The Books: “Enemy of the People” (Henrik Ibsen)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

IbsenPlays.jpgNext on my script shelf:

An Enemy of the People (Penguin Plays), by Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen was, above all else, a social critic. His plays were about problems in the society at large: the status of wives, business concerns vs. individual concerns … His plays were always very controversial, because of what he had to say, the spotlight he shone on certain injustices. Doll House (excerpt here) was greeted by a complete uproar, because Nora leaves her children at the end. There was no happy ending. Nora chose to become a pariah in society (and make no bones about it: that will be Nora’s future. There is no happy ending for Nora – and that was Ibsen’s point. Marriage enslaved women. While marriage gave women financial stability, and social status – on a deeper level, Ibsen saw the truth. Without women having control of their own money, they could not manuever in society. And so marriage became about a jailer and a prisoner, someone who had all the control of the money – and someone with no power. The power structures were completely off – and one of his criticisms of the institution of marriage at the time – was that such an imbalance of power made true intimacy between man and woman impossible. And THAT was, for him, the true tragedy. Men were enslaved by this institution as well. But it was women who paid the true price. Without the structure of marriage, women would fall into disrepute. Nora chose THAT over marriage. That’s quite an indictment – and people did not want to hear it!!) For anyone who thinks art is just entertainment (or should be just entertainment), you should read your Ibsen.

The great thing about Ibsen, too, is that – while his plays are always about big social issues – what really sticks in the mind is the CHARACTERS. The characters are not just ciphers for him to get his point across. Nora and Torvald in Doll House are three-dimensional people, real people, you feel like they have lives outside of the play. They are not just cut-out stick-figures that Ibsen maneuvers around to make his criticisms clear. That’s why Ibsen is a genius. Or one of the many reasons.

Enemy of the People is basically, at its heart, about the individual versus the status quo of society. In this play, the spa/mineral baths represent the status quo of this particular town. The mineral baths are the primary reason for the prosperity of the people … It’s also a metaphor for health and well-being (spas being a place people come to to heal and rejuvenate). But then pollution is discovered in the water, and the establishment refuses to listen to any of the experts who say the spa must be shut down – because obviously that would mean a loss of profits. (It’s like Erin Brockovitch of the 19th century). The mayor of the town runs the spa (Mayor Stockmann) and he represents unyielding orthodoxy, and intimidation. Mayor Stockmann’s brother, Thomas, is the primary doctor who works at the spa – and he becomes the Mayor’s main adversary. Thomas will not go along with the status quo, if he doesn’t think it’s right – he doubts, he’s skeptical of the “experts”, he has to find out for himself the truth. At first he is surrounded by other like-minded skeptics, but by the end of the play – they have all abandoned Thomas, leaving him standing alone. Thomas Stockmann claims (and this is his most controversial point) that the minority is always right – the minority is usually made up of those who are on the frontier, looking forward, asking questions, challenging the status quo … The minority are pioneers. The majority are fearful, static, and rigid, and they WILL be defeated – although they cannot see it.

Thomas Stockmann is a great great part for a man. Apparently, Konstantin Stanislavsky (the great Russian director, actor, and eventual acting teacher and theorist – he is the godfather of the American “method” acting) played Stockmann and always said it was one of his favorite roles. He said that Stockmann helped lead him to become more intuitive about the essence of the art of acting (which nobody had ever studied before in an in-depth way before Stanislavsky). He wrote extensively about Stockmann, and how important it was for an actor to build a credible character from within. How does one CREATE another human being?? Stanislavsky wrote about his experience playing Stockmann: “From the intuition of feelings I passed naturally to the inner image with all its peculiarities and details: the short-sighted eyes that spoke so eloquently of his inner blindness to human faults, the childlike and youthful manner of movement, the friendly relations with his children and family, the happiness, the joking and play, the gregariousness and attractiveness which forced all who came in touch with him to become purer and better, and to show the best sides of their nature in his presence. From the intuition of feelings I went to the outer image, and the soul and body of Stockmann-Stanislavsky became one organically.”

