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    Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    Hedda Gabler

    By Henrik Ibsen

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A masterpiece of modern theater, Hedda Gabler is a dark psychological drama whose powerful and reckless heroine has tested the mettle of leading actresses of every generation since its first production in Norway in 1890.
    Ibsen's Hedda is an aristocratic and spiritually hollow woman, nearly devoid of redeeming virtues. George Bernard Shaw described her as having "no conscience, no conviction … she remains mean, envious, insolent, cruel, in protest against others' happiness." Her feeling of anger and jealousy toward a former schoolmate and her ruthless manipulation of her husband and an earlier admirer lead her down a destructive path that ends abruptly with her own tragic demise.
    Presented in this handsome, inexpensive edition, Hedda Gabler offers an unforgettable experience for any lover of great drama or fine literature. Among the most performed and studied of Ibsen's dramas, it continues to provoke and challenge audiences and readers all over the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMay 23, 2012
    ISBN9780486111773
    Author

    Henrik Ibsen

    Born in 1828, Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and poet, often associated with the early Modernist movement in theatre. Determined to become a playwright from a young age, Ibsen began writing while working as an apprentice pharmacist to help support his family. Though his early plays were largely unsuccessful, Ibsen was able to take employment at a theatre where he worked as a writer, director, and producer. Ibsen’s first success came with Brand and Peter Gynt, and with later plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and The Master Builder he became one of the most performed playwrights in the world, second only to William Shakespeare. Ibsen died in his home in Norway in 1906 at the age of 78.

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    Reviews for Hedda Gabler

    3.5/5

    383 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I can see him. With vineleaves in his hair. Flushed and confident.

      I have intended on reading Ibsen my entire adult life. Thinking that perhaps my number may be up, I finally ventured and am glad I did. This play was surprisingly modern and kinetic. Not sure why, but I expected something dour, suffering in the shadows. Violence through understatement. A Scandinavian skewering of morals.

      Mismatched couples are such fun--from Middlemarch to The Honeymooners. I'd like to read responses to the character Hedda Gabler herself. There are multitudes in her pauses. This was the first play I read in 2016, surprising as I read 12 the year before.
    • 5/5
      I'd never read any Ibsen before and was astonished by this - its psychological depth compared to its economy was amazing, even for drama. Hedda Gabler, the ferociously intelligent, dangerously cruel, yet ultimately pitiable protagonist defies easy categorisation.

      I can't imagine why I've waited till now to read it - I saw that there was a new production of it on in London and thought, ooh, I should give that a go. It was another of those "to read" books that's been on the pile for years.

      It's a pile I really need to mine more often at this rate.
    • 4/5
      I recommend it for the compactness of the story, the solid foreshadowing, and the ending. The play is about control, Hedda's mastery at controlling others and her despondency when her greatest attempt fails. The end came back to me often over next few days.
    • 3/5
      This is a short play that packs a punch! It also has an exciting ending. A Wikipedia quote says "Depending on the interpretation, Hedda may be portrayed as an idealistic heroine fighting society, a victim of circumstance, a prototypical feminist, or a manipulative villain." So you can decide!
    • 4/5
      I can't decide whether to hate Hedda or feel pity for her… She is one of the most conniving women I have ever read about, yet she doesn't seem to get any enjoyment out of it. I would love to see this on the stage.
    • 4/5
      Read this for a Lit class... Gosh, Hedda Gabler was not very nice.
    • 3/5
      Why, oh why, do I get the impression that Ibsen didn't like his female protagonists very much?

      Or, in other words, is there a specific reason that both Nora (from A Doll's House) and Hedda are written as two rather silly women, both incapable of a rational thought?

      Surely, exploring the theme of individuals trapped in situation which they want to escape from has more to offer than half-baked schemes, lies, deception, and artistic illusions?

