CHAPTER TEN

Hedda Gabler: A Script Analysis

As you might have guessed by now, I believe in learning from the plays that have come before us. There's immeasurable value in analyzing great plays to learn how they work. In this chapter, we'll focus on one play from start to finish: Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. By analyzing the play's sources (where Ibsen got the idea for his drama), its structure, its characters, and its various dramatic devices, you'll gain a clearer understanding of how plays work, enabling you to apply these lessons to your own writing.

Written in 1891, Hedda Gabler is the story of a woman of passionate desires. These desires might have led her to a life of intellectual creativity, or one of bohemian nonconformity. But because of her bourgeois social upbringing, she has a great fear of scandal. Her fear is almost pathological, and it has caused her to make safe choices as opposed to adventurous ones. The play depicts a thirty-six-hour period in her life during which her desires and her fears clash, bringing her to a crisis and leading to the destruction of the man she loved and her own suicide.

By taking apart the components of the play, we can learn a lot about how it was conceived and built. A great play can't be reduced to its components, of course. A great play is enlarged by original thinking, exuberant spirit, gut instincts, and the beat of the human heart. But if a play can't be described in its component parts as well as its whole, then it isn't a successfully constructed play.

Hedda Gabler exists in one commonly accepted Norwegian text, and although its many English-language translations vary in tone and texture, there is no serious difference in what is most important—its dramatic structure, characters and actions.

The biographical material and many of the quotes in this chapter are taken from Michael L. Meyer's excellent 1971 biography Ibsen.

HENRIK IBSEN AND THE ORIGINS OF HEDDA GABLER

Henrik Ibsen began writing plays in his native Norway early in life. The son of a merchant whose financial failures disrupted the family's security and well-being, Ibsen's earliest position was as an apothecary's assistant in a provincial town, the setting for his first personal drama: the fathering of an illegitimate son. The mother was the apothecary's housekeeper, ten years Ibsen's senior. While he took a certain measure of responsibility for the child's welfare and upbringing, Ibsen never met his son until late in life, almost fifty years later.

Following his university studies, Ibsen married Suzannah Thoresen, the daughter of a well-known university dean, and began writing epic dramatic “poems” and nationalistic plays focusing on Norwegian themes and stories. Although these oversized plays were produced, they were not successful. It wasn't until 1867 with the publication and production of his great verse play Peer Gynt that Ibsen achieved fame and notoriety. Peer Gynt solidified Ibsen's reputation. He abandoned verse drama in 1873 and worked in prose dialogue form for the rest of his life. This radical departure from the traditional formality of verse was matched by Ibsen's embrace of radical social thinking and his adherence to a psychological approach to character and play structure that seemed shockingly new at the time.

Ibsen took the idea of psychological realism and poured it into the “machinery” of what was then referred to as the “well-made play”—melodramatic nineteenth-century comedies and romances, thrillers and tearjerkers stuffed with secrets, revelations, suspense and violence. Ibsen disdained the “well-made” play—its fakery and shallow theatrics—but we can still see its mechanism at work in his plays. He took this melodramatic form and used it as the vehicle for his own brand of realism. Ibsen was combining the psychological insights and social concerns found in the literary works of Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy and others with his own, and focusing them inside the precise lens of the stage. In Hedda Gabler we find the finest observable example of his dramatic structure, a dramatic structure beholden as much to Aristotelian theory as it was to the construction of nineteenth-century “well-made” melodramas and comedies. Hedda Gabler's influence on the dramatic writing that followed—on George Bernard Shaw, on August Strindberg, on Anton Chekhov and countless dramatists working to this very day—is demonstrable and acknowledged.

By 1889, Ibsen had written a number of plays that dealt with crimes against society, the independence of women, the hypocrisy of religion and public morals, syphilis, and the dangers of social “do-gooding.” Ibsen was often vilified by critics, artists, politicians, religious leaders, academics and other public figures. He was considered a socialist in England, a revolutionary radical, thanks to George Bernard Shaw's Fabian Society pamphlet The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a work that interpreted his plays in a Marxist light.

The first hint that Ibsen was contemplating the play that would later become Hedda Gabler comes in a letter he wrote to an admirer, Helene Raft, in October 1889. “A new poem begins to dawn in me.” (“Poem” was another term for play.) What contributed to the “poem” that would become Hedda Gabler? Ibsen was a dramatist who explored numerous landscapes and shadows for his play subjects, both public and interior:

• Social concerns

• Contemporaries

• His own psyche

Hedda Gabler is a perfect amalgam of all three. The story of a passionate woman whose obsessive longing for excitement combines with her dread of humiliation to destroy her life and the lives of others, Hedda Gabler springs from Ibsen's:

Social Concerns. Ibsen's previous plays had championed new notions of the roles of the sexes. When the submissive Nora left her husband at the conclusion of A Doll's House, Ibsen ushered in a new understanding of the positions of men, women, marriage and sex in personal and societal interaction. It was an understanding that explored the complex connections between passion and money, between children and independence, between love and order, between law and the soul. Developing his artistic concerns along these lines, he was bound, at some point, to turn his eye to the frustration a talented, passionate soul finds in a stifling, bourgeois marriage. A frustration that leads not to “quiet desperation,” but to rage, action and malevolence.