Fascinating. How to merge your own self (because after all, you are the one playing the character and no one else) with the character. Treat the character with respect. Do not assume that it is easy to step in someone else’s shoes. It takes work. Okay, so he’s short-sighted – what does that mean? How does he perceive other people without his vision? How does he deal with his glasses? All of these little details, explored in your imagination, and experimented with during rehearsal, will add up to a 3-dimensional character.

Stanislavsky loved Stockmann because Stockmann, above all else, stands for truth. Stockmann is one of those unfortunate people who is right about something too soon. History is usually very unkind to those who are right too soon. Who see the truth of something, before it is time, historically, for that truth to be acknowledged. (Interesting: Ibsen was sort of the same way. People were not open to his message about marriage, and women’s rights … and so there was an uproar when Doll House came out. He was right … too soon.)

I must excerpt a bit from the tour de force of Act Four, where Stockmann really shows his stuff. Act Four is where an assembly of townspeople from all levels of society gather to discuss the pollution, and Stockmann steps forward to speak up for the truth. It’s the scene where the powers that be declare that Stockmann is an ‘enemy of the people’ – because his views are unpopular, and also seen as dangerous. He threatens the status quo so much – if they listen to him, their town will lose its main source of income. But Stockmann also makes a deeper point (and this is why Ibsen was such a rabble-rouser): Stockmann declares that not only is the spa polluted – but all of society is polluted. He goes for the larger metaphor. Again: he is right, too soon.

I can see why James Joyce loved Ibsen so much. Joyce thought Ireland (as much as he loved it) was a sick society, and nobody wanted to hear it – the people of Ireland did not want to look in the mirror that Joyce held up to them. Ibsen gave him courage to keep going, to keep speaking his truth.

It’s a rousing scene – one that any talented actor should feel privileged to get to play.


EXCERPT FROM An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen.

AKLAKSEN (ringing the bell) Dr. Stockmann has the floor!

DR. STOCKMANN. If it had been only a few days ago that anyone had tried to gag me like this tonight — I’d have fought for my sacred human rights like a lion! But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because now I have greater things to discuss.

(The crowd presses in closer around him; Morten Kiil becomes visible among them)

DR. STOCKMANN. I’ve been th inking a lot these past few days — pondering so many things that finally my thoughts began running wild —

MAYOR STOCKMAN (coughs) Hm –!

DR. STOCKMANN. But then I got everything in place again, and I saw the whole structure so distinctly. It’s why I’m here this evening. I have great disclosures to make, my friends! I’m going to unveil a discovery to you of vastly different dimension than this trifle that our water system is polluted and that our health spa is built on a muckheap.

MANY VOICES. (shouting) Don’t talk of the baths! We won’t listen! Enough of that!

DR. STOCKMANN. I’ve said I’d talk about the great discovery I’ve made these last few days: the discovery that all the sources of our spiritual life are polluted, and that our entire community rests on a muckheap of lies.

STARTLED VOICES. (in undertones) What’s he saying?

MAYOR STOCKMANN. Of all the insinuations —

ASLAKSEN (his hand on the bell) The speaker is urged to be moderate.

DR. STOCKMANN. I’ve loved my birthplace as much as any man can. I was barely grown when I left here; and distance and deprivation and memory threw a kind of enchantment over the town, and the people too. (scattered applause and cheers) For many years, then, I practiced in the far north, at the dead end of nowhere. When I came in contact with some of the people who lived scattered in that waste of rocks, I many times thought it would have done those poor starved creatures more good if they’d gotten a veterinary instead of someone like me.

(Murmuring among the crowd)

BILLING (setting down his pen) Ye gods, why I never heard such –!

HOVSTAD. That’s an insult to the common man!

