh Hedda, Hedda---how could you throw yourself away?" Hedda reveals she does not love Tesman, "But I won't hear of any sort of unfaithfulness!"
Lovborg asks Hedda if she didn't love him when they were friends at least just a "tinge of love". Hedda replies there was something beautiful, facinating and daring "in that secret intimacy".
Lovborg reveals it was indeed Hedda that broke it off and threatened to shoot him. He asks why she didn't carry out the threat. "Dread of scandal," she replies.
47. benear - July 9, 1999 - 6:55 AM PT
Thea enters.
Hedda taunts Lovborg for not drinking some punch. Thea is mortified. Hedda threatens to reveal to Lovborg how distraught Thea was that morning because she feared that Lovborg would fall into his old habits in the big city.
Lovborg drinks.
Hedda continues to taunt and as a result, Lovborg decides to go to the party with Brack and Tesman. The men leave.
Thea: You have some hidden motive in this, Hedda!
Hedda: Yes, I have. I want for once in my life to have power to mould a human destiny.
48. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:05 AM PT
Act III. It is dawn. Thea slumbers in a chair by the stove where the fire has nearly burnt out. Hedda, fully dressed, is sleeping on the sofa. The men have not come home all night. Berta enters with a letter for Tesman and leaves it on the table. The letter is from Aunt Julia.
The women waited until 4 in the morning, then Hedda slept. Thea did not. Hedda pursuades Thea to go to the bedroom and sleep and promises to wake her as soon as the men arrive.
Tesman enters. Tesman tells Hedda that while Brack made arrangements for the party, Lovborg read to Tesman from his partially finished manuscript. Tesman says, "I believe it is one of the most remarkable things that have ever been written." Tesman admits he feels jealous of Lovborg. Also that Lovborg "is incapable of taking his pleasures in moderation."
He tells Hedda that Lovborg made a "long rambling speech in honor of the woman who had inspired him in his work...." Tesman thinks the woman is Thea.
In the course of the evening, Lovborg dropped his manuscript in the street. Tesman recovered it and shows it to Hedda. Upon questioning, Tesman reveals it is the only copy and he did not return it to Lovborg because he feared he would lose it again in his drunken state. No one else knows he has the MS. Tesman states he will return the MS. Hedda stops him. She wants to read it.
Hedda tells Tesman a letter has arrived from Aunt Julia. The letter says Aunt Rina is dying. Tesman rushes off as Brack enters.
49. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:10 AM PT
In a snide conversation with Hedda, Brack reveals that Lovborg ended the evening at a Mademoiselle Diana's rooms (Diana, mighty huntress of men). Brack reveals Lovborg and Diana had a fight. Lovborg accused Diana of robbing him (of the manuscript). A fracus ensued, the police arrived, Lovborg resisted the police and they hauled him off to jail.
Brack cautions Hedda that because of the scandal, no respectable home will receive Lovborg. He is concerned that Loveborg will be intrusive into....
Hedda: ----into the triangle.
Brack: Precisely. It would simply mean that I should find myself homeless.
Hedda: [Smiles] So you want to be the one cock in the basket.
After more banter, Brack leaves via the "back way"
50. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:18 AM PT
Hedda takes Lovborg's manuscript and locks it in a drawer. Lovborg comes storming in. Hedda pretends that Tesman is asleep and that she is ignorant of the night's events.
Thea enters.
Lovborg tells Thea they must part, that she can be of no further service to him (he dictated his book to her) because he will never work again. He tells Thea he has torn the MS "into a thousand pieces".
Thea tells him it is as if he has killed their child. He agrees it is child murder. Thea leaves distraught.
Lovborg confesses to Hedda that he did not kill the "child", worse, he lost it in a night of "riot and debauchery". He tells Hedda there is nothing left for him but to end it.
Hedda asks him to "do it beautifully". She gives him one of General Gabler's pistols. He leaves.
Hedda retrieves the MS and burns it page by page in the stove.
Hedda: [Wispers to herself] Now I am burning your child, Thea! -----Burning it, curly-locks! Your child and Eilert Lovborg's. I am burning----I am burning your child.
51. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:26 AM PT
Act IV. Evening. Hedda, dressed in black, walks to and fro in the darkened room.
Aunt Julia, in mourning, enters.
Rina has died.
Julia talks of bringing news of death "into this house of life" and of sewing a shroud but that, "here there will soon be sewing too, I suppose----but of another sort, thank God!"
Tesman enters. Aunt Julia exits (after several oblique references to an impending bundle of joy).
Tesman tells Hedda he is uneasy about Lovborg and has been looking for him to tell him the MS is safe. He asks Hedda for it so he can return it. She tells him she has burnt it and did it for Tesman's sake.
Tesman (ever the dense one) is joyful that Hedda has shown such love for him. Hedda starts to tell him she is pregnant but instead tells him to "ask Aunt Julia. She will tell you, fast enough."
Tesman thinks Hedda is still talking about the MS and love.
