what if I say to you that the word play and the word theater are completely different things and today we're going to get introduced to a certain kind of drama and a certain kind of dramatist who first established the relevance of this difference the difference between play and theater the difference between text and performance so stay with me till the end of this video because we are going to look at not just the biography of the playright but also the context the conditions and finally the entire summary of the wonderful [Music] play so first things first let me take you to the year 1848 and let me take you to Europe you already must must have had some idea about the French Revolution which took place some time back in 1789 and now I'm taking you to 1848 when a series of revolutions across different European nations destabilized the entire idea of monarchy these revolutions were mostly driven by ideas of democracy liberalism and most importantly nationalism M Europe had already seen the height of Romanticism and we have also had a glimpse of what that looks like through the British Romantics like wassworth cdge shell gats Biden now as a natural flow of civilization after every high tide comes a low tide and Romanticism as a movement started to lose its grip and to fill that vacuum what emerged in European consciousness is realism two important things were happening in Europe at the time one the rapid industrialization and creation of these Urban centers rise of the middle class and on the other hand there was Charles Darwin who brings out this Origin of Species and he clearly states that whatever is written in the Bible about man's Genesis about B's origin is not at all true a vacuum th created in faith is replaced by signs at the same time there was August compy who was bringing out this idea of positivism which essentially talks about close observation and the study of cause and effect in nature drama is such a genre which is most affected by Society uh that is primarily because drama for its sustain tenant has to depend on the people who go and watch the planes and therefore through the evolution of drama we can understand how Society was evolving earlier drama used to present these Larger than Life characters these tragic Heroes uh or sometimes these uh drawing rooms of high society people upper class Elite society which we uh see in case of sentimental dramas the well-made plays but with the changes in society drama started to focus on the real life struggles of real human beings even the working classes so what is realism realism is it's not just a movement in drama uh it's generally seen that every movement first comes in the genre of painting and art it is perhaps because painters are usually uh more open to experimentation they are more imaginative and they are always willing to do something new and during the mid 1800s we see emergence of a painting style which started to depict real life and its details as if that is really what present presenting it was also a time when photography was uh coming up all right so everything happened in that menu and that led to a preference for presentation of reality now how do you present reality on stage when you go and watch a drama you already know that you are watching a drama colridge he had said that when we go and see anything um acted upon stage we suspend our sense of disbelief so it's like we do not remember that we are watching something imaginary and that makes us feel like we are seeing a real thing but here I'm talking about presenting reality itself on stage so that that suspension of disbelief is no longer required how is that accomplished or how did the play rights back then accomplish that the first thing that they worked on was setting up the stage the stage looked like the ordinary spaces that a common man inhabits a common man's living room uh maybe uh an office chamber which they can identify with uh a factory set up a random street which is very ordinary so the setting is shifted from artif IAL ones to real ones so you can see how when an audience was looking at the stage the audience was immediately connecting his own experience with the one going on on the stage the second important aspect is dialogue use of natural everyday conversation that was a very important element that the practitioners of realism introduced and that means they did away with those long soles and monologues and unrealistic signs where you know you are speaking on stage other characters are present but you're pretending as if they cannot hear you that is so unrealistic and nothing unrealistic uh was shown on stage which was not probable or possible under real circumstances characters were not black and white anymore uh shades were coming up and the fine line between tragedy and comedy was getting blurred earlier there were plays which were tragic comic uh but this was not exactly a tragic comic scenario it was realism in a sense that in reality life is neither tragic nor comic it is not entirely doomed nor is it entirely cheerful and happy there is no uh question of a happy ending or a sad end ending because there is no ending there is kind of a flow and drama captures just a chunk of that flowing thing called life and when you do away with tragedy or comedy then what happens you also do away with the idea of tragic hero with that Larger than Life Persona with that seriousness with which uh you look at the crimes committed or the inspiring elements that you get from those uh moments what is it replaced with it is replaced with identification you identify immediately with the situation on stage you immediately identify with the characters