Ibsen Henrik

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 the present day. This work is a part of "Plays for Performance Series".

IbsenAIs great social drama of a caged woman in the late 19th century explores her tormented desire for escape and her yearning for individual and spiritual freedom. Plays for Performance Series.

"Meyer's translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one's general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence on the poetic centre of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field" (George Steiner) The two epic plays in this volume stand, together with Peer Gynt and The Pretenders, at the fulcrum of Ibsen's career. Brand (1865) stated sharply and vividly the necessity of following one's private conscience and 'being oneself'. It created an immediate sensation and was hailed by Strindberg as 'the voice of a Savonarola'. Emperor and Galilean (1873), which Ibsen referred to as his masterpiece, is both his farewell to the epic drama and the forerunner of his great naturalistic prose plays that were to burst on the nineteenth century. Michael Meyer's translations are 'crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana' (Kenneth Tynan)

This volume contains Ibsen's two most famous and frequently read, studied and performed plays about women: A Doll's House (1879), his first international success, which 'exploded like a bomb into contemporary life', and Hedda Gabler (1890), now one of his most popular plays, but greeted at first with bewilderment and outrage ('The play is simply a bad escape of moral sewage-gas' Pictorial World). Also included is An Enemy of the People (1883), whose central character was the actor Konstantin Stanislavski's favourite role. Michael Meyer's translations are 'crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana' (Kenneth Tynan)

The plays in this volume range from the once shockingly realistic Ghosts (1881), 'the play that launched a thousand ships of critical fury'; through The Wild Duck (1884) with its innovatory symbolism and its touching portrait of a fourteen-year-old girl held in thrall by her feckless father ('Where,' asked George Bernard Shaw, 'shall I find an epithet magnificent enough for The Wild Duck?'); to The Master Builder (1892), showing the semi-autobiographical relationship between an ageing genius and a dynamic young woman. Michael Meyer's translations are 'crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana' (Kenneth Tynan)