Emperor and Galilean

Emperor and Galilean (in Norwegian: Kejser og Galilæer) is a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Although it is one of the writer's lesser known plays, on several occasions Henrik Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean his major work. Emperor and Galilean is written in two complementary parts with five acts in each part and is Ibsen's longest play.

The play is about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. The play covers the years 351–363. Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire. It was his desire to bring the empire back to its ancient Roman values. Another crucial and more sympathetic feature of Emperor Julian, is his disliking of his own dynasty, who, in the play at least, were claiming descent and authority for being Gallileans, making Jesus Christ their own, in terms of ethnicity.

The play was conceived by Ibsen in 1864. During his four years in Rome (1864–1868) he actively collected historical material, before starting to write the play itself in 1871. It was completed and published in 1873.

The play premiered at the Theater der Stadt in Leipzig on 5 December 1896. The piece was premiered at the National Theatre in Kristiania (now Oslo) on 30 March 1903.

A slightly abridged English translation was made by Michael Meyer in the early 1960s and revised in the 1980s: it has not been performed on stage, though it was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30 March 1990, with Robert Glenister playing Julian.

The first stage performance in English was of a newly created version by Ben Power, given at the National Theatre in London on 9 June 2011: Julian was played by Andrew Scott, with Ian McDiarmid as Maximus.

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