The Pillars of Society

The Pillars of Society (or "Pillars of the Community," as the RSC has performed it; original Norwegian title: Samfundets støtter) is an 1877 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen had great trouble with the writing of this play which came before the series of masterpieces which made him famous throughout the world. The ending is the most criticised feature, since Bernick is clearly guilty of attempted murder but gets off unscathed, but successfully illustrates that the rich and powerful are often selfish and corrupt.

Ibsen first planned a contemporary drama at the end of 1869 but did not begin the writing until October 1875 (in Munich), completing it in the summer of 1877. It was first published on 11 October of that year in Copenhagen, with the first stagings following on 14 November at the Odense Teater and on 18 November at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. The first performance in Norway was at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen on 30 November. By this date, the play had been translated into German, in which it was immediately well received. In December 1880 in London it became the first of any of Ibsen's plays to be performed in English (under the title Quicksands).

Karsten Bernick is the dominant businessman in a small coastal town in Norway, with interests in shipping and shipbuilding in a long-established family firm. Now he is planning his most ambitious project yet, backing a railway which will connect the town to the main line and open a fertile valley which he has been secretly buying up.

Suddenly his past explodes on him. Johan Tønnesen, his wife's younger brother comes back from America to the town he ran away from 15 years ago. At the time it was thought he had run off with money from the Bernick family business and with the urge to avoid scandal because he was having an affair with an actress. But none of this was true. He left town to take the blame for Bernick, who was the one who had actually been having the affair and was nearly caught with the actress. There was no money to take since at the time the Bernick firm had been almost bankrupt.

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