DR. STOCKMANN. Just a minute — ! I don’t t hink anyone could ever say that I’d forgotten my home town up there. I brooded on my egg like an eider duck; and what I hatched — was the plan for the baths. (Applause and objections) And finally, at long last, when fate relented and allowed me to come back home — my friends, then it seemed as though I had nothing left to wish for in this world. No, I did have one wish: a fierce, insistent, burning desire to contribute to the best of my town and my people.

MAYOR STOCKMANN. (gazing into space) It’s a funny way to — hm.

DR. STOCKMANN. And so I went around, exulting in my blind happiness. But yesterday morning — no, actually it was the night before last — the eyes of my spirit were opened wide, and the first thing I saw was the consummate stupidity of the authorites —

(Confusion, outcries, and laughter. Mrs. Stockmann coughs vigorously)

MAYOR STOCKMANN. Mr. Chairman!

ASLAKSEN (ringing his bell) By the powers vested in me –!

DR. STOCKMANN. It’s petty to get hung up on a word, Mr. Aslaksen. I only mean that it came to me then what a consummate mess our local leaders had made out of the baths. Our leaders are one group that, for the life of me, I can’t stand. I’ve had enough of that breed in my days. They’re like a pack of goats in a stand of new trees — they strip off everything. They get in a free man’s way wherever he turns — and I really don’t see why we shouldn’t exterminate them like any other predator —

(Tumult in the room)

MAYOR STOCKMANN. Mr. Chairman, can you let such a statement pass?

ASLAKSEN (his hand on the bell) Doctor –!

DR. STOCKMANN. I can’t imagine why I’ve only now taken a really sharp look at these gentlemen, because right before my eyes almost daily I’ve had a superb example — my brother Peter — slow of wit and thick of head —

(Laughter, commotion, and whistles. Mrs. Stockmann coughs repeatedly. Aslaksen vehemently rings his bell)

THE DRUNK (who has gotten in again) Are you referring to me? Yes, my name’s Pettersen all right — but I’ll fry in hell, before —

ANGRY VOICES. Out with that drunk! Throw him out!

(Again the drunk is ejected)

MAYOR STOCKMANN. Who was that person?

A BYSTANDER. I don’t know him, Your Honor.

ANOTHER. He’s not from this town.

A THIRD. It must be that lumber dealer from over in — (the rest is inaudible)

ASLAKSEN. The man was obviously muddled on Munich beere. Go on, Dr. Stockmann, but try to be more temperate.

DR. STOCKMANN. So then, my friends and neighbors, I’ll say nothing further about our leading citizens. If, from what I’ve just said, anyone imagines that I’m out to get those gentlemen here this evening, then he’s wrong — most emphatically wrong. Because I nourish a benign hope that all those mossbacks, those relics of a dying world of thought, are splendidly engaged in digging their own graves — they don’t need a doctor’s aid to speed them off the scene. And besides, they’re not the overwhelming menace to society; they’re not the ones most active in poisoning our spiritual life and polluting the very ground we stand on; they’re not the most insidious enemies of truth and freedom in our society.

SHOUTS FROM ALL SIDES. Who, then! Who are they? Name them!

DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, you can bet I’ll name them! Because that’s exactly my great discovery yesterday. (raises his voice) The most insidious enemy of truth and freedom among us is the solid majority. Yes, the damned, solid, liberal majority — that’s it! Now you know.

(Wild turmoil in the room. Almost all those present are shouting, stamping, and whistling. Several elderly gentlemen exchange sly glances and appear to be amused. Eilif and Morten move threateningly twoard the schoolboys who are making a disturbance. Aslaksen rings his bell and calls for order. Both Hovstad and Billing are talking, without being heard. Finally quiet is restored.)

ASLAKSEN. As chairman, I urge the speaker to withdraw his irresponsible comments.