Hedda Gabler comes from an observation of the world.

Contemporaries. Ibsen's circle of friends, colleagues, enemies and acquaintances provided him with rich material. In 1885, Ibsen heard the story of Sophie Magelssen, a notorious beauty who, for some unknown reason, had married Peter Groth, a decent but uninteresting academic who had just received a major university posting following a “competition” with Hjalmer Falk, a writer and philosopher commonly held to be the more gifted of the two. Why had Sophie married Groth? Where would a marriage between these two lead? What events awaited this coupling?

Around the same time, Ibsen met Julius Elias, another academic, whose greatest ambition, as he often explained, was to burrow into other people's letters. (Ironically enough, Elias would later burrow into Ibsen's own letters, following the playwright's death in 1901.) In addition, Ibsen had long known the popular and dashing Danish writer Julius Hoffory and recalled the famous anecdote that concerned Hoffory's loss of his only copy of a much-awaited manuscript during a particularly infamous nocturnal orgy.

Others came into Ibsen's view at this time: a well-respected couple whose marriage shattered when the husband became obsessed with another woman; a famous composer whose newest score was burned by his wife when she found a note from her husband's lover; a man who had freed himself of alcohol only to be drawn back into drinking when his disturbed wife, in an attempt to display her power over him, tempted him one night to join her for an anniversary toast.

In Ibsen's personal life, we also find two women who influenced his thinking, his work and his heart. Emilie Bardach, whom Ibsen called the “May sun of a September life,” was a young woman he met in the mid-1880s. They began a passionate friendship that, for all its suggestions of illicit romance, never blossomed into a sexual affair. Emilie's desire for independence and romance was matched by that of another woman who seemed to share a similar place in Ibsen's life: Helene Raft, who combined Emilie's passionate desires with a cool, hard-headedness that served to further attract Ibsen's interest. Neither were artists, but both seemed to have an artistic temperament that Ibsen recognized and from which he derived ideas and energy.

Helene Raft would write him at one point: “Women's will … tends to remain undeveloped. We dream and wait for something unknown that will give our lives meaning. As a result of this, women's emotional lives are unhealthy, and they fall victims to disappointment.”

Neither Helene nor Emilie would ever consummate her relationship with Ibsen (biographers suggest this was because of Ibsen's inhibitions), and in the end, Ibsen severed ties with the two women who had seemed to bring so much joy, excitement and intellectual stimulation to his late middle age.

Hedda Gabler comes from an observation of other people.

The Author's Psyche. Just as French novelist Gustave Flaubert, when asked to identify the model for the title character of Madame Bovary, proclaimed proudly “Emma Bovary c'est moi!”, one might as easily suspect Ibsen of a private acknowledgment that, as much as Hedda might be based on Sophie Magelssen, on Emilie Bardach, on Helene Raft, his platonic mistresses, in fact Hedda Gabler was Ibsen. Ibsen regretted the passing of his more fiery youth. He saw himself as a man who had turned his back on desire and settled for a life of respectability and comfort. Perhaps this was the price he had paid for his early romance with the apothecary's housekeeper—the birth and secret shame of his illegitimate son. Perhaps it was his early marriage, close on the heels of his affair, to a daughter of academia—a marriage that gave him love, support and sustenance, but less excitement than his nature craved. Perhaps it was a deeper and more complex fear of the sexual act; Ibsen and his wife had only one offspring, born early in their marriage, and he never allowed even his most trusted doctors to examine his sexual organs during a physical examination.

Whatever the reason, Ibsen regretted his loss of fire. He wrote in 1887: “The great tragedy of life is that so many people have nothing to do but yearn for happiness without ever being able to find it.” Later, he would note: “It is a great delusion that one only loves one person.” And still later: “Whatever a man turns his back on gets him in the end.”

Hedda Gabler comes from an observation of the artist's own psyche—whether conscious or not.

HEDDA GABLER: COMPOSITION

How did these disparate elements—these shards of social concerns, salon gossip, diary entries, letters and midnight obsessions—combine to create Hedda Gabler? Can any playwright listen to these voices and come up with a well-made work? There isn't a formula. Ibsen was an artist, and an artist listens to his world, his friends, his inner voice. An artist has antennae and collects stimuli from every part of his experience—as much from an overheard lament in a cafe as from the stories of wars and upheaval found in the pages of newspapers, books and journals. A play comes as much from a small perception as it does from the big idea. In a great play a small perception can become the big idea.

