Peer Gynt from poem to theatrical success

Abstract

The work Ibsen wrote in 1867 was a dramatic poem and not intended for the stage. The text is too long for a normal evening’s performance, and this makes cutting and adaptation necessary in most cases, allowing theatre directors great liberty in trying out their individual conceptions of the poem and its significance. What Ibsen must have had in mind during the composition of Peer Gynt was a certain Romantic genre, the philosophical allegory in verse, usually in the form of a long dramatic poem, of which Goethe’s Faust was the prototype. Occasionally, he must have considered the possibility of staging Peer Gynt. Vilhelm Bergsøe, a Danish author and friend who has reported his discussions with Ibsen in Ischia and Rome in 1867, remembers once being asked: ‘Can one put a man on the stage running around with a casting-ladle?’ Bergsøe could not see why not, and Ibsen went on: ‘But it will have to be a big ladle — big enough to recast human beings in.’ In response to Bergsøe’s remark that it would look rather strange, Ibsen said ‘Yes, I think so too, but I don’t think the play’s for acting’ (quoted from Michael Meyer, Henrik Ibsen. The Farewell to Poetry 1864–1882, p. 65).