DR. STOCKMANN. Not a chance, Mr. Aslaksen. It’s that same majority in our community that’s stripping away my freedom and trying to keep me from speaking the truth.

HOVSTAD. The majority is always right.

BILLING. And it acts for truth. Ye gods!

DR. STOCKMANN. The majority is never right. I say, never! That’s one of those social lies that any free man who thinks for himself has to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any country — the intelligent or the stupid? I think we’ve got to agree that, all over this whole wide earth, the stupid are in a fearsomely overpowering majority. But I’ll be damned to perdition if it’s part of the eternal plan that the stupid are meant to rule the intelligent! (Commotion and outcries) Oh yes, you can shout me down well enough, but you can’t refute me. The majority has the might — unhappily — but it lacks the right. The right is with me, and the other few, the solitary individuals. The minority is always right.

(Renewed turmoil)

HOVSTAD. (laughs) So in a couple of days, the doctor’s turned aristocrat.

DR. STOCKMANN. I’ve told you I’m not going to waste any words on that wheezing, little, narrow-chested pack of reactionaries. The tide of life has already passed them by. But I’m thinking of the few, the individuals among us, who’ve mastered all the new truths that have been germinating. Those men are out there holding their positions like outposts, so far in the vanguard that the solid majority hasn’t even begun to catch up — and there’s where they’re fighting for truths too newly born in the world’s consciousness to have won any support from the majority.

HOVSTAD. Well, and now he’s a revolutionist!

DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, you’re damn right I am, Mr. Hovstad! I’m fomenting a revolution against the lie that only the majority owns the truth. What are these truths the majority flocks around? They’re the ones so ripe in age they’re nearly senile. But, gentlemen, when a truth’s grown that old, it’s gone a long way toward becoming a lie. (Laughter and jeers) Oh yes, you can believe me as you please; but truths aren’t at all the stubborn old Methuselahs people imagine. An ordinary, established truth lives, as a rule — let’s say — some seventeen, eighteen, at the most twenty years; rarely more. But those venerable truths are always terribly thin. Even so, it’s only then that the majority takes them up and urges them on society as wholesome spiritual food. But there isn’t much nutriment in that kind of diet, I promise you; and as a doctor, I know. All these majority-truths are like last year’s salt meat — like rancid, tainted pork. And there’s the cause of all the moral scurvy that’s raging around us.

ASLAKSEN. It strikes me that the distinguished speaker has strayed rather far from his text.

MAYOR STOCKMANN. I must agree with the chairman’s opinion.

DR. STOCKMANN. You’re out of your mind, Peter! I’m sticking as close to the text as I can. Because this is exactly what I’m talking about: that the masses, the crowd, the damn solid majority — that this is what I say is poisoning our sources of spiritual life and defiling the earth under our feet.

HOVSTAD. And the great liberal-minded majority does this because they’re reasonable enough to honor only basic, well-accepted truths?

DR. STOCKMANN. Ah, my dear Mr. Hovstad, don’t talk about basic truths! The truths accepted by the masses now are the ones proclaimed basic by the advance guard in our grandfathers’ time. We fighters on the frontiers today, we no longer recognize them. There’s only one truth that’s basic in my belief: that no society can live a healthy life on the bleached bones of that kind of truth.

HOVSTAD. Instead of standing there rambling on in the blue, it might be interesting to descsribe some of those bleached bones we’re living on.

(Agreement from various quarters)

DR. STOCKMANN. Oh, I could itemize a whole slew of abominations; but to start with, I’ll mention just one recognized truth that’s actually a vicious lie, though Mr. Hovstad and the Courier and all the Courier‘s devotees live on it.

HOVSTAD. That being –?

DR. STOCKMANN. That being the doctrine inherited from your ancestors, which you mindlessly disseminate far and wide — the doctrine that the public, the mob, the masses are the vital core of the people — in fact, that they are the people — and that the common man, the inert, unformed component of society, has the same right to admonish and approve, to prescribe and to govern as the few spiritually accomplished personalities.