There isn't a recipe, but a play that does not, in some way, combine an observation of ideas, an observation of living people, and an observation of the artist's own soul will probably never fuel a dramatic vehicle, no matter how well built. Another reminder that the essence of art, the meaning of a created work, cannot be taught, even while the methods and techniques of delivery can.

The writing of Hedda Gabler (originally titled Hedda) came slowly. Ibsen apparently thought about the subject for a long time. Actually, changing the title may have helped. Hedda is fine, but Hedda Gabler is more to the point, more firmly identifies the character. As a matter of fact, one of the wonderful details of the play is the fact that Hedda is almost always referred to by others—her in-laws, her former “lover,” even her husband—as “Hedda Gabler,” her maiden name, as opposed to her married name. It's as if the world recognizes Hedda's unwillingness to fully enter the dull domesticity her marriage to George Tesman brings. Few call her “Mrs. Tesman.” When used by the sardonic Judge Brack, “Mrs. Tesman” becomes a kind of taunt. When used by Eilert Lovborg, it is with accusation and longing.

Planning for the play came in increments. Ibsen was a writer who approached plays first via theme. Anecdotes may have fueled the initial story idea of Hedda Gabler, but it's fair to say that Ibsen did not like to pursue a plot until he knew clearly what he thought about the issues and the characters. He was searching for the actions that would tell the story, the actions that would engender the themes he wanted to convey. Notes like “women lean towards sensuality, but are afraid of scandal”; and “the play is about the longing and striving to defy convention.” Ibsen was putting together his three observations to create a set of ideas that would, in turn, create characters and actions.

He outlined the entire plot in longhand (the outline would change, but he had one, and that's the point). Then he began the play itself. He spent a month writing Act One. Then he stopped for many weeks. Then more ideas and actions came together. Acts Two, Three and Four evolved quickly, in just four weeks. In the next two months he revised.

When it opened, the play premiered to horrible reviews.

Moral? Sometimes a writer's work is beyond the comprehension of his time.

HEDDA GABLER: CHARACTER

Hedda was an original character. She is a female egotist (the first of her kind onstage) who seeks passion, romance, sensation, experiment, vicarious danger and adventure. But she is also pathetically afraid to act on her desires until the very end, until it is too late.

Hedda does terrible things, but she is always witty, always vital, always planning, plotting, full of energy. She wants things. That's the key. And even when we criticize her pettiness, her cruelty, her demonstrable monstrosity, she's always worthy of pity, understanding and, most important, awe. As a character, she is a giant.

Characters must fascinate, enthrall, surprise. Characters must want. We must care about them—and those they affect—to see the outcome of their goals, desires, obsessions and obstacles. Hedda Gabler achieves all this.

HEDDA GABLER: ANALYSIS

Hedda Gabler was written to be performed in four acts, four separate sections in four separate times of day in a single thirty-six hour period, a very close approximation of the Aristotelian notion of the “unity of time.” Although there are four official acts, Hedda Gabler, as we shall see, still adheres to the three-movement model. Each act takes place in the same sitting room, displaying Ibsen's strict use of the Aristotelian “unity of space.”

For this analysis of the play, I am using Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Doug Hughes' 1992 English language adaption. It has been staged at both Seattle Rep and at the Denver Center Theater Company. Numerous other translations are readily available. It is essential that you read a copy of the play as we analyze it. I suggest reading one act at a time, then referring to the analysis of that act. As we go over the text, keep in mind everything you've read so far:

• the definitions of drama and theater

• the six elements of Aristotle (character, action, ideas, language, music and spectacle)

• space/time/causality

• character/conflict/action/idea

• the three movements of a play

• inciting incidents, points of attack, goals, obstacles, wants, needs, desires, complications, crises, climax and resolution

• mysteries

• protagonists and antagonists

• concrete goals and abstract ideas

• suspense

• secrets

• sex

• love

• money

• power

• crime

• death

• ideas

• theatricality

ACT ONE

On the morning that starts the action of the play, the pedantic academic George Tesman and his wife of five months, Hedda, have just returned to their new home in the city. Their ship has docked the night before. The home is that of the late cabinet minister, Secretary Falk, purchased by George with loans from his family and assistance from his friend, the older Judge Brack. In the opening scene, George's loving but cloying Aunt Julie is discussing the young couple's arrival with the maid, Berthe, a domestic who is stoking the fire grate. Berthe worked in Aunt Julie's home but has now joined George and Hedda at Julie's insistence. Julie's sister Rina is ill, dying, and Julie will have to return home soon to care for her, but she is eager to see George and his wife, “the beautiful Hedda.” Julie has even bought a new hat for their return. She places it on a sofa.

George joins them. He is excited and anxious. Hedda Gabler is a woman with expensive tastes. His new home and servants require a larger income, one that may come with the professorship he hopes to get. His friend Judge Brack has told him that the appointment at the university is assuredly his.

Julie quizzes George about his honeymoon. She alludes to the possibility that Hedda Gabler is pregnant. George will neither confirm nor deny the possibility. (Both refer to Hedda as “Hedda Gabler,” not “Hedda Tesman.”)