on stage because those characters are the gray characters the shades which you actually see around you and why just around you is the character you see as your reflection in the mirror every day another important change that was brought in was of course in the way these characters dressed the costumes the props everything was mundane ordinary common and natural I am using the word natural although there is an allog together different genre called naturalistic play which is uh if not entirely different from realism but is like an extension of it that we can speak about later in a way we can say the characters the set the costume the dialogue the characterization everything is built on the idea of reality being represented on stage because if you look at the dominant School of philosophy During the period that I'm talking about it was a period when empiricism flourished empiricism in a sense you get to know about the world through your five senses and that is also because this was a time that coincided with the development of ss does that mean imagination takes a backseat not altogether because we also see a lot of symbolism in these plays which is kind of telling you that real life when it is observed closely and when it is thought about closely it also has very strong symbolic element in it at the Forefront of this movement in drama was Henrik Ipson he kind of revolutionized the theater through introducing what we were now calling her realism but did he do that just with the band just in the very beginning of his career no author's biography usually scares students Sur doesn't it but I will kind of pick up things which I think you will find very interesting and that's going to help you understand the way his mind was actually changing Ipson was born in a remote town in Norway and he was actually born into a very wealthy family but he was around 6 or seven when his father went bankrupt and the entire household kind of changed they could survive it's not like they were totally impoverished but that old wealth was gone and he crew up and he was getting dissatisfied with everything at 15 he thought I won't be studying anymore so he left school he went away and he became this traine uh under a pharmacist uh what you uh that time they used to be called Apothecary so he became a traine there and then after a few years he thought I'm not happy with what I'm doing uh let me just restart my studies and he want wanted to prepare for University entrance so he prepared he studied he studied he couldn't manage to get entry into an University but what happened was that because of his rigorous study especially of Roman plays and all he ended up writing a play it was in a verse form it's called Catalina It Was Written exactly in 1850 it was a forse drama and it's not not that it got any instant success or anything but he somehow understood that this is his calling he's going to be a director and when I was talking about that revolution of 1848 uh and uh that went on to 1849 I was talking about nationalism so in Norway there was this you know Trend that we will be setting up a nationalist theater what is a nationalist theater uh it is something where the plays are written that focus on the uh the idea of Norway as a as a nation uh of the Scandinavian folklores something which would tie or unite the people of Norway now Ipson he was asked to write one play every year uh and he kind of got into the groove uh but the problem lied elsewhere Ipson as a writer he want to present the individual that is how an individual acts under certain circumstances but the theater of nationalism or the Nationalist theater that demands the kinds of plays where you look at people as groups okay uh the working class or the middle class uh so you look at people as groups Ipson wanted to look at people as individuals he was kind of a believer in individualism now during this time he also got married in 1858 to this woman called Susanna now what was special about this marriage unlike people around him unlike others or other couples that he was seeing around him Ipson wanted to have a kind of marriage which was founded on the idea of equality because he was a worshipper of individualism he thought that marriage should not stop or restrict uh either the husband or the wife from being the best individual that person can be the best version of yourself you know you have that idea now but people around him thought he was being unchristian this was like Blasphemous the Bible says otherwise and he was uh under mining uh marriage at an institution because marriage is about the bond between people and the word bond it has this connotation of tying up and Ipson was talking about Freedom his ideas about different things different social issues did not match with people and he was also finding it difficult to produce plays uh to satisfy the uh theater of nationalism or the Nationalist theater although he wrote this play in 1863 The Pretenders uh which was pretty popular um but it was too late the theater in Christiania where he was uh working that went bankrupt and Ipson was feeling like I've lost everything and he was totally dissatisfied with Norway people of Norway their expectations and he wanted to go away but you had to survive so he applied for a uh for a grant he was awarded with that ground thankfully so he went to Italy and a sea change occurred there he started to uh experiment more freely this time he lived in Italy for 27 years and it was during this period which is known as the second period of his career we have the play adult's house this second phase may be seen as the ones in which he wrote about social problems and and