Trivia

He is called "the father of modern drama" because his extremely influential plays dealing with domestic life dealt with some of the most shocking issues of the day - venereal disease, a wife abandoning her husband and children to discover her own worth as a human being, suicide, etc. He also wrote a few verse dramas, among them "Peer Gynt". However, Edvard Grieg's music for the original 1876 production is now performed much more often than is the play.

Not only is he considered the father of modern drama, but his grandson Tancred Ibsen, would grow up to be perhaps the greatest Norwegian of his generation in the modern art of movie-making...

In 1846 he had an illegitimate child by Else Sophie Jensdatter, a servant.

Dubbed one of "the four greats" (de fire store) in Norwegian literature, together with Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Alexander Kielland and Jonas Lie.

On December 23rd 1859 his son Sigurd was born.

His play, "Hedda Gabler" at the Writers Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2014 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Large Play Production.

Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director.

Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare.

As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.

His three-act play 'A Doll's House' was the world's most performed play in 2006.

He received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and was Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa.

Ibsen himself regarded 'Emperor and Galilean' as his masterpiece.

In 1995, the asteroid 5696 Ibsen was named in his memory.

He had a critical eye and conducted a free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. In many critics' estimates The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works".

Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition, and is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century.

Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873, Commander in 1892, and with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1893.

The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in Norway and other countries.

Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal.

In 2012 Håkon Anton Fagerås made a statue in marble of Ibsen for the Ibsen Museum in Oslo.

On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo) after a series of strokes in March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died the following day at 2:30 pm.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.

In 2011 Håkon Anton Fagerås made two busts in bronze of Ibsen. One for Parco Ibsen in Sorrento, Italy and one in Skien kommune.

Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind the façades, revealing much that was disquieting to a number of his contemporaries.

Although most of his plays are set in Norway-often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up-Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years.

He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas had a strong influence upon contemporary culture.

He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Marguerite Yourcenar, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleza.

After Peer Gynt Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety.

Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt has strong surreal elements.

Ibsen's dramas were informed by his own background in the merchant elite of Skien, and he often modelled or named characters after family members.

The name Ibsen is originally a patronymic, meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a Danish variant of Jacob). The patronymic became "frozen", i.e. it became a permanent family name, in the 17th century. The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around 1900.