Julie is very proud of George, noting that his academic achievements outshine so many of his contemporaries'. Then she makes a reference to one of his friendly adversaries, a man known as “Eilert,” whom Julie informs George has just published a book of some importance. George absorbs this information.

Hedda Gabler enters, as beautiful as she has been described. She refers to Julie as “Miss Tesman,” to George as “Tesman.” Hedda notes the hat on the sofa. She says it must be the maid's, because it's so “dreadful. People don't do such things.”

Embarrassed, Aunt Julie retrieves her hat. She leaves.

Once alone, Hedda and George discover a card from a visitor who has apparently come earlier that morning, a “Mrs. Elvstead.” Tesman remembers her as a woman he and Hedda knew some years ago, a woman who has married an older magistrate in a northern province. Hedda comments that it is the same province where Eilert Lovborg had moved to some time before.

At this point, “Mrs. Elvstead” is announced. She enters, nervous. It turns out she went to school with Hedda many years before, but Hedda was a much more popular figure. Thea Elvstead knows very few people in the city, and she has come to town to meet someone—a friend, the tutor of her stepchildren.

THEA: “Eilert Lovborg is back in town.”

Lovborg's book has become a sensation. It was written at Thea's home, with her help. George is shaken by Lovborg's success, and Hedda seems to enjoy his discomfort. Thea must find Lovborg. Will the Tesmans help? Of course, says George. Hedda suggests he write a letter to Lovborg at the local address Thea has discovered. Hedda makes George leave the room to write the letter.

Once George is gone, Hedda interrogates Thea. Thea's marriage to the magistrate is a union of convenience (she used to be governess to the magistrate's children). She has left the much older magistrate to come to the city, so that she can be with Lovborg.

Hedda is taken aback by this “little woman's” courage. Thea seems not to care “what people will say,” as Hedda puts it. Under questioning, Thea reveals that she has not only helped Eilert write his successful book (“like his partner”), she has also made him stop his “old habits,” his drinking and carousing. Hedda is not pleased by this. Hedda brightens, however, when Thea says that even though she has left her husband, something stands between her and Eilert: “another woman,” someone Eilert loved years before.

THEA: “When he left her, she threatened to shoot him with a pistol.”

HEDDA: “Such melodrama.”

Thea believes the woman is a famous singer (read: prostitute) whom Eilert once mentioned. The singer, Diana, is in the city, too, and her presence is driving Thea “mad.”

George reenters. He has sent the note to Lovborg, inviting him to the house that evening.

The maid announces Judge Brack.

Thea exits.

The smooth, avuncular judge enters. Judge Brack and Hedda banter. It is obvious they enjoy an innuendo-filled relationship. George hints about a possible pregnancy. Hedda quiets him.

The three talk about the honeymoon, the costly home, and George's university appointment. There's a problem though.

BRACK: “Eilert Lovborg's back in town.” (That sentence again.)

They know.

And his new book has caused such a sensation that the university is considering him for the same post George thought was his. There will be “a competition.”

George is distraught. His own book—years in the making with still more years to go—is about the “the textile industry in the 14th century.” Lovborg's best-seller is about the history of civilization.

Brack is sanguine. Does George remember the party at the Judge's scheduled for later in the evening? No, George has forgotten. And George has just invited Lovborg to visit. Brack doubts Lovborg will respond. Brack leaves, saying he'll be back to pick up George.

Alone again, Hedda berates George. Without a university post and its attendant salary, her dreams of servants and horses and a social whirl may be lost. George says that perhaps visits by his Aunt Julie will fill Hedda's time instead. Hedda doesn't respond to this. But she makes a pronouncement as she exits the sitting room.

HEDDA: “At least I still have one thing to kill time with.”

TESMAN: “What's that?”

HEDDA: “My pistols, George. General Gabler's pistols.”

And she exits.

End of Act One

Summary: Ibsen uses the “slow immersion” approach to begin his play. The opening dialogue between Aunt Julie and Berthe is classic nineteenth-century exposition. Hedda doesn't even make her first entrance for a good few minutes. Where was the point of attack? At the curtain line? Maybe. That's where we realize Hedda may be the woman from Eilert's past. Why does the curtain line tell us that? It's the revelation of the pistols. Was the point of attack at the Judge's mention of a “competition”? Maybe. Competitions are dramatic. Earlier?

Think of westerns. The first act turning point, the end of the beginning, comes when Thea enters the Tesman's home and says, “Eilert Lovborg is back in town,” after which Hedda acts to make George invite him to the house. Nothing will ever be the same after this entrance (Thea's), this information (“Eilert Lovborg is back in town”), and this action (“George, send him a letter. Now.”).

If you looked for the inciting incident, you saw the tip of its iceberg in the news that Lovborg has written a new book. Once Lovborg arrives onstage, we'll find out more about how that book came to be written.

