[HIALMAR and GINA take HEDVIG between them.]

  HIALMAR [As they are carrying her.]

  Oh Gina, Gina, can you survive this!

  GINA

  We must help each other to bear it. For now at least she belongs to both of us.

  MOLVIK [Stretches out his arms and mumbles.]

  Blessed be the Lord; to earth thou shalt return; to earth thou shalt return——

  RELLING [Whispers.]

  Hold your tongue, you fool; you’re drunk.

  [HIALMAR and GINA carry the body out through the kitchen door.

  RELLING shuts it after them. MOLVIK slinks out into the passage.]

  RELLING [Goes over to GREGERS and says:]

  No one shall ever convince me that the pistol went off by accident.

  GREGERS [Who has stood terrified, with convulsive twitchings.]

  Who can say how the dreadful thing happened?

  RELLING

  The powder has burnt the body of her dress. She must have pressed the pistol right against her breast and fired.

  GREGERS

  Hedvig has not died in vain. Did you not see how sorrow set free what is noble in him?

  RELLING

  Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?

  GREGERS

  Why should it not endure and increase throughout his life?

  RELLING

  Before a year is over, little Hedvig will be nothing to him but a pretty theme for declamation.

  GREGERS

  How dare you say that of Hialmar Ekdal?

  RELLING

  We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you’ll hear him spouting about “the child too early torn from her father’s heart;” then you’ll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment and self-admiration and self-pity. Just you wait!

  GREGERS

  If you are right and I am wrong, then life is not worth living.

  RELLING

  Oh, life would be quite tolerable, after all, if only we could be rid of the confounded duns that keep on pestering us, in our poverty, with the claim of the ideal.

  GREGERS [Looking straight before him.]

  In that case, I am glad that my destiny is what it is.

  RELLING

  May I inquire,—what is your destiny?

  GREGERS [Going.]

  To be the thirteenth at table.

  RELLING

  The devil it is.

  HEDDA GABLER (1890)

  INTRODUCTION

  WHILEIN THE WILD DUCK THE burden of discussing ideas is placed on the shoulders of the misguided and discredited idealist Gregers, in Hedda Gabler (1890) ideas are banished from the play entirely. It is as if Ibsen wanted to continue the project of correcting the distorted image of himself as a playwright of radical ideas by turning ideas into objects that can be touched, lost, and burned—in short, by turning them into a manuscript. What the manuscript says we will never know, except for the fact that it deals with the future. But this is precisely its point. In a play, it is not ideas that matter but things, and as an object the manuscript serves excellently well—at least as well as pistols, the other prominent prop Ibsen employs here.

  The primary manipulator of all of these props is not Ibsen but Hedda Gabler, a true master plotter. She is Ibsen’s alter ego, someone who spends all day scheming and constructing traps, manipulating people and objects like an author. Ibsen competes not with Lövborg, the author of ideas, but with Hedda Gabler, the author of intrigue. After having been known as a radical in both ideas and dramatic forms, Ibsen here returns to the craft of dramaturgy, asserting his mastery over the plot.

  This is not to say that Hedda Gabler is only a mannered exercise in how to construct a good play. It is also a renewed effort to create a modern tragedy. If Ghosts is Ibsen’s King Oedipus, Hedda Gabler is his Medea—a Medea frighteningly rationalized. Instead of hot witchcraft, Hedda possesses the powers of cold calculation; her every action is precisely calibrated to effect, whether in the service of a larger purpose or out of pure habit. She simply cannot not manipulate, cannot not use her powers of plotting; her whole character is consumed by these features. It is in the same manner and, in fact, for the same reason that she finally commits suicide, out of calculation that she would be in the power of another plot, of the plot of another character, who now has power over her and will use it to make her his mistress. This is the one thing Hedda Gabler cannot tolerate because it goes against her nature to be manipulated by someone else. And so she kills herself, this most rational of all turn-of-the-century femme fatales.

  In her isolated hostility toward the world surrounding her, Hedda Gabler can be seen as Ibsen’s return to the one-protagonist play with which he had begun his European triumph: for example, Brand and Peer Gynt. Hedda Gabler is perhaps less successful in battling the world, but she is ready to pursue this goal to the bitter end. Given this focus on the one, single protagonist, this is a play that has always attracted actors. Henry James wrote a notable review of Hedda Gabler, at the beginning of his fascination with Ibsen, noting how much this play catered to the profession of actors. The first London Hedda Gabler (1891) was directed by William Archer, with Elizabeth Robins in the title role; she claimed she had become interested in Ibsen through André Antoine’s production of Ghosts in 1890. Since then, Hedda Gabler has remained a challenge for famous actors, the crowning achievement of many an acting career, including Charles Ludlam’s drag performance at the American Ibsen Theatre in 1984.

