Ibsen and the dramaturgy of uncertainty

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Pinter, Harold, “Program Note for The Dumb Waiter.” Quoted in John Russell Taylor, Anger and After (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1963), 300. 2. Ibsen, Henrik, “Ghosts”, The Oxford Ibsen, translated and edited by J.W.McFarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), Vol. V, 476. Subsequent references to Ghosts and ancillary materials are provided in parentheses. 3. Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen (London: Methuen, 1998), 74. All subsequent references to Copenhagen and ancillary materials are provided in parentheses. 4. W.B. Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli”, The Collected Poem of W.B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1958), 338. 5. Ibsen, Henrik, “Gengangere” [Ghosts]. Samlede Værker, VI (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1914), 127 6. Their productions of A Doll's House have been extensively reviewed by Marvin Carlson, “‘Unser Ibsen‚: Ibsen on the contemporary German stage,” Ibsen Studies IV, 1, (2004), 55–69; Joan Templeton, “Updating A Doll House: Bergman, Ostermeier, Kimmig and Breuer,” in Ibsen on the Cusp of the 21st Century, ed. Pål Bj⊘rby, Alvhild Dversgal, and Idar Stegane (Larvik: Alvheim & Eide, 2005), 183–192; and Sven Heed, “Violence and Revolt in a Barbie Doll's House,” North‐West Passage, n.2, (2005), 117–125. 7. Steiner, George, Antigones, The Jackson Knight Memorial Lecture (Wilton, Somerset: Cox, Sons and Co., 1979), 16. Subsequent references to this lecture appear in parentheses. 8. Steiner, George, Lessons of the Masters (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003), 28. 9. Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954), 10–12. 10. Ibsen, Henrik, “Vildanden” [The Wild Duck]. Samlede Værker, VI. (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1914), 167. Subsequent references appear in parentheses. 11. Esslin, Martin, “Ibsen and Modern Drama.” Ibsen and The Theatre. ed. Errol Durbach (London: Macmillan, 1980), 75. 12. Bronowski, Jacob, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 367. Subsequent references appear in parentheses. 13. Michael Frayn offers, in his “Postscript” to Copenhagen, a number of German variants on the idea: Unsicherheit (unssureness), Ungenauigkeit (inexactness), Unbestimmtheit (indeterminacy/indeterminability). See pp. 101–102. 14. Shaw, Bernard, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism 1891, 1912–13,” in Shaw and Ibsen, ed. J.L. Wisenthal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 133. 15. Ibsen Henrik, “Brand,” The Oxford Ibsen, edited by J.W.McFarlane, translated by Christopher Fry (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), Vol. III, 250. 16. Atle Kittang's article, “Ibsen, Heroism and the Uncanny,” is in press and will soon appear in the Special Ibsen issue of Modern Drama, 49.3 (2006). In this same issue, Thomas Van Laan in his article, “The Tragic Vision of Ibsen's Rosmersholm,” also emphasizes the uncertain elements in this play: “The most important component of the tragic view of Rosmersholm,” he writes, “ is the equivocality that makes acting dubious and perilous. Assuming that recognition is a very likely, if not necessary, characteristic of tragedy — as I do — I would argue that the play's recognition is constituted by passages like Rebekka's account of something ‘coming over’ her irresistibly, her ‘that's how something like that goes,’ and Rosmer's ‘That we will never puzzle out to the bottom.” 17. Ewbank, Inga‐Stina, “Reading Ibsen's Signs: Ambivalence on Page and Stage, ” Ibsen Studies IV.1 (2004), 7, 15 fn. 4.