BILLING. Well, I’ll be —

HOVSTAD. (simultaneously, shouting) Citizens, did you hear that!

ANGRY VOICES. Oh, we’re not the people, uh? So, only the accomplished rule!

A WORKMAN. Out with a man who talks like that!

OTHERS. Out the door! Heave him out!

A MAN. Evensen, blow the horn!

(Deep blasts on a horn are heard; whistles and furious commotion in the room)

DR. STOCKMANN. (when the noise has subsided a bit) Now just be reasonable. Can’t you stand hearing the truth for a change? I never expected you all to agree with me on the spot. But I really did expect that Mr. Hovstad would admit I’m right, after he’d simmered down a little. Mr. Hovstad claims to be a freethinker —

STARTLED VOICES (in undertones) What was that? A freethinker? Hovstad a freethinker?

HOVSTAD. Prove it, Dr. Stockmann. Where have I said that in print?

DR. STOCKMANN. (reflecting) No, by God, you’re right — you’ve never had the courage. Well, I don’t want to put you in hot water. Let’s say I’m the freethinker then. Because I’m going to demonstrate scientifically that the Courier‘s leading you shamelessly by the nose when they say that you — the public, the masses — are the vital core of the people. You see, that’s just a journalistic lie! The masses are no more than the raw material out of which a people is shaped.

(Muttering, laughter, and disquiet in the room)

Well, isn’t that a fact throughout all the rest of life? What about the difference between a thoroughbred and a hybrid animal? Look at your ordinary barnyard fowl. What meat can you get off such scrawny bones? Not much! And what kind of eggs does it lay? Any competent crow or raven could furnish about the same. But now take a purebred Spanish or Japanese hen, or a fine pheasant or turkey — there’s where you’ll see the difference! Or again with dogs, a family we humans so closely resemble. First, think of an ordinary stray dog — I mean one of those nasty, ragged, common mongrels that run around the streets, and spatter the walls of houses. Then set that stray alongside a poodle whose pedigree runs back through a distinguished line to a house where fine food and harmonious voices an dmusic have been the rule. Don’t you think the mentality of that poodle will have developed quite differently from the stray’s? Of course it will! A young pedigreed poodle can be raised by its trainer to perform the most incredible feats. Your common mongrel couldn’t learn such things if you stood him on his head.

(Tumult and derision generally)

A CITIZEN (shouting) Now you’re making us into dogs, eh?

ANOTHER MAN. We’re not animals, Doctor!

DR. STOCKMANN. Oh yes, brother, we are animals! We’re the best animals, all in all, that any man could wish for. But there aren’t many animals of quality among us. There’s a terrible gap between the thoroughbreds and the mongrels in humanity. And what’s amusing is that Mr. Hovstad totally agrees wiht me as long as we’re talking of four-legged beasts —

HOVSTAD. Well, but they’re a class by themselves.

DR. STOCKMANN. All right. But as soon as I extend the law to the two-legged animals, Mr. Hovstad stops cold. He doesn’t dare think his own thoughts any longer, or follow his ideas to a logical conclusion. So he turns the whole doctrine upside down and declares in the Courier that the barnyard fowl and the mongrel dog — that these are the real paragons of the menagerie. But that’s how it always goes as long as conformity is in your system, and you haven’t worked through to a distinction of mind and spirit.

HOVSTAD. I make no claim of any kind of distinction. I was born of simple peasants, and I’m proud that my roots run deep in those masses that he despises.

NUMEROUS WOMEN. Hurray for Hovstad! Hurray, hurray!

DR. STOCKMANN. The kind of commonness I’m talking of isn’t only found in the depths: it teems and swarms all around us in society — right up to the top. Just look at your own neat and tidy mayor. My brother Peter’s as good a common man as any that walks on two feet —

(Laughter and hisses)

MAYOR STOCKMANN. I protest against these personal allusions.