  It was through the challenge to acting that directors interested in acting technique took on this play as well, most notably so Vsevolod Meyerhold, the inventor of a system called biomechanics, in 1906. The entire production, including the shape of the stage and the set design was stylized and centered around the one dominating figure of Hedda Gabler, whom the audience encountered sitting in a white fur before a background of blue. Meyerhold’s lead was much later followed by Ingmar Bergman’s 1964 production at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, which stripped away all unnecessary clutter, creating a bare stage laid with a dark red velvet carpet. In both productions, the entire stage becomes an extension of Hedda Gabler’s persona, a costume that she wears and that dissolves only with her final suicide. If in The Wild Duck the stage and its objects assert their primacy over the actor, here they become entirely subsumed under the overbearing personality of the protagonist.

  —Martin Puchner

  CHARACTERS

  GEORGE TESMAN.142

  HEDDA TESMAN, his wife.

  MISS JULIANA TESMAN, his aunt.

  MRS. ELVSTED.

  JUDGE143 BRACK.

  EILERT LÖVBORG.

  BERTA, servant at the Tesmans’.

  The scene of the action is Tesman’s villa, in the west end of Christiania.

  ACT FIRST

  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 veranda 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 foot-stools. 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 me, Berta—why have you done this? Taken the chintz

  covers off all the furniture?

  BERTA

  The mistress told me to. She can’t abide covers on the chairs, she says.

  MISS TESMAN

  Are they going to make this their everyday sitting-room then?

  BERTA

  Yes, that’s what I understood—from the mistress. Master George—the doctor—he said nothing.

  GEORGE TESMAN comes from the right into the inner room, humming to himself, and carrying an unstrapped empty portmanteau. He is a middle-sized, young-looking man of thirty-three, rather stout, with a round, open, cheerful face, fair hair and beard. He wears spectacles, and is somewhat carelessly dressed in comfortable indoor clothes.

  MISS TESMAN

  Good morning, good morning, George.

  TESMAN [In the doorway between the rooms.]

  Aunt Julia! Dear Aunt Julia! [Goes up to her and shakes hands warmly.] Come all this way—so early! Eh?

  MISS TESMAN

  Why, of course I had to come and see how you were getting on.

  TESMAN

  In spite of your having had no proper night’s rest?

  MISS TESMAN

  Oh, that makes no difference to me.

  TESMAN

  Well, I suppose you got home all right from the pier? Eh?

  MISS TESMAN

  Yes, quite safely, thank goodness. Judge Brack was good enough to see me right to my door.

  TESMAN

  We were so sorry we couldn’t give you a seat in the carriage. But you saw what a pile of boxes Hedda had to bring with her.

  MISS TESMAN

  Yes, she had certainly plenty of boxes.

  BERTA [To TESMAN.]

  Shall I go in and see if there’s anything I can do for the mistress?

  TESMAN

  No thank you, Berta—you needn’t. She said she would ring if she wanted anything.

  BERTA [Going towards the right.]

  Very well.

  TESMAN

  But look here—take this portmanteau with you.

  BERTA [Taking it.]

  I’ll put it in the attic.

  [She goes out by the hall door.]

  TESMAN

  Fancy, Auntie—I had the whole of that portmanteau chock full of copies of documents. You wouldn’t believe how much I have picked up from all the archives I have been examining—curious old details that no one has had any idea of——

  MISS TESMAN

  Yes, you don’t seem to have wasted your time on your wedding trip, George.

  TESMAN

  No, that I haven’t. But do take off your bonnet, Auntie. Look here! Let me untie the strings—eh?

  MISS TESMAN [While he does so.]

  Well well—this is just as if you were still at home with us.

  TESMAN [With the bonnet in his hand, looks at it from all sides.]

  Why, what a gorgeous bonnet you’ve been investing in!

  MISS TESMAN

  I bought it on Hedda’s account.

  TESMAN

  On Hedda’s account? Eh?

  MISS TESMAN

  Yes, so that Hedda needn’t be ashamed of me if we happened to go out together.

  TESMAN [Patting her cheek.]

  You always think of everything, Aunt Julia.

  [Lays the bonnet on a chair beside the table.]

  And now, look here—suppose we sit comfortably on the sofa

  and have a little chat, till Hedda comes.

  [They seat themselves. She places her parasol in the corner of the sofa.]

  MISS TESMAN [Takes both his hands and looks at him.]

  What a delight it is to have you again, as large as life, before my very eyes, George! My George—my poor brother’s own boy!

  TESMAN

  And it’s a delight for me, too, to see you again, Aunt Julia! You, who have been father and mother in one to me.

  MISS TESMAN

  Oh yes, I know you will always keep a place in your heart for your old aunts.

  TESMAN

  And what about Aunt Rina? No improvement—eh?

  MISS TESMAN

  Oh no—we can scarcely look for any improvement in her case, poor thing. There she lies, helpless, as she has lain for all these years. But heaven grant I may not lose her yet awhile! For if I did, I don’t know what I should make of my life, George—especially now that I haven’t you to look after any more.

  TESMAN [Patting her back.]

  There, there, there——!

  MISS TESMAN [Suddenly changing her tone.]

  And to think that here are you a married man, George!—And that you should be the one to carry off Hedda Gabler—the beautiful Hedda Gabler! Only think of it—she, that was so beset with admirers!

  TESMAN [Hums a little and smiles complacently.]

  Yes, I fancy I have several good friends about town who would like to stand in my shoes—eh?