University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/36168 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. Critical and Popular Reaction to Ibsen in England: 1872-1906 by Tracy Cecile Davis Thesis supervisors: Dr. Richard Beacham Prof. Michael R. Booth Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Department of Theatre Studies. August, 1984. ABSTRACT This study of Ibsen in England is divided into three sections. The first section chronicles Ibsen-related events between 1872, when his work was first introduced to a Briton, and 1888, when growing interest in the 'higher drama' culminated in a truly popular edition of three of Ibsen's plays. During these early years, knowledge about and appreciation of Ibsen's work was limited to a fairly small number of intellectuals and critics. A matinee performance in 1880 attracted praise, but successive productions were bowdlerized adaptations. Until 1889, when the British professional premiere of A Doll's House set all of London talking, the lack of interest among actors and producers placed the responsibility for eliciting interest in Ibsen on translators, lecturers, and essayists. The controversy initiated by A Doll's House was intensified in 1891, the so-called Ibsen Year, when six productions, numerous new translations, debates, lectures, published and acted parodies, and countless articles considered the value and desirability of Ibsen's startling modern plays. The central section of this study is concerned solely with the year 1891, and considers in detail the forums for debate; Ibsenite and non-Ibsenite partisans, activity, and opinion; and audience and popular reaction. In addition to prompting discussion about social issues, Ibsen's plays also challenged the censorship system, the actor-mangers' cartel, and the stock-in-trade decorous well-made play. In the 1890s, when Ibsen's themes and style changed, it became apparent that popular and critical taste had absorbed the lessons of plays like Ghosts and Hedda Gabler, and that their comparatively conventional structures and recognizable systems of signification were greatly preferred to the symbolic poeticism of plays like The Master Builder and When We Dead Awaken. Most of the later plays were relegated to independent producing societies whose technical and financial resources could not possibly provide suitable scenery or adequate rehearsal, while some of the greatest actors of the day accrued kudos in the earlier polemical plays. By the turn of the century, the Ibsenite impulse had diminished, and his erstwhile champions either promoted a false Ibsen Legend or morosely conceded defeat by a theatre where musical comedy and burlesque flourished. The final section of this study describes the aftermath of the Ibsen Year, and activity in the years leading up to the dramatist's death. General discussion of production style, acting technique, and the modernist movement as a whole are also included in the final chapter. One objective of this research has been to identify and analyze the whole spectrum of response, among as many types of readers, playgoers, and commentators as possible. To this end, a great variety of Victorian periodicals have been consulted, and columns of theatrical gossip, leading articles, interviews, and letters to editors have been sought to supplement the reviews, learned essays, and feuilletons by theatrical journalists and professional critics. Personal accounts in diaries, letters, and autobiographies have also been sought to provide indications of popular interest and opinion, and of Ibsen's place in the avant garde and mainstream theatre. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction I. First Contacts in England 1. The Early Years (1872-1888): A Quiet Introduction -Ibsen and the New Drama -English Ibsenites of the 1870s -Archer and The Pillars of Society -Other Ibsenites and Ibsen Projects: A Strategy for the 80s -Publications and Translations -Action: Breaking a Butterfly -The Scribblers' Nora -The Bloornsbury Ibsenites -Lectures -Conci usion 2. Introducing Ibsen to the General Public (1889-90) 45 -Ibsen and the Magazines -Producing the Novelty Doll's House -An Audience for Ibsen -Critical Reaction -Varieties of Response -Reactions of Unsympathetic P1 aygoers -Standard Responses of Sympathetic Playgoers -Some Converts, and the Aftermath -Ghosts and The Pillars of Society -Readings and Lectures -More Publications - S urnma ry 11. The Ibsen Year: 1891 3. Forums for Debate 103 -Relevant Changes in the Theatre Since 1880, and the Effect of Ibsen -Ibsen and the Playgoers' Club -Public Interest 