Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Ebook191 pages1 hour

    Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    By Henrik Ibsen

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ibsen includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ibsen’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781788775885
    Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    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.

    Read more from Henrik Ibsen

    Related to Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    Titles in the series (23)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Writing In The Ruins

      May 16, 2023

      Writing In The Ruins
      11 min read

    • Article

      Stalking Wolfskehl

      Aug 23, 2021

      Stalking Wolfskehl
      6 min read

    • Article

      Have Your Say…

      Dec 26, 2023

      Have Your Say…
      2 min read

    • Article

      Norwegian Wood

      Jul 25, 2019

      HENRIK IBSEN: THE MAN AND THE MASK By Ivo de Figueiredo, translated by Robert Ferguson. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2019. 704 pp., $40 cloth. HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND HENRIK IBSEN? Theatrically, he was the Master Builder himself, setting the

      7 min read

    • Article

      Richard Osborne

      Jan 12, 2022

      COME TO THE CABARET! I wonder what thoughts went through John Kander’s mind when news came through in late November of Stephen Sondheim’s death at the age of 91. John Kander, 94 and still with us, composed the music for Cabaret, the regime-changing 1

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Bookness of Not-Books

      Jun 22, 2017

      The Bookness of Not-Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Compulsively Driven

      Mar 21, 2023

      Compulsively Driven
      7 min read

    • Article

      Closer To Vermeer

      Mar 1, 2023

      Closer To Vermeer
      6 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      May 11, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    • Article

      If All Else Fails, Read

      Nov 11, 2020

      If theatregoing is curtailed, we can at least read about the art form. No sooner had I got back from the Theatre Royal than I came across this line: ‘So much for the taste and judgement of a Bath public. Pshaw! It is all quackery.' I should quickly a

      1 min read

    • Article

      A Final Walk With Olds

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Final Walk With Olds
      6 min read

    • Article

      “Phallus in Wonderland” 1 : Role Plays with Joyce Wieland

      Jun 4, 2018

      After gently pouring tea into each of our cups, Phyllis Lambert pushes a plate of delicate accompaniments arranged for our meeting in my direction. A shortbread cookie seems mess-free, so I take a few bites even though it is fairly small in size. I d

      18 min read

    • Article

      Armchair Dramatics

      May 6, 2020

      Armchair Dramatics
      3 min read

    • Article

      Staff Picks: Detritus, Dreamin’, Dinos

      Jul 14, 2017

      From Paleoart.   First published in 1966, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, by Justin Kaplan, is still the standard biography of our most enduringly funny writer—or, at least, the earliest writer who makes me actually laugh. I avoided it till now because I

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Sep 21, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      6 min read

    • Article

      Polyglot Novelist

      Sep 12, 2021

      Polyglot Novelist
      5 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Apple

      Nov 24, 2021

      Alex Danchev with Sarah Whitfield (Profile, £30) IN 1946, René Magritte painted his most famous picture, The Son of Man, which shows a bowler-hatted figure in a black overcoat standing ramrod straight in front of a featureless background of sky and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Walter Sickert

      Nov 26, 2021

      Walter Sickert
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) - Henrik Ibsen

      The Complete Works of

      HENRIK IBSEN

      VOLUME 18 OF 29

      Rosmersholm

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2013

      Version 1

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘Rosmersholm’

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition (in 29 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78877 588 5

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 18 of the Delphi Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen in 29 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Rosmersholm from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Henrik Ibsen or the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      HENRIK IBSEN

      IN 29 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      The Plays

      1, Catiline

      2, The Burial Mound

      3, Lady Inger of Oestraat

      4, The Feast at Solhaug

      5, Olaf Liljekrans

      6, The Vikings at Helgeland

      7, Love’s Comedy

      8, The Pretenders

      9, Brand

      10, Peer Gynt

      11, The League of Youth

      12, Emperor and Galilean

      13, Pillars of Society

      14, A Doll’s House

      15, Ghosts

      16, An Enemy of the People

      17, The Wild Duck

      18, Rosmersholm

      19, The Lady from the Sea

      20, Hedda Gabler

      21, The Master Builder

      22, Little Eyolf

      23, John Gabriel Borkman

      24, When We Dead Awaken

      The Poems

      25, The Poetry

      The Norwegian Texts (De norske tekster)

      26, The Original Texts

      The Non-Fiction

      27, Speeches and New Letters

      The Criticism

      28, The Criticism

      The Biography

      29, The Life of Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Rosmersholm

      Translated by R. Farquharson Sharp

      Written in 1886, this play is considered to be one Ibsen’s greatest dramatic achievements. Rosmersholm explores themes of social and political change, in which the traditional ruling classes relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society.  The action is entirely personal, resting on the conduct of the ‘immoral’ and free thinking heroine, Rebecca, who sets herself to undermine Rosmer’s religious and political beliefs, because of his influential position in the community. Rebecca has abandoned not only Christianity but, unlike Rosmer, she has abandoned the whole ethical system of Christianity as well. Possibly she may be taken as Ibsen’s answer to the question of whether or not Christian ethics can be expected to survive the death of the Christian religion.

