This bronze plaque provides text in both Norwegian and English. The English text reads:
"HONOUR AND DESPAIR, 1857-1864
In the autumn of 1857, Henrik Ibsen returned to the capital as artistic director for Kristiania Norwegian Theatre at No. 1 Mollergaten. The theatre's greatest success was Ibsen's The Vikings at Helgeland. Unfortunately the cost of buying and restoring the building in 1860 coincided with a period of recession and inflation. The box office was meagre, and in 1862, the theatre went into bankruptcy. Although now unemployed, Ibsen used this opportunity to concentrate solely on his writing.
He first wrote Love's Comedy, a play that anticipates the marital issues that would later occupy him so intensely in his dramas on contemporary life. This play met with a storm of protest both from the critics and theatre goers, and many were those who aired their views without having read it. Ibsen maintained that his wife Suzannah was the play's only devotee. The Pretenders, which also addressed recurrent issues in Ibsen's dramas, received far better reviews. Having received a travel grant from The Norwegian Parliament, Ibsen left Norway on 1 April 1864. Apart from summer visits in 1874 and 1885, he remained abroad for 27 years."
The following information about Henrik Ibsen is from Wikipedia (
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"Henrik Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century.
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 later work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic early play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the truly great playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare". He is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903 and 1904.
Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. 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. Born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, his dramas were shaped by his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas continue in their influence upon contemporary culture and film with notable film productions including A Doll's House featuring Jane Fonda and A Master Builder featuring Wallace Shawn."