Thea enters (terrified) and relates she has heard rumors of misfortune befalling Lovborg and something about a hospital.
52. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:30 AM PT
Brack enters and tells them Lovborg has been taken to the hospital on the point of death. He has been shot.
Hedda: [In a clear voice] At last a deed worth doing!
Tesman: [Terrified] Good heavens, Hedda! What are you saying?
Hedda: I say there is beauty in this.
(Hedda thinks Loveborg shot himself in the temple. Brack says he was shot in the breast. Hedda says that is just as beautiful.)
.
.
.
Hedda: Eilert Lovborg has himself made up his account with life. He has had the courage to do----the one right thing.
53. benear - July 9, 1999 - 7:40 AM PT
Thea produces the loose notes she kept of Lovborg's book. Tesman asks to see them. Tesman suggests if they put their heads together, they can reconstruct the book. Tesman and Thea exit to look at the notes.
Hedda speaks to Brack of the freedom a deed of deliberate courage brings and of the beauty of the act.
Brack reveals Lovborg did not shoot himself but was found shot in Mademoiselle Diana's boudoir. He went there talking madly about a lost child.
It seems the pistol discharged while still in his breast pocket and the ball lodged in his bowels. Brack says the pistol "must have been stolen." That there can be no other explination because it was one of General Gabler's pistols.
Brack reveals the police are searching for the owner of the pistol. Brack makes it clear he will keep quiet in exchange for a sexual liaison with Hedda. Brack specifically talks of the idea of Hedda and Mademoiselle Diana being hauled into court together to explain the shooting.
Hedda pleads tiredness and goes into the back room and draws the curtains.
A shot is heard within.
Tesman, Thea and Brack leap to their feet.
Tesman: Oh, now she is playing with those pistols again.
He throws back the curtain. Hedda lies on the sofa lifeless.
Tesman: [Shrieks to Brack] Shot herself! Shot herself in the temple! Fancy that!
Brack: [Half-fainting] Good God!----people don't do such things.
THE END
54. benear - July 12, 1999 - 4:47 AM PT
Well, was Hedda just an evil conniving bitch or did Ibsen have something else in mind?
I think Hedda Gabler is Ibsen's most subtle commentary on the state and status of marriage. In "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" the theme of marriage is also present, however, Ibsen uses a somewhat blunter instrument to examine it.
Hedda's problem is she chose respectability over love, or the possibility of love. In short, she married for the wrong reason.
55. benear - July 12, 1999 - 5:26 AM PT
The supreme irony of the play is that Hedda's stated desire is to have the power to mould the destiny of another human being. Yet, when she has the opportunity to do so, she rejects it.
Thea is a much more modern woman than Hedda. Although she also married for the wrong reason, she chose to do something positive about it. As a result, she is a much happier woman than is Hedda.
The men in the play are weak and flawed. Even Brack is weak in his character. Although Ibsen can be accused of treating his female characters rather harshly, he is far more disdainful of his male characters.
This coming Friday, I will begin to discuss "A Dream Play" by August Strindberg.
56. cllrdr - July 12, 1999 - 6:33 AM PT
First-rate work, b.
I'm sure the Elizabeth Wurzel's of this world would find Hedda sympathetic.
Prozac and newly-discovered PMS wisdom would, needless to say, change the dynamic for a contemporary version. Still such histories seem to repeat themselves on a regular basis -- especially in Republican-rich "family values" settings.
Did you ever see "The Velvet Touch" (1948) with Rosalind Russell and Claire Trevor? She plays a conniving actress who, while appearing in a production of "Hedda," kills her lover and connives to make it look as if Claire did it. Detective Sydney Greenstreet isn't buying, however. It ends with Roz doing "Hedda" and actually killing herself onstage. It was directed by a guy named Jack Gage who was a major queen in Cukor's inner circle.
57. benear - July 12, 1999 - 6:54 AM PT
I don't specifically remember seeing The Velvet Touch, but it sounds wonderful. I will see if I can find it.
An interesting question is could someone like Hedda be realistic in a contempory setting? I think so. There are families that put so much pressure on their offspring to conform to a certain ideal that the result is a stunted, suicidal, or homicidal adult.
Hedda wanted to be a modern woman, shooting pistols and riding saddle horses. She lived vicariously through Lovborg when he regaled her with tales of his debauchery. But because she was the General's daughter, she was so profoundly conservative and fearful of scandal that she ultimately could not breath.
58. HCaulfield - July 12, 1999 - 9:29 AM PT
benear -- Why do you note that the men are weak & flawed? Don't you think there were (are!?) lots of men just like Tesman, Brack, et al?
I would say that the point Ibsen is trying to make is that the state of men/women relations is seriously fucked up. Hedda can't deal with her appointed place in society, so she works out her resentments on those around her: cutting remarks, flirting, and egging on destructive behavior by others.
Remind me at the appropriate time: connections between Hedda & Blanche Dubois.
