Theatre
The Word
Ordet
Kaj Munk · 1932
Opening lines
Mikkel
Farvel saa længe, Inger.
Goodbye for now, Inger.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from studieudgaven.kajmunk.aau.dk
Synopsis
On a large farm in Jutland, old Morten Borgen, a widower, has three sons: Mikkel, the eldest, married to Inger, who is expecting a child, Johannes, who has studied too much theology and takes himself for Christ, and Anders, in love with Anne, the daughter of the tailor Peter. The two fathers are opposed by their faith, one joyful, the other gloomy and rigorist, and refuse the marriage. Then death enters the house, and all eyes turn to the son considered mad.
Context
The play was written in a few days in the last months of 1925, while the Royal Theatre was slow to decide on another play by its author, after the death of a young neighbour and her newborn child. Accepted by the Royal Theatre in 1927 under the title In the Beginning Was the Word, it was never staged there and was published on 2 September 1932, printed on the very day of its première at the Betty Nansen Theatre, where it was a triumph. Gustaf Molander brought it to the screen in 1943, Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1955.
Who it is for
A play in four acts, with an explicit religious thesis. It is worth knowing that Dreyer's film has fixed the way it is read.
Prizes and reception
With a text from 1943, the best-known work of its author, and one of the greatest successes of Danish theatre.
Sources for this page 11
The pages consulted to check this page.