      Ugh...
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure what Mr. Ibsen intended when he created the character of Hedda Gabler, but she is the perfect example of a person who is admired for her position, but is completely unworthy of that admiration. She is the hateful bully that gets away with it because no one wants to believe it of her. In the end, her death is an indication of how manipulation of others doesn't give you what you want - it just makes you hate yourself and your life. The tragedy is that Hedda wasn't satisfied until she had ruined the lives around her first.
    • 4/5
      Hedda is kind of a stuck-up, manipulative, hopelessly romantic to the point of nihilistic woman, with an unsubsidiable pride and exaggerated sense of aestheticism. This is an extremely difficult character to portray that when I read the script, I just love Hedda and in some way see myself in her but when seeing it onstage she was such a bitch I just needed to punch her on the face 8-}. Anyways, the character's ambiguity and openness to interpretation is precisely what to love I guess
    • 4/5
      This classic Ibsen play is about a woman who has ambitions beyond her modest life, and her beauty has captured a number of men who are willing to help her meet those ambitions. She has no scruples, and will do anything to get what she desires. It is a quick and easy read, and keeps you turning the pages until you reach the final, startling ending.
    • 3/5
      What a bitch and what a great role. I could see her character translated into a corporate-type taking on the glass ceiling -- ruthless and manipulative. A timeless character.
    • 4/5
      Even though I'm a fan of master composer Ibsen, this one I've strangely neither seen staged, nor read before. I'm really glad I did now! It's an unusual play, both in plot (revolving mostly around trying to stage your mundane life to try and evoke some excitement) and in it's protagonist. Hedda is not very likeable - she's nasty, condecending, full of herself and not as clever as she would like to think, but in all that she makes up for a memorable and rare character. As are all of them, by the way. This play provides a great cast of slighlty heightened but very relateable people, whose lives fall into pieces through Ibsen's usual revelation of their life lies. But it's subtly done here, understated and hinted, making the play sneaky and more surprising than Ibsen's plays normally are. Even the inevitable female suicide in the end is more an act of taking matter in one's own hands than one of desperation. All in all, surely one of Ibsen's finer plays. Can't wait to see it on stage.

    Book preview

    Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen

    Hedda Gabler

    HENRIK IBSEN

    DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

    New York

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    EDITOR: STANLEY APPELBAUM

    Performance

    This Dover Thrift Edition may be used in its entirety, in adaptation or in any other way for theatrical productions, professional and amateur, in the United States, without fee, permission or acknowledgment. (This may not apply outside of the United States, as copyright conditions may vary.)

    This Dover edition, first published in 1990, is an unabridged republication of an anonymous, undated English translation published by Boni and Liveright, New York.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906.

    [Hedda Gabler. English]

    Hedda Gabler / Henrik Ibsen.

    p. cm. — (Dover thrift editions)

    Republication of an anonymous, undated English translation published by Boni and Liveright, New York—T.p. verso.

    eISBN-13: 978-0-486-11177-3

    I. Title. II. Series.

    [PT8868.A323 1990]

    839.8’226—dc20      90-3498

    CIP

    Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

    26469614

    www.doverpublications.com

    Note

    BETWEEN 1850 AND 1899, the Norwegian poet and playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) wrote over twenty plays in verse or prose, ranging from Romantic historical drama to Symbolist and proto-Expressionist works. Most popular with readers and audiences over the years have been the social and psychological dramas written between the late 1870s and the early 1890s. Hedda Gabler of 1890 has long been a particular favorite.

    In the past, superficial readers and unsubtle actresses and directors have sometimes been misled by Hedda’s obvious manipulation of people and acts of reckless cruelty into conceiving the character as a fiend incarnate, a thoroughly evil woman out of popular melodrama or an adult bad seed. In the 1990s, it is easier to see Hedda as a desperately frustrated woman fully conscious of her own high potential and aware that, as the society about her is constituted, her only chance of making a mark is by attaching herself to some man who can achieve prominence under her guidance—a goal that she typically idealizes and romanticizes as the power to mould a human destiny.

    DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

    GEORGE TESMAN. *

    HEDDA TESMAN, his wife.

    MISS JULIANA TESMAN, his aunt.

    MRS. ELVSTED.

    JUDGE† BRACK.

    EILEERT LÖVBORG.

    BERTA, servant at the Tesmans.

    The scene of the action is Tesmans villa, in the west end of Christiania.

    * Tesman, whose Christian name in the original is Jörgen, is described as stipendiat i kulturhistorie—that is to say, the holder of a scholarship for purposes of research into the History of Civilisation.

    † In the original Assessor.