59. HCaulfield - July 12, 1999 - 9:46 AM PT
I wonder about her desire, "to have the power to mould the destiny of another human being." Doesn't she mould the destiny of Loveborg? Maybe she believes she failed because he didn't deliberately shoot himself in the heart, he accidentally shot his nuts off.
60. benear - July 12, 1999 - 10:58 AM PT
HC: Yes, there are plenty of men like Tesman and Brack, and Lovborg too. I think Ibsen was commenting less about male/female relations than about the institution of marriage itself and the role of women in society. The only role respectably open to Hedda (and women) was that of wife and mother, a role that was anathema to her personality and desires.
She married late in life (29) well past her prime. There is every indication she "settled" for Tesman, a man beneath her socially and intellectually, because the other possibilities dried up.
As for controlling someone else's destiny, this is a romantic notion (and Hedda was a romantic at heart) that will always be doomed to failure. Thea somewhat accomplished this with Lovborg, however, her influence did not flow from a selfish, romantic desire. Hedda controlled the destiny of Lovborg only in a negative, destructive and accidental way. Thea had positive, creative influence.
Probably the only way any human being can influence the destiny of another is through the raising of children, something Hedda rejected. Even this is problematic because as every parent knows, once a child reaches adolescence, the influence one is able to assert, becomes more and more tenuous.
But the whole issue of destiny is interesting. In the late 1800's destiny was no longer something determined by the Gods, but instead was determined by a mechanistic, scientifically explainable universe.
61. cmboyce - July 12, 1999 - 11:25 AM PT
I'd say Hedda certainly moulded Lovborg's destiny; the burning of the manuscript was the act that fed her sense of power. But things didn't go the way she thought they would. The irony lies in her inability to _control_ the moulding.
But that irony is not the main point, which I see as a melding of psychological and social points in the dramatic proposition that the apparantly "motiveless malignity" of a Iago can indeed be traced, to the social circumstances of the only _seemingly_ motiveless villain. Thus, benears's emphasis on the stultifying restraints on married women in Ibsen's world is well taken, but I think it is here a component in an essay on evil rather than on social injustice. Which is to say, it is more nearly "expressionistic"—colored by bold abd arbitrary dramatic manipulations—than realistic. A quite logical progression towards "When We Dead Awaken".
"But the whole issue of destiny is interesting. In the late 1800's destiny was no longer something determined by the Gods, but instead was determined by a mechanistic, scientifically explainable universe."
That's well put. And in this context, the turn toward the pointed arationality of the expressionistic—here in its merest beginnings, admittedly—makes good aesthetic and psychological sense, being both expressive of the distress felt by thinking people at their apparant helplessness in the face of this new sort of future (unwatched over by the old certainties of divine justice) and illustrative of the seemingly cold, cruel world, unconcerned with human pain or aspirations, that inspires such distress.
62. benear - July 12, 1999 - 11:40 AM PT
More irony: Hedda burns the manuscript out of jealosy of Thea rather than in an attempt to control Lovborg's destiny. When they were schoolgirls, Hedda terrorized Thea by pulling her hair. The "curly-locks" she is referring to at the end of Act III is Thea. Thea has luxurious curly hair in contrast to Hedda's.
On one level, Hedda is a spoiled brat who never matured. Again, the result of a society controlled by men who conspired to keep women in essentially a child-like, helpless and dependent state.
63. judithathome - July 12, 1999 - 12:16 PM PT
I think Hedda is a spoiled child who was induldged by her father and doted on by her suitors until they learned her true nature. By becoming pregnant, she has sealed her fate: no longer the center of the universe and soon having to bow out of the spotlight in favor of the baby, she decides the only real destiny she can control totally is her own.
64. benear - July 12, 1999 - 1:04 PM PT
And perhaps it is more than control of her destiny. The child within is increasingly controlling her body. I am told, but do not have firsthand knowledge, there is a feeling of loss of control that accompanies pregnancy. Also, Brack is making a claim to, in essence, control Hedda's body. By shooting herself, Hedda is in reality reassuming control. The issue of control of one's person is a central tenet of the modern movement for women's rights.
Even in Ibsen's day, the issue was not one explicitly of reproductive rights but of a woman as the property of a man, her father, then her husband. It is quickly evident, however, that the issue of reproductive rights follows naturally from the issue of political and social emancipation of women. Voting naturally leads to freedom of choice and abortion, if you will.
Facinating how little some things have changed in a 110 years. Of course, the very idea that a woman would control her own body, that alone her destiny, was anathema to the church and the state in 1890. It is still anathema to most conservative religions, but in the West, the state has finally learned to value women much more equally with men.
65. judithathome - July 12, 1999 - 2:50 PM PT
I can speak with first hand knowlege that once a woman is "with child", her body is most definitely no longer in her control. It was mentioned that Heddas body had thickened somewhat and that her clothes fit more snuggly. These things are beyond ones control; they happen.