Details and props in Act One are important. Think of them as seeds that will grow later in importance: the hat, dying Aunt Rina, the suggestions of pregnancy, the two books, Thea's declaration of love, the story of “the other woman,” the Judge's sly grasp of information, the “competition,” the pistols. Also, certain key thematic concerns have been layered in: “people don't do such things” (this about leaving the hat on the sofa), “burning,” scandal (“Aren't you afraid what people will say, Thea?”), “partners” and “courage.” Ibsen finds ways to plant these seeds in dramatic and memorable ways. They'll come back later. But the point of attack catalyst is a human one. A man from the past has returned. A central dramatic question has been posed (What will Hedda do now that Lovborg's back?). His presence will change their lives. And they know it.

ACT TWO

That evening. A fire flickers in the grate. Judge Brack has returned to pick up George. Hedda, beautifully dressed, greets him. (Why is Hedda beautifully dressed?) Hedda asks the judge why he has come back to bring George to the judge's own home. It becomes obvious: Judge Brack and Hedda have a flirtatious relationship, one made up of double entendres. Hedda even teases the judge by aiming her father's pistol at him in the garden.

They discuss her honeymoon—a bore.

They discuss Tesman—a bore. Brack asks her why she married George. She replies: He's solid. And there weren't any other “available escorts in the city.”

The judge hints at his willingness to be the third side of a “casual triangle.” Hedda laughs. She “accepts,” in the veiled terms they are used to.

George enters, laden with more books for his research and dressed to leave. George also has Lovborg's book. He's read it that very afternoon. It's impressive. He also reveals that his Aunt Rina has taken a turn for the worse (A small detail? Or will it be important later?). George exits a moment, and Hedda reveals that she knew all the time that the infamous “hat” was Aunt Julie's. She was just torturing Aunt Julie for the fun of it. She also admits that her love for the home George has bought, the famed “Secretary Falk's villa” is not real at all. She and George had been walking home from a party the summer before (she chides the judge for “going in another direction”; otherwise he might have been the one walking her home); George was tongue-tied. They passed the villa. To break the silence, Hedda said she would love to Hve in the villa. So, in effect, the judge's “other directions” created a chain of events that lead to the Hedda/George courtship, to the myth of the adored villa, and the marriage itself.

Brack wonders about Hedda's goals. Doesn't she have any? She's bored, she replies. But she needs … something.

Brack alludes to a child. This upsets Hedda.

George returns. And a visitor is announced.

Eilert Lovborg enters.

Polite reintroductions. They're all old acquaintances. George praises Lovborg's book. Lovborg disparages it. It is pablum, he says, designed to flatter the readership. It is merely preparation for his next work, the one he wrote with Thea in the provinces. This next book, he says, will be a real masterpiece. He carries the manuscript with him.

And he's willing to read it to George.

George tries to appear thrilled (inside, he's dying—subtext) but explains he's on his way to Brack's party. Brack slyly suggests Lovborg join them at the party. He can read the book to George there. Brack will even set up a room. Brack is enjoying all this. Hedda is not.

George asks if Lovborg will indeed be giving a series of lectures in the fall, as he had heard at the bookstore.

Lovborg says he will. But only after George gets his university appointment.

Surprise. We thought there was to be a “competition.”

Lovborg doesn't want the university job. He'll “let” George have it. He just wants everybody to know he could have beaten George if he wanted to. “I'll settle for the moral victory,” he says.

George is ecstatic. But Hedda, Lovborg and Brack—and the audience—know George has been humiliated.

George and Brack exit for a moment.

Hedda asks Lovborg if he would like to see photos from her honeymoon. Once they're alone, we realize Hedda and Lovborg have been extremely close—soul mates, almost lovers. Lovborg keeps murmuring her name (“Hedda Gabler, Hedda Gabler”) as she turns the pictures in the album (note the juxtaposition: a discussion of Hedda and Lovborg's passion while they peruse the photographic evidence of Hedda's connubial boredom).

LOVBORG: (Re: George) “How could you throw yourself away.”

They refer to their earlier “partnership” (remember the word when Thea used it?) and their secret “understanding” that no one suspected.

HEDDA: “Did I have power, Eilert?”

Lovborg has a goal in this scene. He wants to know if Hedda had ever loved him, might still love him.

Hedda says she will not have an affair. She doesn't love George—that's obvious—but there will be no affair.

But did she love Eilert? Eilert is begging her to say “yes.”

Hedda say he was “dangerous,” “forbidden.” They had a common “hunger for life.” (Hedda's tragic flaw #1.)

The “fire” was the attraction (read: sex). But Hedda also feared Lovborg's passion and fire. His danger. Lovborg asks her why she didn't shoot him when she threatened him with her pistols (confirmation of our suspicions).

HEDDA: “Because I'm too terrified of scandal!” (Hedda's tragic flaw #2.)