that's why most plays of this time is called Problem play the third period in his career came uh much later where he explored idealism too uh but that is a different thing uh and we have to focus now on dolls house 1879 that was the year in which he produced this play what was the audience like what was happening their minds during the time I'm going to draw your attention to three particular years in this context with respect to Norway 1884 women were granted the right to pursue higher education like men 1898 a law was passed allowing women married women to have control or authority over property 1913 women got the right to vote and Norway was one of the first countries to grant women voting rights looking at these three years you can very well understand what was Society like in 1879 nothing was granted yet and the stage or theater had not yet witnessed what realism is what was the dominant uh mode of theater back then it was the well-made play wellmade play means a very artificial scenario with exaggerated sentiments and a lot of plot twists something very artificial so when the audience first goes and looks at the stage which is laid bare in front of them and they look at a very aesthetically decorated living room they feel that okay we are looking at another wellmade play and then they see that a woman comes in and they feel that such a meticulously dressed prim and proper and cheerful angel in the house is a character from a wellmade play this was ion's strategy he knew that if he introduced realism without any moment of transition then the audience might not accept it or understand it let alone appreciate it what he very intelligently does is he educates the audience through this play a doll's house is not about a play written during the movement of realism it is a play through which realism is born because the beginning of the play is so very different from how it progresses and How It Ends so let's quickly look at the basic plot line to understand a little bit about the story so that eventually when we'll study it in detail we'll be able to understand these nuances so what is the story about in the First Act we are introduced to the main characters we have Norah Helmer and her husband towal Helmer Norah has a friend called Christine and we have a character called Dr rank who is towell's friend but is also very intimate with n other than these characters we have ctit who appears to be the villain of the story at least in the beginning and then there are minor appearances of the maid the nurse and so on and the little children too Norah from the beginning is presented as a very cheerful bubbly childish woman uh who has three kids and the kids are mostly taken care of by the nurse who was also Norah's nurse when she was a young child Norah's parents are dead her husband is presented as this authoritarian figure a very dominating person uh who appears to provide Nora with the necessities of life and Norah uh kind of tries to play tal to get some money out of him uh and the way this play begins everything appears to be like a normal home again the word normal is uh quite a problematic word nowadays but back then people thought that this is a normal household the husband is the provider the wife is the spendthrift who spends everything away by the time the play reaches the middle of the First Act uh we get to see Christine who is is Nora's friend and she's a widow now she comes uh from far and Norah begins to speak with uh Christine saying how she's very excited because her husband has got a job in the bank as a manager and now all their financial troubles were gone Christine emphasizes the fact that uh she had been the soul breed winner after her husband's death uh and she had to support her mother and her brothers and that kind of triggers in Nora a feeling that uh Christine is probably showing an air of superiority because Christine represents a kind of an independent woman so she also tells Christine that she has also done very serious things in life and she has also saved her uh husband's life uh by procuring some money with which they could have a trip where he recovered from his illness because her husband was seriously ill but but she does not tell Christine exactly how she got that money and the audience is also left in suspense now while these things happen we get to see this character coced he comes and suddenly Norah's appearance changes it's as if she's having some kind of anxiety inside her this coced fellow he used to work in the same bank where toell is now going to be the manager and it is see that todor has decided to dismiss him on what grounds that he had done some corruption or some Act of forgery rockstead he comes to Nora and then we realize that it is coced from whom Norah had taken the money and she was paying him back in installments coced blackmails Norah that if he loses his job he would reveal everything to her husband as the audience begins to feel very curious as to what is the entire problem here we get the explanation that while borrowing the money Norah had not informed anything to her husband why because her husband never wanted to borrow anything from anyone that was his moral stand secondly n's father was in deathbed so she couldn't ask him for money that would be very bad and during those days that's why I gave you those dates earlier during those days women were not allowed to keep any bank account borrow anything without the husband's consent or parents consent so Norah was in a bit of a problem here so when she approached CAD for money CAD gave her the money on the condition that she had to sign a bond and that signature was to be uh