Four major plays

About this book

"The first play in this volume provoked such an uproar when it made its Scandinavian début that invitations to social gatherings would carry a postscript: 'You are requested not to mention Ibsen's "Doll House!"' In it, and in his next play, 'Ghosts, ' Ibsen brought to light things that a self-righteous, hypocritical society would have preferred to leave under the carpet: his heroines' perceptions about society and their position in it are conveyed with a clarity that is still shockingly dramatic. When, some years later, Ibsen came to write 'Hedda Gabler' and its successor, 'The Master Builder, ' his focus had shifted from the pressures exerted on women by society to the pressures individuals exerted on other individuals, in their urge to dominate and control one another. A contemporary reviewer claimed that 'Hedda's soul is a-crawl with the foulest passions of humanity.' That it is also possible to see her as a flawed idealist in an anguished private dilemma indicates how far Ibsen had brought dramatic prose towards the experession of a reality beneath the surface of words."