I think it odd that the only recourse left to a woman who wanted to be in control was death, the ultimate loss of control. But, it worked as a statement for Hedda...
66. cmboyce - July 13, 1999 - 11:45 AM PT
Actually, it worked as a statement for _Hendrik_. It is Ibsen, not a woman, who finds that "the only recourse left to a woman who wanted to be in control was death, the ultimate loss of control", and I don't think we need suppose that he'd have recommended suicide to a woman friend who found herself pregnant when she didn't want to be. Hedda's suicide is a _coup de theatre_, intended to lend extraordinary emphasis to the dramatic situation the playwright has woven. While the matrix within which this situation arises is realistic, I believe the suicide is not intended to be realistic, but is something else... proto-expressionistic, perhaps (though that idea is anachronistic, of course), but at any rate, rhetorical.
67. benear - July 13, 1999 - 12:31 PM PT
Hedda Gabler was written on the cusp between Ibsen's realistic period and his symbolist period. Some have tried to make much of the pistols as a symbol and of Hedda's reference to laurel leaves or garlands. Others maintain the the pistols are pistols (a cigar is sometimes just a cigar) and that the play is realistic and nothing more.
68. benear - July 13, 1999 - 2:56 PM PT
I have been mulling over cmboyce's assertion in Message #61 that Hedda was evil. Was she? She certainly wasn't Hitler or Stalin evil. The comparison to Iago is a very interesting one and something I haven't heard before. The stunted psychological development, jealousy and need to control are certainly common to both characters. Iago relished his "evilness" and set about his dasterdly deeds with joy. I see no joy in Hedda, only desperation. Iago was fully conscious of his evilness, while I don't think Hedda views herself as evil. In fact, she doesn't know why she does the things she does. She just knows she has impulses she can't control. I would like to hear more discussion on this point.
Also, for HCaulfield, we will have lots of opportunity to compare and contrast Hedda not only with William's female characters but with a few other jucily drawn women such as Regina in Little Foxes and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
69. cllrdr - July 13, 1999 - 3:55 PM PT
She's a lot closer to Martha than Regina. Regina wants money and power -- period. Martha doesn't know what she wants. And neither does Hedda. But Martha, however much superficial noise she makes, implodes. The seemingly quieter Hedda, explodes all over the place.
Ibsen's heroines are all right on the cusp of classical drama and modern "psychological" concerns. True, Hedda looks forward to Williams' heroines in self-destructiveness --especially Blanche who has all of her grandeur. But Hedda also looks backward to Medea and Electra.
70. cmboyce - July 13, 1999 - 9:11 PM PT
I don't exactly think Hedda is "evil" in the manner that Iago is, let alone Stalin, but rather is an avatar of the evil that human psychology can generate, or dissolve into, or succumb to, or something, under stress.
"Evil" is a difficult term to deal with, once one comes to try to pin it down, and I don't have a very clear idea of this particular evil, now that I have (perhaps imprecisely) introduced the term, but I do think that Hedda is an example, or rather that Hedda's _story_ is an example, of the baleful consequences of both a life lived within oppressive constraints, and a life lived in a highly self-centered manner, concerned only with ego-tripping and personal aggrandizement at others' expense (itself doubtless a consequence, here, of the lack of available self-valuation any other way).
That is, she is both a victim of evil, of an unjust and thus evil society (in the mode Ibsen was already a master at depicting), and an evil victimizer, as a psyche running amok (and as such an "expressionistic" motif representing the world's evils).
71. cmboyce - July 13, 1999 - 9:17 PM PT
Let me add one more thing: I think (at least at the moment) that Iago is representative of _supernatural_ evil and Hedda of _social-psychological_ evil. They are thus each appropriate unto their creator's times, and differ accordingly, through all sorts of possible ramifications of thought.
72. benear - July 14, 1999 - 12:56 PM PT
Celler, dear boy, you certainly know how to cut right to the chase. Hedda Gabler is a primo example of how Ibsen stood at the intersection of classical drama and modern drama. He was the first down the road to modernism. It's not too late for you to become a co-host of this thread.
Most, if not all, of the modern playwrights did not look to their immediate predecessors of the 18th and 19th centuries, a period when there was little progress in the development of drama. Rather they turned to the classics and to Shakespeare. They took Aristotle's principles and played with them. They expanded them, deconstructed them, minimized them and deliberately negated them. The body of work that resulted is what we call Modern Drama.
cmboyce: I am still having difficulty characterizing Hedda as evil. The very concept is alien to one of the tenets of modern drama, namely that it has scientific underpinnings. A scientist looks at his subject and does not make value judgements of good and evil. Making a scientific observation on the contents of the diet of a carnivore, for example, a scientist would not characterize the lion as evil and the lamb as good. But would simply observe that the lion killed the lamb on a certain day, at a certain time, in a certain place, using a specific technique and then ate it. The conclusions that a scientist would draw would be rather dispassionate.