authenticated by her father as a guaranted that in case she cannot pay back the father will pay back so Norah said fine I'll get my father to sign this she took that Bond and then she returned it signed but she never gave her father this paper for Signature she signed it herself and mistakenly she put the date 3 days after her father's death so obviously this was a very stupid thing to do but we can understand that Norah who was not very uh certain about these official matters legal matters she overlooked the whole seriousness of this and she thought that if I paid back the money nothing matters and after all I'm doing this to save my husband so she gave the bond to CAD and CAD understood that this was all forged so now that he had a leverage on Norah he want wanted to utilize the situation to its fullest and he ends up asking Norah for this favor that he should not be thrown out of the back we see Norah requesting toal and toal is completely horrified at the idea that his childish wife could be talking about such serious matters uh interfering in His official business and he gets very offended it was Christmas time he wanted his wife to decorate the house to prepare for a fancy ball and not talk about serious things at all interestingly he had already given the job which he had uh taken away from crad to Christine upon Norah's request Norah back then didn't know that CAD would turn up so she had asked her husband that uh my friend she knows about bookkeeping and toell said fine I'll then engage her in my office so in a week C's fate is sealed in the next two acts what happens is that situations get complicated in the second act we see that Nora is getting more and more anxious about the whole thing there is an interaction between Nora and Dr rank who already appears in the First Act but in the second act we see a lot more interaction and there is a kind of a friendship between Nora and Dr rank which we get to understand as their conversation progresses that Dr rank has a certain admiration for Norah and he ends up confessing his love for him this Dr rank he suffers from uh a very horrible disease of the spine and he's going to die very soon and his confession is not to gain something out of this relationship of course because he knows he's going to die but it's just like the confession of a dying man Nora is visibly upset by the confession because uh she already knew that she had a sense that Dr rank was uh in love with her but she felt that when he actually told it out loud it broke that romantic element about it and now it was uh like she was cheating on her husband so anyway uh Dr rank said that he would not be able to continue his visits because he knows that he he's going to stop visiting them very soon he's going to die and before he dies he's going to send an envelope with a black cross on it and he doesn't want toal to visit him in his s bed because he knows that torval doesn't like anything messy disorganized and ugly it is in the second act that we really understand what Dr rank means by this because whenever toell comes and there is some hous work going on like knitting or arranging uh Nora immediately stops that work or asks that person to leave the place because tovell doesn't like uh the the chaos of domestic chores he likes a prim and perfect presentation in front of him he doesn't care for the hard work that goes behind it so we see a man who is not participating in his household chores he he consider considers the children as noisy things and he doesn't want to be around them he feels Disturbed while Norah is seen to interact with children in a very playful manner back then this was a normal household it was 1879 anyway coming back to the story in the third act a costume party takes place during which when Nora and uh her husband there upstairs in the party we see coced and Christine having a conversation earlier Christine had told Nora that she uh was in a relationship with coced and she when when she came to know about the whole thing from Nora that it is CAD from whom uh this blackmail is coming and CAD is about to reveal everything to the husband and crad had left a letter in the letter box telling everything to toal then Christine had offered her help to Nora saying that I think I have some influence on this person I will go I'll try to request him to come and get his letter back and then through their conversation what emerges is that uh they plan to have a future together and then CAD feels that okay uh when my life is going to be settled and my children like he's a widow and with kids and Christine doesn't have any kids chistin feels like she can be a mother to his children uh so it's a prospect of a very happy ending for them and CAD feels that okay if I'm having a happy ending why should I make a woman suffer let me take the letter back then Christine says that no I have seen this house built on lies and deceit let toal know everything let them sort out their differences somehow we might at that moment feel that is being um jealous of Nora she wants to harm her but then she is talking sense here because a relationship built on deceit and fraud is not going to survive anyway so CAD doesn't get his letter back when Nora and torel they come down from their costume party and they're finally on their own Nora greets her husband good night and they are in a kind of melancholic mood also because they had already received an envelope from Dr rank with a black cross on it a couple of uh cards from Dr rang and Norah tells to tovell that this is a sign that he is going to die and this is like a final letter or final note he is sending to us Nora also notices that todal is