4. The Ibsenites 116 -Ibsenite Leadership -Publ ishing Projects -Stage Productions: -Rosmersholm -Fraser's Doll's House -Ghosts -Hedda Gabler -Other Projects -The Quintessence of Ibsenism -Ibsenite Self-Criticism 5. The Won-Ibsenites 162 -Anti-Ibsen Leadership and Ideology: Some Misconceptions -Response to Ibsenite Projects: -A Doll's House (January) -Rosmersholm -Ghosts -Hedda Gabler -The Lady from the Sea -A Doll's House (June) -Anti-Ibsen Projects, especially Parodies and Burlesques -End of Season Stocktaking: "The Ibsen Question" 6. Popular Reaction 232 -A Doll's House (January) -Rosmershoim -Ghosts -Hedda Gabler -The Lady from the Sea -A Doll's House (June) -Parodies and Burlesques -Attendance III. Ibsen Again 7. Ibsenite Activity, 1892-3 273 -Promised Projects -A Doll's House -Beata -Publications and Other Projects -1893: Producing The Master Builder -1893: A Modernist Season -A Southern Doll's House -An Enemy of the People -Parodies, Burlesques, and Lectures -The Achievements of 1893 and After 8. Triumph, Misunderstanding, and the Fate of Ibsen: 1894-1906 333 -Dissolution of the Ibsenite Impulse -Identifying an Acting Style -The Means of Production -Lingering Anti-Ibsenism and Neo-Anti -Ibseni tes -Qualitative Ibsenism -The Ibsen Legend Appendices: A. Chronology of Ibsen-Related Events, 1872-1906 386 B. First Performances and Translations in English, German, and French 407 C. Some Theatre Critics of Periodicals Surveyed 412 D. Illustrations 415 Bibliography 431 INTRODUCTION Two types of nineteenth-century English commentary on Ibsen are readily available: reprinted reviews by the 'new critics' Archer, Walkley, Shaw, Grein, and Beerbohm, and the pithy apophthegms by Clement Scott and other anti-Ibsen 'old critics.' The sound and laudatory judgments of the former are weighted against the spiteful and reactionary assertions of the latter which, although indicative only of reaction to the initial performance of Ghosts, are usually mistaken as representative of critical and popular response to all of Ibsen's plays throughout the Victorian period. By examining a wide selection of reviews of all London productions (and as many provincial ones as possible) up to 1906, including publications for different types of readers (i.e. serious journals, dailies, weeklies, penny papers, society magazines, illustrateds, and comic papers) as well as diaries, letters, and memoirs, a more accurate response emerges. Other Ibsen-related events also had a bearing on opinion -- especially before professional productions were feasible -- and so public debates, lectures and readings, and published translations, literary criticism, and descriptive articles are also included in this study. Popular reaction was not uniformly hostile or consistently disap- proving, as examination of changing tastes and tolerance of the alternative or fringe theatre that Ibsen's plays facilitated demon- strates. For almost two decades, information about Ibsen was circulated among a limited group of people, until finally in 1889 a production of A Doll's House ensured widespread fame for 'the giant of the North.' His iconoclastic treatment of conventional playwriting techniques, genre, and subjects attracted some progressive Britons of all classes but to most people he was at least partly threatening, unaesthetic, or ridiculous, and prejudice against the 'thinking person's drama' complicated response. Almost without exception, however, his psychological studies, innovative structure, resonant dialogue, or unforgettable imagery impressed even his staunchest opponents. At first, with the social plays from The Pillars of Society to Hedda Gabler, traces of traditional technique were apparent, but later in the plays of Ibsen's more symbolic final phase (from The Master Builder to When We Dead Awaken), the deliberate experimentation with old and new systems of signification was less easily identifiable especially in performance, and less appreciated even by Ibsenites. The high point of the controversy was 1891, the so-called Ibsen Year, when six separate productions of five plays were mounted in London. Inseparable from the Ibsen controversy were questions of more general theatrical reform, responsibility for management, the purpose of the theatre and reasons for playgoing, censorship, and dramatic literature. A loose network of modernist producers, translators, actors, and critics rallied around Ibsen and demonstrated that unconventional managements and sympathetic actors could and would present Ibsen and that there was a portion of the theatre-going public willing to patronize these experimental