It is a question of motivation. What motivates Hedda? It is something internal to her personality and emotional makeup. This does not change the fact that she does terrible things, but the question is why? I don't think she does them because she is evil. She is selfish, self-centered, needy, desperate, sad, but not evil.
However, this introduces the concept of tragedy. Aristotle had a very specific definition of tragedy as well as of comedy. Ibsen made a radical departure from Aristotle's definition. I think we could all agree that Hedda Gabler ends tragical
73. benear - July 14, 1999 - 12:58 PM PT
...ends tragically, however, the play is not a tragedy in the classical sense.
74. cllrdr - July 14, 1999 - 1:19 PM PT
Thank you, B -- but I think you're doing a bang-up job.
You're right re the classical sense of tragedy. The fate of Oedipus, Medea et. al. was viewed by their authors as reflective on the entire society. When the King dies, the world dies with him. That's not what happens when Hedda dies. Her self-destructiveness is *reflective* of a great many aspects of the culture that bore her, but they're still the acts of an individual. Ibsen doesn't let her off the hook in the way pop psychology would. Had Hedda been on Sally Jesse or Ricky Lake, she would have been sent to psychological counseling pronto.
"Your problem, it seems Mrs. Tesman, stems from your relationship with your father. . . ."
75. cmboyce - July 14, 1999 - 1:49 PM PT
Message #72
benear, I pretty much agree with what you say, but I'm trying to look at both the play and it's "modern" quality from a different angle. I'm perfectly willing to avoid the term "evil", but we have the term because it represents an archetype, recognized immemorially (whether it represents something scientifically knowable or not) by humans (its appearance in our repertoire of psychological responses may be species-specific). Modern drama does not reject the archetype, imo, but represents it in its own deliberately novel ways. That early modern drama and literature present arguably "evil" matters in a "clinical", "scientific", "modern" (at any rate), way, is part of the general changing of collective viewpoints over the last few centuries. Evil doings are no longer generally viewed as the work of malevolent deities such as Satan, but they are not generally held non-existant, either.
It is not Hedda who is "evil" in any case, but is rather the vehicle—a carrier, in a medical sense—for the baneful consequences of the social and psychological givens established by the playwright. That Ibsen might have deplored the use of the term to describe these consequences does not mean they do not constitute a valid referent for the word. It is the referent—dramatically negative workings-out of the theme—that I am referring to as depicted evil.
But never mind; I don't think we are really in disagreement about Hedda Gabler, the play. Perhaps our terminological difference here is the tip of some philosophical iceberg, but I don't think it need interfere with our readings of the plays.
76. benear - July 14, 1999 - 1:57 PM PT
Right you are. Aristotle defined a noble tragedy. A tragedy that is ultimately optimistic because it asserts man's dignity and courage in the face of defeat. Also, the tragic hero is usually the cause of his own downfall. There is a causal relationship between the flaw in the hero and his tragic end. Events, however, remain uncontrolled. So in a tragedy defined by Aristotle, the hero's flaw (Oedipus' arrogance) is the direct cause of the tragic events, however, Oedipus has no knowledge or control over the events as they occur. Killing another man in a fight is not tragic. Killing your father while not knowing the man is your father is tragic.
In modern drama, tragedy is democratized. The individual man can be tragic. Still, it is a flaw that causes the tragic end, and the character's still lack control over events.
77. benear - July 14, 1999 - 2:14 PM PT
Actually, cm, I am in total agreement with your points in your last two posts. Excellent analysis.
Before I depart to bury my head in A Dream Play I will make a few final comments about what defines Modern Drama.
Appropriate to what cmboyce has been saying, there is one other man that has great influence on modern drama: Karl Marx (1818-1883). His explination of scocio-economic determinism forms the fourth leg on which modern playwrights built, the other three being Darwin, Freud and Newton. In a nutshell, determinism (biological, psychological and scocio-economic) states that man is subject to natural laws over which he has very little control.
78. benear - July 14, 1999 - 2:21 PM PT
In realism, things are what they are. The characters in a realistic drama represent...themselves and nothing more. Naturalism otoh requires to use of symbols. In a naturalistic drama, the characters represent forces larger than themselves. Naturalism is closely related to realism but takes matters one step further. Naturalism applies scientific laws of determinism to Art. Naturalism actually reveals larger human experience.
Expressionism grows out of impressionism and again is related to realism. Expressionism is also a technique used (largely in the 1920's) to reveal a larger human experience. The technique uses objects to express moods and inner feelings. Realism emphasizes the individual whereas expressionism deemphasizes the individual.
79. benear - July 14, 1999 - 2:28 PM PT
Finally, realism relies on traditional plots. There is first exposition, followed by rising action (complication) leading to climax, followed by falling action with a denoument (tying up all loose ends). Hedda Gabler is a perfect example of a traditional plot. And Ibsen, in general, relied on formulaic plots for his realistic plays. He also downplayed spectacle.
One other characteristic of modern drama is that the plays begin medias res, literally in the middle of things. Again, Hedda Gabler is a perfect example of this.