sitting down with letters other letters which includes Croc's letter and she kind of retires to her room and then then Turell calls her back and he demands an explanation and when he is demanding an explanation that what is this what have you done Norah's first reaction is that the Toral is so protective of me he's definitely going to protect me and he is probably going to tell everybody that it is he who has done this to save me and I should not let him sacrifice his honor this is going on in her mind but she sees that to world is not not speaking along those lines at all he's accusing her and not just that he's saying that she's going to be a very bad influence on the children she must stay away from them we see toor world really being extremely violent with his words here he's not ready to understand that what Norah did was for him but then something happens right in the middle of this the tobell Rings the mate comes with a letter from coced to Norah toble statues that and he finds out that Croc stud has decided to stop blackmailing Norah and he has also returned that promising letter that bed to tears that up and he feels that there is no danger to his honor anymore or his reputation his mood changes immediately he tries to tell Norah that okay let's forget it all that what he has not realized is not 's change of attitude she suddenly has become calm thoughtful and Frozen as if she is going through what Aristotle would have called anagnorisis in the final section of the last act we see Nora wanting to have a serious conversation with Talon saying that we have never had a serious conversation all our lives and what is this serious conversation about she wants to leave the house darvel says how would you survive you you know nothing about the world and she says that is exactly why I should leave this whole place had been only a place like a doll's house a child's play where her worth her dignity had never been given value so for the first time in the history of theater a woman walks out of the stage slamming the door the sound of which shook the hearts of the audience looking on there were upoos how can a mother leave the children how can this be a good thing doesn't she have any responsibility how would she survive the only way she can is by becoming a fallen woman when this play was arranged to be staged in other country especially Germany because that was a very happening place then renowned actors female actors they refused to play the part of Nora and Epson was seeing that okay people are going to change the ending anyway and if I let any Tom Dick Harry change it then it won't be aesthetic at all it will be horrible so let me do that horrible thing myself so he wrote an alternative ending where Nora reconciles to her household she is reconciling to her husband and she doesn't leave the stage the point is that alternative ending play didn't work well it was not popular and people had to get back to the original ending at the very beginning of this video I was talking about the difference between play and theater we will understand this difference when we will read through the text of the play but think about that last moment when Nora gets out of the stage with that slam of the door that sound has rarely been used in theater till then the effect that sound has the effect that Silence has you would notice when we will read the play that Ipson gives elaborate stage directions and you might wonder what's the whole point Shakespeare only writes exit enter and that's all why is this man giving such long essay like stage directions that is because each and every aspect of the stage is significant and when you go to see a performance it's different from when you read a play because in a play you can simply pause reading go back to your own life come back to it read it again but when you're watching a play you're watching it for a condensed moment so every sound every minor Det of the stage affects you much more than it does when you are a reader of a play a play is a permanent thing it's not going to change but theater is a temporary thing and therefore if since the's house is presented differently across different Productions down the ages but there is something some core element of realism in it because of which it is still relevant when I'm recording this it is 8th March it's supposed to be a day dedicated to women more specifically walking woman something that Nora really idealizes this video would be processed and posted sometime around probably 12th 13th march on 20th March is the birthday of Henri Gibson so when you talk about relevance of adults house don't look at the accomplishments that women have achieved down the line it is not just about accomplishment of a woman I believe equality in marriage is an accomplishment of both man and woman both have to work hard toward it and this is what Ipson said when he was talking at a Women's Rights Convention he said I don't know what women's rights are I don't know what they mean because he was talking about human rights seeing what as a human is the most important perspective that he establishes in the play and I'm sure when we will be reading the play together you will realize the full implication of it I hope you like today's summary and this whole discussion on context and conditions I'm really looking forward to our detailed study of a doll's house and also you can check some of the articles which are already posted on our website uh especially on the portrayal of Nora and realism in the plate thank you all for being with us stay subscribe and see you all very soon in my next video this is Monami Muki signing off [Music] bye h