    Contents

    Act I

    Act II

    Act III

    Act IV

    Hedda Gabler

    Act I

    A spacious, handsome, and tastefully furnished drawing-room, decorated in dark colours. In the back, a wide doorway with curtains drawn back, leading into a smaller room decorated in the same style as the drawing-room. In the right-hand wall of the front room, a folding door leading out to the hall. In the opposite wall, on the left, a glass door, also with curtains drawn back. Through the panes can be seen part of a verandah outside, and trees covered with autumn foliage. An oval table, with a cover on it, and surrounded by chairs, stands well forward. In front, by the wall on the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools. A settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little way from the wall, a sofa. Further back than the glass door, a piano. On either side of the doorway at the back a whatnot with terra-cotta and majolica ornaments.—Against the back wall of the inner room a sofa, with a table, and one or two chairs. Over the sofa hangs the portrait of a handsome elderly man in a General’s uniform. Over the table a hanging lamp, with an opal glass shade.—A number of bouquets are arranged about the drawing-room, in vases and glasses. Others lie upon the tables. The floors in both rooms are covered with thick carpets.—Morning light. The sun shines in through the glass door.

    MISS JULIANA TESMAN, with her bonnet on and carrying a parasol, comes in from the hall, followed by BERTA, who carries a bouquet wrapped in paper. MISS TESMAN is a comely and pleasant-looking lady of about sixty-five. She is nicely but simply dressed in a grey walking-costume. BERTA is a middle-aged woman of plain and rather countrified appearance.

    MISS TESMAN (stops close to the door, listens, and says softly). Upon my word, I don’t believe they are stirring yet!

    BERTA (also softly). I told you so, Miss. Remember how late the steamboat got in last night. And then, when they got home!—good Lord, what a lot the young mistress had to unpack before she could get to bed.

    MISS TESMAN. Well, well—let them have their sleep out. But let us see that they get a good breath of the fresh morning air when they do appear. (She goes to the glass door and throws it open.)

    BERTA (beside the table, at a loss what to do with the bouquet in her hand). I declare there isn’t a bit of room left. I think I’ll put it down here, Miss. (She places it on the piano.)

    MISS TESMAN. So you’ve got a new mistress now, my dear Berta. Heaven knows it was a wrench to me to part with you.

    BERTA (on the point of weeping). And do you think it wasn’t hard for me too, Miss? After all the blessed years I’ve been with you and Miss Rina. *

    MISS TESMAN. We must make the best of it, Berta. There was nothing else to be done. George can’t do without you, you see—he absolutely can’t. He has had you to look after him ever since he was a little boy.

    BERTA. Ah but, Miss Julia, I can’t help thinking of Miss Rina lying helpless at home there, poor thing. And with only that new girl too! She’ll never learn to take proper care of an invalid.

    MISS TESMAN. Oh, I shall manage to train her. And of course, you know, I shall take most of it upon myself. You needn’t be uneasy about my poor sister, my dear Berta.

    BERTA. Well, but there’s another thing, Miss. I’m so mortally afraid I shan’t be able to suit the young mistress.

    MISS TESMAN. Oh well—just at first there may be one or two things—

    BERTA. Most like she’ll be terrible grand in her ways.

    MISS TESMAN. Well, you can’t wonder at that—General Gabler’s daughter! Think of the sort of life she was accustomed to in her father’s time. Don’t you remember how we used to see her riding down the road along with the General? In that long black habit—and with feathers in her hat?

    BERTA. Yes, indeed—I remember well enough—! But good Lord, I should never have dreamt in those days that she and Master George would make a match of it.

    MISS TESMAN. Nor I.—But, by-the-bye, Berta—while I think of it: in future you mustn’t say Master George. You must say Dr. Tesman.

    BERTA. Yes, the young mistress spoke of that too—last night—the moment they set foot in the house. Is it true then, Miss?

    MISS TESMAN. Yes, indeed it is. Only think, Berta—some foreign university has made him a doctor—while he has been abroad, you understand. I hadn’t heard a word about it, until he told me himself upon the pier.

    BERTA. Well, well, he’s clever enough for anything, he is. But I didn’t think he’d have gone in for doctoring people too.

    MISS TESMAN. No, no, it’s not that sort of doctor he is. (Nods significantly.) But let me tell you, we may have to call him something still grander before long.

    BERTA. You don’t say so! What can that be, Miss?

    MISS TESMAN (smiling). H’m—wouldn’t you like to know! (With emotion.) Ah, dear, dear—if my poor brother could only look up from his grave now, and see what his little boy has grown into! (Looks around.) But bless

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