This is Hedda's inner conflict (self as antagonist):

(1) Hedda wants passion, but (2) she's afraid of the scandal that may come with it.

Hedda's inner conflict is firmly depicted for the audience. It is still early in the play (not quite the 40 percent point), and this vital exposition is revealed in a scene of great conflict, tension and suspense.

As their scene ends, Hedda admits the heat of her feelings for Lovborg. We know the attraction is still there. The fire is crackling again. But Hedda must reject Lovborg.

Thea Elvstead enters.

Thea melts at the sight of Lovborg. Lovborg, hurt and angered by Hedda's rejection, needles Hedda by referring to Thea's “partnership,” her “courage,” her “willingness to act.” By using all these phrases—phrases Ibsen has earlier linked to the relationship between Lovborg and Hedda—and applying them instead to Thea, Lovborg is forcing Hedda into a corner.

Suspense/tension: What will Hedda do?

It looks like Lovborg has put Hedda—the woman he loves, the woman he has been hurt by, the woman he both hates and desires—in her place.

And then Hedda mentions “the punch.”

The characters—and the audience—know Lovborg is a former drinker. Thea has helped reform him. It is one of her points of pride.

Then Hedda suggests Lovborg have a glass of punch. Lovborg and Thea are shocked. Of course, he wouldn't dream of drinking anything with alcohol. But Hedda uses Lovborg's weakness, his fear of not being thought of as courageous, to make him drink. She says Brack and George were mocking him earlier when he twice refused a drink. Didn't he notice? Surely someone who doesn't need liquor can show his independence by having one drink?

Conflict/Tension/Suspense

Against his better judgment and against Thea's protestations, Lovborg takes one drink (acts)—to prove himself in front of Hedda. He has shown Hedda that he has both courage and self-control. (But has one drink been one too many?) Lovborg decides to join George and Brack at the party. Thea will stay with Hedda, and Lovborg will return at ten to take Thea back to her rooms. The men leave, Lovborg carrying his manuscript. Hedda comments to Thea that they will sit together until Lovborg's return.

HEDDA: “He shall return with vine leaves in his hair.” (A phrase that sounds like an old shared reference.) “On fire with life.”

Hedda also says she'd like, for once in her life, to have power over another human being.

Hedda and Thea go into the dining room.

End of Act Two

Summary: The development of the plot is furthered in this act, the first half of the Great Middle. So is character. So are themes. What has Ibsen used in the first act that he now uses in the second act? Phrases, memories, lines, images, actions and ideas. And what has he inserted into the second act that he may use in Act Three and Act Four? What details seem minor but may have importance later? Remember: A good play uses its details as it moves along. They come back. They transform. They are used again. It is in this act that the full story of the inciting incident—Hedda and Lovborg's past affair and the subsequent writing of his manuscript—is explained to the audience. The second act is firmly part of the middle of the play. Hedda has been moving toward her goal—exercising power over Lovborg. She has met with opposition: Lovborg's abstinence and his unwillingness to compete with George, Thea's presence, the presence of Brack and George, her own fears. She has acted: The challenge to Lovborg is a key action; so is keeping Thea with her. And Act Two ends on a note of rising action and suspense: What will Lovborg, George and Brack do at their party? When will they return? What will Hedda do? It is after Act Two that most directors place their “official” intermission.

ACT THREE

Dawn. Seven hours past ten. Hedda and Thea sleep on the settee. Lovborg has not returned. Neither has George.

Suspense—what is keeping them? What has happened?

The maid has stirred the fire again. She delivers a letter for George in Aunt Julie's handwriting (remember the importance of Aunt Rina's physical condition?). It is left unopened. (A mystery.) Thea leaves the room to sleep in Hedda's bedroom. Then George returns, dishevelled.

He tells Hedda:

• that Lovborg read him the book. It's incredible.

• that Lovborg got drunk and out of control. It's believable.

• that Lovborg led them into the street, toasting “the woman” who inspired the great work. It must be Thea, says George. (We doubt that.)

• and … that Lovborg dropped the manuscript in the street, and George found it. (Surprise/complication.)

George carries the manuscript with him. No one knows he has it. George says it must be returned to Lovborg soon. Hedda argues that they should keep it in the house.

George finds the letter. Aunt Rina is indeed dying (not dead, this is a key distinction). If he hurries, he may see her one last time. (If she's dead, no hurry, right? Sly Ibsen.)

George leaves. Hedda will take care of the manuscript. She hides it.

Brack arrives. He has news about Lovborg. It seems his late night travels took him to “Mademoiselle Diana”—the “singer.” All was well until Lovborg started accusing Diana of stealing something. (What could it be?) The police took Lovborg away.

HEDDA: “Were there vine leaves in his hair?” (That phrase again!)

How does Brack know all this? A man in his position has powerful friends and good contacts, he says. Brack tells Hedda that Lovborg has now so embarrassed himself “that every respectable door must now be closed to him.” (Scandal.)

