When We Dead Awaken : A Scene That Gets out of Control

The scene referred to in the title of this article belongs to a type that is important in Ibsen; it gets out of control in the sense that its characters let it get away from them. Broadly speaking, of course, all decent dramatic scenes get out of control in this way. When any two characters come onstage, each has a script of |his own in mind, a notion of how the scene is supposed to go, and the drama comes not from Hamlet's script or Gertrude's script, say, but from the clash between scripts as they argue in her closet. Indeed, a good way of getting actors to play a big scene freshly and spontaneously is to urge them to concentrate, not on the script that they have memorized, but on the script their character thinks will be played when the scene begins.

Naturally this principle can be observed in all of Ibsen's scenes. At one level, it is a matter for Playwriting 101, but the specific version I'm concerned with belongs perhaps in Playwriting 1001 or even in Playwriting a million and one. For the Ibsen scenes I'm thinking of veer out of hand in a uniquely disruptive way, and at least one of the characters becomes sharply aware that he or she has lost control. Probably the best known example - too well known to need much elaboration here - is the stocking scene in Doll's House, when Rank's responses to Nora's hints about her financial difficulties reveal a sexual subtext to their relationship that Nora has always kept hidden from herself. Suddenly, Nora's most likely source of help is cut off, and she begins to feel the seismic tremors that will eventually shake the whole structure of her identity, while Rank, dismayed and baffled, tries flailingly to put the genie back in the bottle.

Of the same type but less frequently commented on is the wonderful scene early in Master Builder when Hilda arrives at Solness's door. As Solness and Dr. Herdal welcome her, the two old friends clearly feel that they enjoy a certain kind of male privilege. Because Hilda with her walking costume and casual manner has apparently ventured slightly beyond the conventions of dress and behaviour that protect young women, the two men are free, without any stigma of impropriety, to adopt a bantering, slightly suggestive manner of speech, into which Hilda is supposed to enter and whose (again slightly) demeaning sexual terms she is supposed to accept. But the scene gets out of hand for Solness. It is really exquisitely funny, although it paves the way for the terrifying intensities that follow. Herdal initiates the process flirtatiously:

HERDAL.

We met up at one of those mountain lodges last summer . . . What happened to all those other young ladies?

HILDA.

Oh, they went off down the west slope.

HERDAL.

They didn't quite like all our fun in the evenings.

HILDA.

No, they certainly didn't.

HERDAL.

(shaking his finger at her) Of course, we can't say you didn't flirt with us a bit.

HILDA.

I'd a lot rather do that than sit knitting knee socks with all the old hens.

HERDAL.

(laughing) I couldn't agree with you more! (800-01).

The doctor draws Solness in his wake, and as the scene develops and Hilda and Solness are left alone on stage, Solness feels confident enough in his sexual control of the scene to approach a topic that he might ordinarily have avoided - he is ready to reminisce freely about that day in Lysanger ten years ago when he climbed the new church tower. His confidence seems only to be underwritten by Hilda's apparently acquiescent playfulness.

Gradually things get out of hand:

HILDA.

When the tower was finished, we had a big function.

SOLNESS.

Yes, that's one day I won't soon forget.

HILDA.

(smiling) Won't you? So good of you!

SOLNESS.

Good? (805)

Solness is a little surprised at the details this charming, obviously impressionable girl remembers but is willing to accept...