Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906):
His first play - Catiline (1849; revised 1898)

Stanley A. Iverson (Concordia College, Moorhead)

The year 2006 brings the year-long celebration of the life and works of Henrik Ibsen with arrangements for at least one play to be performed per day throughout the world, in 71 countries - including Japan, China and India, Cuba, New Zealand and Mozambique with traveling exhibits in several cities in the United States.  The year was 1849 and the revolutions in Europe had been settled.  Ibsen was working as an apprentice pharmacist in Grimstad, Norway, and had just finished reading Sallust and Cicero on Catiline in preparation for examinations at the university.  It was then that he wrote his first play, Catiline.  This paper examines the elements from Sallust and Cicero in the modern play as well as Ibsen’s own elements, particularly the women in the play, Furia and Aurelia.  After a self-imposed exile on the continent when he wrote the majority of his plays, he commented on his first play and revised Catiline in 1898.