80. Ronski - July 15, 1999 - 7:44 AM PT
benear,
What role would you say determinism plays or has played in drama in our era? That is, the current time or last few decades, post-Ibsen et al.
81. benear - July 15, 1999 - 8:37 AM PT
Ronski: First I have to say that there has been little new drama produced on or off broadway since the 60's. In the 70's and 80's, there was just not much of anything worth noting being written for the stage. Also ticket prices escalated out of the range of the lower and middle middle class' ability to pay. As a result, the theater is just not attended much any more.
Off the top of my head, the only post-modern plays I can remember are "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" and "Hotl Baltimore". As a result of living in the sticks, I haven't even seen the Angels in America trilogy but have read about it extensively.
I hope that Angels is a harbinger of things to come, but with the costs of production and return on investment for live theater, I am not optimistic. It is just so much safer to invest $50 million in a film and reap a 100% ROI. For the audience, an $8 ticket to a movie is just so much more palatable than a $65 ticket to the theater. Plus you don't have to get dressed up. Lately you just have to be barely dressed at all to go to the movies.
So the role of determinism since the 60's? I haven't a clue.
82. Ronski - July 15, 1999 - 10:42 AM PT
benear,
I was afraid that would be your answer, more or less, given the steep decline in original dramatic works (or even musicals, given the propensity to mount revivals, rather than take a gamble on a new show).
Our next visit to Broadway will probably be Dame Edna, as it happens.
83. cllrdr - July 15, 1999 - 10:47 AM PT
If "Closer" is still running, check it out. It's no great shakes as a play but it's got Rupert Graves in his underwear -- an essential element of serious modern drama if there ever was one.
84. ChristinO - July 15, 1999 - 1:25 PM PT
I saw two excellent plays last year: Stoppard's 'Arcadia' and Friel's "Molly Sweeny"
Oh, lordy. I think it was actually almost two years ago.
I need to get out more.
85. benear - July 16, 1999 - 5:43 AM PT
August Strindberg 1849-1912.
Johan August Strindberg was born in Stockholm, the fourth of 11 children. His mother had been a barmaid and his father was a small businessman. Strindberg's father's family deplored the marriage of his parents as being a mismatch. They married only a few months before Strindberg's birth.
Raised in poverty in a very crowded 3 room house, Strindberg became oversensitive and rebellious. His mother died when he was 13 making him even more irritable and suspicious. His father immediately remarried.
Strindberg was primed from the start for a life of furious conflict with the world and with himself. He was fixated on his mother, insecure and filled with aggressive drives compounded of desire and fear.
86. benear - July 16, 1999 - 5:51 AM PT
In 1867 he froze and starved for one semester at the University of Upsala then tried the University of Stockholm. He left to teach at the same grammar school he attended as a boy. He served for awhile as a physician's assistant and made a vain attempt to become an actor.
In 1870 he returned to the University of Stockholm and studied literature and science. After winning a stipend for a short romantic play, he abandoned his studies in 1872 to pursue a literary career.
And what a career. He wrote some 70 long and short plays among many other things. He was acknowledged by his own countrymen as Sweden's greatest writer. Ibsen who was often berated by his junior, Strindberg, once declared, "He will be greater than I."
O'Neill claimed Strindberg in 1924 as "..the most modern of moderns, the greatest interpreter of the characteristic spiritual conflicts that constitute the drama." Strindberg's example can be traced in many an O'Neill success and failure.
87. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:02 AM PT
James Huneker predicted in 1905 that the antifeminist Strindberg would find no popularity in America but also thought of him as a "culture hero" who had "brought us the history of experience not to be forgotten." Later when Shaw won the Nobel Peace Prize, which had been withheld from Strindberg himself by the enmity of a committee member, he converted it into a trust fund for English translations of Strindberg's writings---55 volumes of plays, stories, novels, autobiographies and miscellaneous writings.
Strindberg's first full-length drama, "Master Olof" was rejected by both publishers and theaters. In spite of this, Strindberg received an appointment as assistant in the Royal Library in Stockholm and there from 1874 to 1882 he brooded and browsed, studied philosophy, tried to master Chinese, produced a scholarly study and wrote the first naturalistic social novel, "The Red Room" (1879), under the influence of Flaubert.
During this time, Strindberg fell in love with the wife of the baron Von Essen. He married her and fathered 3 children. They became embroiled in as violent a domestic conflict as any ever aired in literature.
88. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:08 AM PT
Strindberg left his library post and traveled through Europe with his family from 1883 to 1889. He published a collection of realistic short stories entitled, "Married" (1884). The book was confiscated and its publisher was arrested for blasphemy. Strindberg won popularity with the Swedish public by returning home to take full responsibility for the book.
He gained an acquittal and then published an even more trenchent collection of stories also entitled "Married". it contained all the elements of Strindberg's later ultrarealistic plays, including their misogyny and their attack on "the cult of feminism" which had been promoted by Ibsen's "A Doll's House". Here first appeared Strindberg's strange attraction-repulsion pattern in his relations with women.
89. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:14 AM PT
Thereafter, "the battle of the sexes" consumed much of his energy and found notable expression in "The Father" (1888), "Comrades" (1888), "Miss Julie" (1888), "The Link" (1893) and "The Dance of Death" (1901). Strindberg finally divorced in 1891 after much publicized bickering. He married a second time in 1893 and a third time in 1901.
In the war of the sexes, Strindberg contended, "the less honest and more perverse would come out conqueror", that is, the woman would win, the man being handicapped "by an inbred respect for women". Of Ibsen and the "Ibsenites" or feminists, he declared, "My superior intelligence revolts against the gynolatry which is the latest superstition of freethinkers." He also expressed a fear that society was reverting to a state of matriarchy.
90. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:21 AM PT
A number of Strindberg's plays devoted to the sex duel are masterworks of analysis. The psychological conflicts in which he specialized led modern playwrights into one of the most rewarding channels of their craft. Strindberg advanced drama by writing more probingly and more tautly than Ibsen did. He went further than Ibsen in creating plays with hardly any exposition where nearly everything is simply the dramatized climax. To this end, Strindberg abolished intermissions and act divisions virtually giving rise to the modern one-act drama.
The masterpiece of this kind of concentrated dramaturgy is the one and one half hour uninterrupted play "Miss Julie" in which the sexual instinct thrusts a fastidious and neurotic woman into a disastrous affair with her father's footman. In another long one-acter, "The Creditor", in which Strindberg exposed a woman's parasitism, he transferred all the conflict to the psychological plane and conveyed it entirely through analytical conversation before moving to a shattering conclusion.
91. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:26 AM PT
In "The Father" and "The Creditor", Strindberg approaches a new concept of tragedy. More than in the work of any earlier treatment, man is destroyed by his neuroses. Strindberg's destroyed character is no longer a hero in the classic or Elizabethan sense of the term. The hero falls ignominiously. Nevertheless, because of the substantial amount of passion and will invested by the characters, the effect of the action in Strindberg's plays is consequential and has a certain degree of tragic exaltation.
Strindberg made no virtue of scientific detachment. He was the dramatist of division in the modern soul and it splits apart explosively in his characters as it often did in his own person.
92. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:33 AM PT
We shall now leave realism.
Strindberg carried drama beyond realism or naturalism. He was one of the most potent pioneers in imaginative drama. He adopted expressionism because he felt compelled to express the ineffable and to dramatize personal stresses which the limited scope of dramatic realism could neither encompass nor project. This new dramatic style superseded merely poetic and symbolist styles. It eventuated Central European expressionism after 1916 and stimulated Eugene O'Neill to create "Emperor Jones" and "The Hairy Ape".
93. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:44 AM PT
Strindberg sought refuge from his failed second marriage in Swedenborgian mysticism. (If anyone knows what this is, I would appreciate an explanation.) He made fantastic chemical experiments and believed he could make gold. He began to dread mental collapse even earlier, when, after a weird correspondence with Nietzsche toward the end of 1888, Strindberg learned that the philosopher had gone mad. Strindberg developed hallucinations and delusions of persecution and felt tormented by invisible spirits. He became extremely paranoid. Around 1896 he entered a private sanatorium.
However, his writing remained lucid. He wrote a beautiful drama of reconciliation, "Easter" in 1900. Strindberg helped a young producer create an "Intimate Theater" for an audience of 200. Here he reformed the art of staging, abolished footlights and used only draperies for the background. For this theater he wrote a number of simplified plays he called "Chamber plays". In these concentrated dramas, the best of which was "The Ghost Sonata" (1907) he sought to strip all pretense from people's lives and expose everything hidden.
94. benear - July 16, 1999 - 6:52 AM PT
Finally, Strindberg wrote two long plays which are among the most original and experimental in the history of Western drama: "To Damascus" (1898-1904) a trilogy on the search for mystic salvation and "A Dream Play" (1902) a Buddhistic allegory and fantasy on the misery and failure of life. These plays made Strindberg the chief precursor of ultramodernism.
If the bedlam in his expressionistic work often proves confusing, it is largely because Strindberg followed the shifting forms of a dream and frequently telescoped time and place. He made characters undergo numerous changes of identity, allowed symbols to manifest themselves elusively and presented supersensory and nonrational experience. Above all, he abolished the boundaries between real and unreal and between the objective and the subjective worlds, so that the one blends into the other without warning.
95. benear - July 16, 1999 - 7:04 AM PT
A Dream Play
The Author's Preface
"As in his previous play, 'To Damascus' the author has in 'A Dream Play' attempted to reproduce the detached and disunited although apparently logical---form of dreams. Anything is apt to happen, anything seems possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On a flimsy foundation of actual happenings, imagination spins, and weaves in new patterns: an intermingling of remembrances, experiences, whims, fancies, ideas, fantastic absurdities and improvisations, and original inventions of the mind."
