Catiline

Catiline or Catilina was Henrik Ibsen's first play. It was written during winter 1848-49 and first performed under Ibsen's name on December 3, 1881 at the Nya Teatern (New Theater), Stockholm, Sweden. The first Norwegian performance under Ibsen's name was at Det Nye Teater in Oslo on August 24, 1935. Forced to support himself after his father declared bankruptcy, Ibsen went to Grimstad as a pharmacist's apprentice. There he both prepared himself for university and experimented with various forms of poetry. While studying, he found himself passionately drawn into the Catiline orations, famous speeches by Cicero against the elected questor Catiline and his conspiracy to overthrow the republic. Ibsen chose this famous conspirator as the subject for his initial effort, finishing Catiline in 1849. Henrik Ibsen expresses in the prologue to the second edition that he was profoundly inspired by the contemporary tempestuous political situation of Europe, especially he favours the Magyar uprising against the Hagsburgian empire. He explains in the prologue to the second edition written in February 1875, that the case of Catiline had special interest for him, because, as he writes: "there are given few examples of historical persons, whose memory has been more entirely in the possession of its conquerors, than Catiline". Thus, Catiline can be read as one of Ibsen's heroes, alongside Brand and Gregers Werle.