      From the beginning of June until the end of September 1885, Ibsen was in Norway for the first time in eleven years. His experiences and impressions of seeing his mother-country again were of great importance in shaping Rosmersholm. In a letter to Carl Snoilsky, the Swedish poet and friend, with whom Ibsen had spent several days in Molde, he wrote: I am also fully occupied with a new play, which I have been thinking about for some time and in which connection I carried out some close studies during my stay in Norway last summer. Ibsen regarded Snoilsky as a truly noble person and he was to become the chief model for the play’s protagonist Johannes Rosmer.

      On August 6th Ibsen began to write the fair copy, but many revisions were made, and it was not until September 27, 1886 that the manuscript was completed. Rosmersholm was published on November 23, 1886 by Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag in Copenhagen and Christiania. The first edition was composed of 8,000 copies. Many reviewers were even more confused by Rosmersholm than they had been by The Wild Duck two years before. In Norway the reviews were almost entirely negative, while in Sweden and Denmark they were slightly better. The lukewarm reviews affected sales, which were poor and the play was not reprinted until Ibsen’s collected works were published in 1898-1900.

      Rosmersholm had its very first performance on January 17, 1887 at Den nationale Scene in Bergen. Gunnar Heiberg directed. The play, while Didi Heiberg and Nicolai Halvorsen played the parts of Rebekka West and Johannes Rosmer. Like the publication of the play, the audience received the production coolly.

      The play opens one year after the suicide of Rosmer’s wife, Beata. Rebecca had previously moved into the family home, Rosmersholm, as a friend of Beata, where she lives still. It becomes plain that she and Rosmer are in love, but he insists throughout the play that their relationship is completely platonic. A highly respected member of his community, Rosmer intends to support the newly elected government and its reformist, if not revolutionary, agenda. However, when he announces this to his friend and brother-in-law Kroll, the local schoolmaster, the latter becomes enraged at what he sees as his friend’s betrayal of his ruling-class roots. Kroll begins to sabotage Rosmer’s plans, confronting him about his relationship with Rebecca and denouncing the pair, initially in guarded terms, in the local newspaper. Rosmer becomes consumed by his guilt, now believing he, rather than mental illness, caused his wife’s suicide. He attempts to escape the guilt by erasing the memory of his wife and proposing marriage to Rebecca. But she rejects him outright. Kroll accuses her of using Rosmer as a tool to work her own political agenda. She admits that it was she who drove Mrs. Rosmer to deeper depths of despair and in a way even encouraged her suicide — initially to increase her power over Rosmer, but later because she actually fell in love with him.

      The central image of the play is the White Horse of Rosmersholm, the family ghost in Rebecca’s wording. It is rumoured to be seen by the characters after the suicide of Beata. The horse symbolises the past that revolves around Rosmer’s dead wife, and haunts the survivors. The presence of the horse at their death represents their incapacity to deal with the memories that haunt them. The white horse is similar to the ghosts that Mrs. Alving refers to in Ibsen’s 1881 tragedy Ghosts.

      The first edition

      CONTENTS

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      ACT 1

      ACT II

      ACT III

      ACT IV

      Carl Snoilsky, the Swedish poet, served as the model of this play’s main character

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      John Rosmer, of Rosmersholm, an ex-clergyman.

      Rebecca West, one of his household, originally engaged as

               companion to the late Mrs. Rosmer.

      Kroll, headmaster of the local grammar school, Rosmer’s

               brother-in-law.

      Ulrik Brendel.

      Peter Mortensgaard.

      Mrs. Helseth, Rosmer’s housekeeper.

      (The action takes place at Rosmersholm, an old manor-house in the neighbourhood of a small town on a fjord in western Norway.)

      ACT 1

      (SCENE — The sitting-room at Rosmersholm; a spacious room, comfortably furnished in old-fashioned style. In the foreground, against the right-hand wall, is a stove decorated with sprigs of fresh birch and wild flowers. Farther back, a door. In the back wall folding doors leading into the entrance hall. In the left-hand wall a window, in front of which is a stand filled with flowers and plants. Near the stove stand a table, a couch and an easy-chair. The walls are hung round with portraits, dating from various periods, of clergymen, military officers and other officials in uniform. The window is open, and so are the doors into the lobby and the outer door. Through the latter is seen an avenue of old trees leading to a courtyard. It is a summer evening, after sunset. REBECCA WEST is sitting by the window crocheting a large white woollen shawl, which is nearly completed. From time to time she peeps out of window through the flowers. MRS. HELSETH comes in from the right.)

      Mrs. Helseth. Hadn’t I better begin and lay the table for supper, miss?

      Rebecca. Yes, do. Mr. Rosmer ought to be in directly.

      Mrs. Helseth. Isn’t there a draught where you are sitting, miss?

      Rebecca. There is a little. Will you shut up, please? (MRS. HELSETH goes to the hall door and shuts it. Then she goes to the window, to shut

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1