"The personalities split, take on duality, multiply, vanish, intensify, diffuse and disperse, and are brought into focus. There is, however, one single minded consciousness that exercises a dominance over the characters: the dreamer's. There are for the dreamer no secrets, no inconsequences, no scruples, no laws. He neither pronounces judgement nor exonerates; he merely narrates."
"Since dreams most frequently are filled with pain, and less often with joy, a note of melancoly and of compassion for all living things runs through the limping story. Sleep, the liberator, often appears as a tormentor, a torturer, but when the agony is most oppressive the awakening rescues the sufferer and reconciles him to reality. No matter how agonizing reality may be, it will at this moment be welcomed cheerfully as a release from the painful dream."
96. benear - July 16, 1999 - 7:14 AM PT
Cast of Characters
The Voice of Indra
The Daughter of Indra
The Glazier
The Officer
The Father
The Mother
Lina
The Portress
The Billposter
The Singer
A Woman's Voice (Victoria)
The Ballet Girl
The Chorist
The Prompter
The Policeman
The Attorney
Kristin
The Quarantine Master
The Poet
He
She
The Pensioner
The Elderly Dandy
The Old Flirt
Her Lover (The Major)
The Three Servant Girls
Plainlooking Edith
Edith's Mother
Alice
The Teacher
The Naval Officer
Several Boy Pupils
The Husband
The Wife
The Blind Man
First Coalheaver
Second Coalheaver
The Gentleman
The Lady
The Lord Chancellor
The Dean of Theology
The Dean of Philosophy
The Dean of Medicine
The Dean of Jurisprudence
The Ship's Crew
Members of the Opera Company
Clerks, Heralds, Dancing Girls, Men and Women, etc.
97. cmboyce - July 16, 1999 - 7:16 AM PT
ChristinO (if you look in) & interested others. Büchner's "Woyzeck" is a knockout. Written in a succession of 24 scenes, some of them very short, all of them naturalistic/realistic in tone, it has a very 20th-century feel, though written in 1836. It was not performed until 1913, when it immediately became a cause de celebre and exercised a fascination on the entire European avant garde, at least according to the introduction. "The list of writers whose work would have been utterly different if it had not existed includes Alfred Jarry and Frank Wedekind at the start of the century, Antoine Artaud in the 1930s, Brecht in the 30s-40s, Bergman in the 50s, Beckett, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Peter Weiss." It may well be so. It really reads as though it had been written no earlier than the 20s.
Put crudely, Woyzeck tells, or shows, the story of a lowly soldier, Woyzeck, whose self-esteem, as we would observe today, is about nil; he is teased and tormented and generally made to eat shit by the Captain and the Doctor in particular, aggravating his sense of worthlessness. He's already a bit crazy—he hears voices, etc.—and he snaps when his mistress, Marie, has a fling with the Drum Major, a braggart soldier-type (recognizably derived from a commedia dell' arte figure, the _capitano_); his voices tell him to kill Marie, and he talks himself into a frenzy and stabs her to death. In the final scene, he returns to the scene of the crime, a sylvan pond (having ranted about in a pub, meantime) to throw the murder-weapon into the water. We last see him walking deeper and deeper into the pond, talking distractedly about washing the blood off himself.
All the dialogue is very curt and natural. Though Woyzeck is the only character with any real depth—and he's very touching, imo—the others are represented by different rhetorical styles, as it were, and the relationships among them are as clear and distinct as if dep
98. benear - July 16, 1999 - 7:17 AM PT
Settings
1. The Prologue: In the Clouds
2. Outside the Growing Castle
3. Inside the Castle: The Officer's Room
4. Inside the Castle: The Mother's Room
5. The Alleyway Outside the Opera House
6. The Attorney's Office
7. The interior of a Church (The Chancel; The Organ)
8. Fingal's Cave
9. The Attorney's Living-quarters Behind His Office
99. cmboyce - July 16, 1999 - 7:18 AM PT
as clear and distinct as if depicted in stained glass, or a comic strip. Woyzeck himself often changes the way he talks—he is submissive with the Captain and Doctor, affectionate (later wretchedly jealous) with Marie, full of soldierly cameraderie with his buddy Andres, and in the several pub scenes, and crazy as a coot when by himself, "conversing" with his voices. In German, the intro informs, all the characters except the abusive and supercilious Captain and Doctor speak in dialect, making the "superior" standard language of the villains seem bizarre and out of place.
One other nice feature is the singing. A number of (real, Hessian) folk songs are presented, usually in fragments, and they are, each time, salient, revealing the emotional state of the singer.
All in all, a pleasure to read, and, I am completely confident, a real joy to see well performed. Have you (or anyone else here) ever seen
it on stage, Christin?
100. cmboyce - July 16, 1999 - 7:28 AM PT
(Oops. Bad timing. Sorry to be butting in, benear.)