DR. STOCKMANN. (unruffled) — and that’s not because he’s descended, just as I am, from a barbarous old pirate from Pomerania or thereabouts — because so we are —

MAYOR STOCKMANN. A ridiculous fiction. I deny it!

DR. STOCKMANN. — no, he’s that because he thinks that the higher-ups think and believes what they believe. The people who do that are the spiritually common men. And that’s why my stately brother Peter, you see, is in fact so fearfully lacking in distinction — and consequently so narrow-minded.

MAYOR STOCKMANN. Mr. Chairman — !

HOVSTAD. So you have to be distinguished to be liberal-minded in this country. That’s a completely new insight.

(General laughter)

DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, that’s also part of my new discovery. And along wtih it goes the idea that broad-mindedness is almost exactly the same as morality. That’s why I say it’s simply inexcusable of the Courier, day in and day out, to promote the fallacy that it’s the masses, the solid majority, who stand as the guardian of tolerance and morality — and that degeneracy and corruption of all kinds are a sort of by-product of culture, filtering down to us like all the pollution filtering down to the baths from the tanneries up at Molledal.

(Turmoil and interruptions)

DR. STOCKMANN. (unfazed, laughing in his enthusiasm) And yet this same Courier can preach that the deprived masses must be raised to greater cultural opportunities. But hell’s bells — if the Courier‘s assumption holds true, then raising the masses like that would be precisely the same as plunging them smack into depravity! But luckily it’s only an old wives’ tale — this inherited lie that culture demoralizes. No, it’s ignorance an dpoverty and ugliness in life that do the devil’s work! In a house that isn’t aired and swept every day — my wife Katherine maintains that the floors ought to be scrubbed as well, but that’s debatable — anyway — I say in a house like that, within two or three years, people lose all power for moral thought and action. Lack of oxygen dulls the conscience. And there must be a woeful dearth of oxygen in the houses of this town, it seems, if the entire solid majority can numb their consciences enough to want to build this town’s prosperity on a quagmire of duplicity and lies.

ASLAKSEN. It’s intolerable — such a gross attack on a whole community.

A GENTLEMAN. I move the chairman rule the speaker out of order.

FURIOUS VOICES. yes, yes! That’s right! Out of order!

DR. STOCKMANN. (vehemently) Then I’ll cry out the truth from every street corner. I’ll write to newspapers in other towns! The entire country’ll learn what’s happened here!

HOVSTAD. It almost looks like the doctor’s determined to destroy this town.

DR. STOCKMANN. Yes. I love my home town so much I’d rather destroy it than see it flourishing on a lie.

ASLAKSEN. That’s putting it plainly.

(Tumult and whistling. Mrs. Stockmann coughs in vain; the Doctor no longer hears her.)

DR. STOCKMANN. (with mounting indignation) What’s the difference if a lying community gets destroyed! It ought to be razed to the ground, I say! Stamp them out like vermin, everyone who lives by lies! You’ll contaminate this entire nation in the end, till the land itself deserves to be destroyed. And if it comes to that even, then I say with all my heart: let this whole land be destroyed, let its people all be stamped out!

A MAN. That’s talking like a real enemy of the people!

BILLING. Ye gods, but there’s the people’s voice!

THE WHOLE CROWD. (shrieking) Yes, yes, yes! He’s an enemy of the people! He hates his country! He hates all his people!

ASLAKSEN. Both as a citizen and as a human being, I’m profoundly shaken by what I’ve had to listen to here. Dr. Stockmann has revealed himself in a manner beyond anything I could have dreamed. I’m afraid that I have to endorse the judgment just rendered by my worthy fellow citizens; and I propose that we ought to express this judgment in a resolution, as follows: “This meeting declares that it regards Dr. Thomas Stockmann, staff physician at the baths, to be an enemy of the people.”

(Tumultuous cheers and applause.)

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