Page:A Doll's House and two other Plays by Henrik Ibsen.djvu/17

 INTRODUCTION

was born, on 20th March 1828. at Skien, a Small Norwegian town which concerned itself solely with the timber trade. About eight years later his father's means, which had originally been easy, were suddenly and dis— astrously reduced. The family had to remove to humbler quarters and live in a very small way, and thus the boy had an early initiation into the privation that was to be his lot in life for many years. One of his few pleasures in these early days was the possession, which was allowed to him undis- turbed, of an attic in his father’s house. Here he could rummage at will, we are told by Mr. Gosse, amongst some dreary old books, amongst others Harrison’s folio History of the City of London, as well as a paint-box, an hour-glass, and an extinct eight-day clock, properties which were faith- fully introduced, half a century later, into The Wild Duck."

As a youth, Ibsen displayed some talent for painting, and, when he left school at ﬁfteen, was anxious to be an artist. But poverty forbade, and for ﬁve years he was apprenticed to an apothecary. By the end of that time his literary gifts had begun to assert themselves, and his soul, stirred by the revolutionary wave that was spreading over Europe, unhurdened itself in poetry. It was not long before the irksomeness of life in a small country town became in- supportable by one who had ambitions, and in 1850 Ibsen managed to get to Christiania, where he eked out an exist- ence by humble journalistic work. He had taken with him to Christiania a three-act blank verse tragedy, Catalina, which was published (under a pseudonym) in 1850 and fell vii