Hedda understands what the judge is implying: He wants Hedda's door to be closed to Lovborg. Brack wants Hedda for himself. Hedda and Brack discuss his advances toward her. She knows what he wants. But she's ahead of him. The judge may have power, she says, but he has no power over her.

Brack accepts this uneasy draw. He leaves.

Lovborg arrives. (Ibsen is always the efficient traffic cop, even though the rapidity and felicity of his characters' arrivals and departures remind us of the melodramatic roots of this beautifully constructed play.) He bursts in. He's a mess.

And Thea enters. She wants Lovborg, cares for him, needs him.

(Hedda is watchful.)

Lovborg has come to break it off with Thea. He has news for her: He has destroyed their “child”—the manuscript. He says he has torn it into a thousand pieces the night before (lie/complication). Hedda is baffled by this lie, but she's smart, and she keeps her mouth shut.

Thea is distraught. She leaves, in tears.

Lovborg tells Hedda the truth. He got drunk and lost the manuscript. He looked for it everywhere. It's gone. He couldn't admit “carelessness” to Thea about “their child.” That seems to Lovborg worse than intentionally destroying it. That's why he lied. Far better to say he had acted, than to admit to such pathetic, inadvertent failure. He doesn't have the willpower he thought he had. Thea had helped him, but now he's a lost man.

HEDDA: “Thea had such power over a human life?” (Hedda seems obsessed by this notion of power.)

Lovborg starts to leave. Without Thea, without his great work—and, by implication, without Hedda—his life is over. Lovborg will kill himself.

Hedda doesn't try to stop him. Hedda doesn't reveal her possession of his lost manuscript.

Instead Hedda gives Lovborg General Gabler's pistol. (Remember how Ibsen has used this gun?) Hedda has finally achieved her goal: to have power over another human being.

HEDDA: “Do it beautifully.”

LOVBORG: (Smiling ruefully) With “vine leaves in my hair”?

We realize we were right. That line is a shared reference between the two of them.

Lovborg exits with the gun.

And then, in one of the great curtain moments in all drama, Hedda retrieves Lovborg's manuscript and burns it in the fire grate (the fire that has been going all during the play), saying: “I'm burning your child, Thea.”

Burning, fire, children, power.

It all comes together.

The curtain falls as the firelight plays over Hedda's smiling face.

End of Act Three

Summary: Act Three is the second half of the Great Middle. It depicts the rising action (or acceleration of actions) of the play. If we compare the actions of the first two acts with those of this third act, it's easy to see that the rapidity of the actions, as well as their number, has tripled. The first two acts paved the way for conflict. Act Three has conflict and action in full flower: George and Hedda battle over the discovered manuscript; Brack propositions Hedda; Hedda rejects Brack; Lovborg lies to Thea and rejects her; Hedda rejects Lovborg again; Hedda provokes Lovborg to suicide; and Hedda destroys the manuscript. Where was the second turning point of the play? The Crisis? The end of the middle?

Was it George's revelation about his finding the manuscript? Brack's pass at Hedda? Lovborg's rejection of Thea?

No. As we saw in the chapter on Great Middles, the crisis/turning point comes late in the play, two-thirds or three-fourths of the way through. It is the moment to which all other previous actions and events have been pointed. It is the moment that leads inevitably, irrevocably, toward the end. It is when Hedda hands Lovborg the pistol and then burns the manuscript. Nothing can be the same after these actions. In Hedda Gabler, the crisis/turning point comes at the close of the act, sixty seconds from the curtain coming down. Masterful. The climax and conclusion, full of incident, will come when the curtain rises again.

ACT FOUR

That evening. Darkness. Hedda, dressed in black (mourning?), paces. Julie enters to tell Hedda that Rina is dead. George enters after a day of making funeral arrangements. George suggests that perhaps Aunt Julie should now come to live with them. Hedda reacts negatively, but keeps quiet.

Aunt Julie leaves.

George is worried about Lovborg. Hedda tells George she has burned the manuscript. George is horrified. Hedda says she did it for George's sake, to help him, to erase any future competition from Lovborg. George thinks Hedda loves him and has done this to make him happy. Hedda also reveals, in veiled terms, that she is pregnant. Now George is delighted. Hedda's “crime” will be kept hidden. No one must know the truth, says Hedda—especially Judge Brack.

Thea enters with a large suitcase. She has heard rumors about Lovborg, something about “the hospital.” (Suspense—what has happened?)

Brack enters. Always the man with powerful friends and powerful information, Brack tells the others that Lovborg has shot himself, that he's dying. It was a shot to the heart. (Hedda had hoped for a bullet in the head, but the heart will do.) As is his wont, Brack reveals this information bit by bit, piece by piece, never the whole story in one gulp.

George bemoans the loss of Lovborg, and he mourns the loss of the manuscript which, as Thea says, was “torn into a thousand pieces.” George and Hedda can feel safe. (But they are now co-conspirators. They have a secret.) Lovborg's masterpiece won't be able to hurt them.

