Henrik Ibsen

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price When her son, Oswald, comes back from Paris, Mrs Alving feels the ghosts of her past life returning to haunt them. Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts was first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, in a production by a Danish company on tour. The play was first performed in Sweden at Helsingborg in August 1883. This English version of the play, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.

Nora er gift med advokat Helmer, og er en idealhustru etter tidens smak. Hun bærer imidlertid på en hemmelighet. Når Helmer finner ut at hun har forfalsket en underskrift for å hjelpe ham med penger til et kuropphold, fordømmer han henne. Nora forlater da mann og barn for å bli en selvstendig kvinne.

The play was intended as a tragedy on the purposeless of life imposed on the women of his time, both by their upbringing and by the social conventions which limited their activities. When it was first produced it met with misunderstanding and abuse. It has nevertheless become one of the most popular of Ibsen's plays.

In 1890, Henrik Ibsen premiered Hedda Gabler, a play questioning the role of women in Victorian society. Some audiences have viewed Gabler as a woman driven to desperation simply because her world has turned out to be less charmed than she hoped. For others, she is a victim of her times, unwilling to devote herself, as was expected of her, to the duties of home. Jon Robin Baitz has brushed away the cobwebs, and he serves as an ambassador from Ibsen's age to our own, preserving the intensity of the original but translating it into a spare, contemporary idiom. His adaptation provides an opportunity to understand the play through a lens shaped by feminism and a theatrical tradition beginning with Beckett. Trapped by the conventions of her age, Gabler is both a martyr and a female incarnation of Vladimir and Estragon, longing for a salvation that will likely never arrive.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price One of Henrik Ibsen's most powerful studies of female psychology, The Lady from the Sea introduces the character of Hilde Wangel, who reappears in Ibsen's later play The Master Builder. Ellida Wangel cannot give herself fully to her husband because she is overwhelmed by memories of the past and her attraction to the ocean. Will she suffocate on dry land, or find freedom across the sea? This English version of The Lady from the Sea, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated by Kenneth McLeish, with a full introduction by Stephen Mulrine, biography and suggestions for further reading.

Ibsen’s seminal play, which changed modern drama, is a searing view of a male-dominated and authoritarian society, presented with a realism that elevates theatre to a level above mere entertainment. The reverberations of Nora’s slamming the door as she leaves Torvald continue to this present day. Nicholas Rudall, justly celebrated for his translations of Ibsen, again provides a play of power and speakability.

One of the best-known, most frequently performed of modern plays, displaying Ibsen's genius for realistic prose drama. A classic expression of women's rights, the play builds to a climax in which the central character, Nora, rejects a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house." Publisher's Note. Contents. Dramatis Personae.

The innovative dramas of Henrik Ibsen created a sensation among 19th-century audiences with their mordant attacks on social conventions. Among the finest of these ground-breaking works was Ghosts, first performed in 1881. In it, the playwright assailed the hypocrisy of moral codes, offering a daring treatment of such then-taboo issues as infidelity, venereal disease, and illegitimacy. Ibsen substituted the modern scientific idea of heredity for the ancient Greek concept of fate, exposing hidden sins of the past as the roots of corruption. The sins of the past are at the heart of the play, whose haunted heroine, Mrs. Helen Alving, has accepted her pastor's counsel and endured her husband's many infidelities in silence. Ten years after Alving's death, she is to dedicate an orphanage in his memory. Her son Oswald, kept innocent of his father's profligacy, returns home for the dedication. Oswald's attraction to the housemaid -- in reality, his half-sister -- conjures up the ghost of his parents' unhappy marriage. This disastrous romance, along with Oswald's increasing symptoms of the venereal disease inherited from his father, force Mrs. Alving to confront her own "ghosts." A powerful and engrossing psychological drama, Ghosts serves as an excellent entree to Ibsen's other works and helps confirm his status as "the father of modern drama."

This dark psychological drama was first produced in Norway in 1890 and depicts the evil machinations of a ruthless, nihilistic heroine: the infamous Hedda Gabler. Readers will discover a masterly exploration of the nature of evil, along with the potential for tragedy that lies in human frailty. A true masterpiece.

The epic story of Peer's quest for the meaning of life as he staggers from the fjords of Norway to the deserts of Africa and back. Written in 1876.

Robert David MacDonald's majestic version of Ibsen's poem-drama about the triumph of will over compromise. Brand, a fiery priest-hero, urges his flock to sacrifice their lives to save their souls.

The only play in which Ibsen denies the validity of revolt, The Wild Duck suggests that under certain conditions, domestic falsehoods are entirely necessary to survival. Plays for Performance Series.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. Dr Stockmann attempts to expose a water pollution scandal in his home town which is about to establish itself as a spa. When his brother conspires with local politicians and the newspaper to suppress the story, Stockmann appeals to a public meeting - only to be shouted down and reviled as 'an enemy of the people'. Ibsen's explosive play reveals his distrust of politicians and the blindly held beliefs of the masses. Christopher Hampton's version of Ibsen's classic was first staged at the National Theatre, London, in 1997.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Ibsen's study of the corrosive effects of a guilty conscience. Solness, the master builder of the title, is a self-made and successful businessman. He has stopped building the churches and towers of his youth in order to concentrate on ordinary houses for people, ever since the home that his wife inherited burnt down, with their own children inside. His guilty feelings of worthlessness spur him into absurd power struggles in his office, but he is forced to face his guilt when the provocative Hilde arrives with her story from the past... Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder was first published in 1892 and first performed in January 1893 at the Lessing Theatre in Berlin. This English version, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.