But just then Thea holds up the suitcase. Thea has Lovborg's original notes. The book could be pieced back together, (surprise/reversal/complication). And since that's what George does best—research other people's work—he can help Thea rebuild the text. George decides to dedicate his life to re-creating Lovborg's book. He'll work with Thea. They'll start that very evening (reversal).

They exit to the study.

Hedda is shocked. Still, Lovborg has killed himself, performed a “courageous” act, done it “beautifully.” Hedda has exhibited her power over a human life. So she must have achieved her primary goal. Right? The central dramatic question must have been answered. Right? Is this the end of the play?

No. Judge Brack is still in the room.

Alone, Brack tells Hedda that the real story is not quite the one he told a few moments before.

Lovborg is already dead. Lovborg didn't return to his rooms and commit suicide. Lovborg went back to Diana's, caused a ruckus again, went into Diana's bedroom … (Hedda looks sick)… said he wanted his “lost child” … (Hedda sinks into a chair)… and shot himself by accident. A gun was in his pocket, it went off, it hit him—not in the head, not in the heart, but in the groin.

Hedda's goal has been frustrated, by accident, fate and human nature.

There's something else, says Brack: “The gun.”

Just then—for the sake of suspense—George reenters to get something from his desk.

The tension is killing us.

George exits.

“The gun.” Brack has recognized it. After all, it was pointed at him playfully just the evening before. It's Hedda's.

BRACK: “Lovborg must have stolen it.”

Hedda, desperate, plays along. Yes. Stolen. When she wasn't looking.

Who has the gun? The police. Will they try to trace it? Of course.

HEDDA: “Do you think they will succeed?”

BRACK: “No, Hedda Gabler. Not as long as I keep quiet. If they do trace it, though, you can always say the pistol was stolen.” (Implication: No one will believe that, Hedda.)

HEDDA: “I would rather die.”

BRACK: (Smiles) “People say such things. They never do them.” (We've heard a variation of that line before.)

If the pistol is traced to Hedda, and the police show it wasn't stolen, says Brack, “… well, then, Hedda, there would be scandal.” A trial. Hedda on the witness stand. The same witness stand as the “singer,” Diana.

Scandal! What Hedda fears most. Her Achilles' heel. The second part of her tragic flaw. She exhibited the first part of it when she gave Lovborg the gun (her desire for passion and danger). Now the other half (fear of scandal) has returned to finish her off.

But Brack assures her. He'll keep quiet.

HEDDA: (Looking up at him) “So I'm in your power, Judge.” (The line about power comes back to haunt her.)

The judge has achieved his goal. Hedda seems to have failed at hers. The protagonist destroyed by herself (self-antagonism), actions she cannot control (Lovborg's botched escapade—fate), and another character (Brack as adversary-antagonist). In some plays, this would be the end. But Ibsen is moving toward something larger, something greater. Ibsen is moving toward the classic conception of tragedy. The hero must fall even further. What follows the judge's revelations is a fairly long (two minutes) scene that seems to suggest the future Hedda sees for herself:

“A Domestic Setting”

• George and Thea (a “partnership”) at work on Lovborg's posthumous masterpiece (the “child” Hedda thought she had “burned”)

• the prospect of living with Aunt Julie (that “dull, dull boredom”)

• Brack seated next to Hedda (“power over another human being”)

It is Hedda's nightmare come true.

Hedda plays an annoying ditty on the piano for a moment. George enters and remonstrates her. He and Thea need quiet. Hedda looks around at all of them. This is her future?

Hedda will act.

She walks into the other room and closes the curtain.

A shot rings out.

Hedda has shot herself in the head with her father's second pistol. She has “done it beautifully.”

George and Brack rush in and discover the body. Hedda has eluded Brack's power—at the cost of her life.

BRACK: “People don't do such things.”

Curtain. End of Play.

Summary: This Great Ending, with its resounding climax and resolution, is one of the most famous, shocking conclusions in theater history. The entire act is a marvel. In a sense, Ibsen heaps crisis upon crisis, reversal upon reversal, but never so many as to make the play's action appear ridiculous. What's most important is that the character asserts her power at the play's end. In one sense, she is defeated. In another, she has exerted a victorious and violent control over her own life.

Does Hedda Gabler fulfill the expectations of a well-constructed play? Read the play again. Look at the sources of Ibsen's ideas for the script and how he combined and energized them in the text. Look at his use of drama and theater. Look at his use of the six elements. Look at space, time and causality. Look at the three-part structure. Look at his use of dialogue. Look at character, conflict, action and ideas. Look at goals and obstacles. Look at tension and suspense. Look at secrets. Look at sex. Look at money. Look at power. Look at crime. Look at theatricality, the world of gunshots, onstage fires, and the compressed excitement of two secret lovers talking about passion while looking at honeymoon pictures.

Then see the play. Stage the play.