Henrik Ibsen

With three plays focusing on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling lies - and exposing them, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Other Plays is translated with an introduction by Peter Watts in Penguin Classics.In Ghosts, Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he always looked up to, and learns the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. It was Ibsen's most provocative drama, stripping away the surface of a middle-class family to expose layers of hypocrisy and immorality. A Public Enemy sets two brothers against each other when one wishes to make public the facts about the polluted water in the public baths of their home town. And When We Dead Wake tells of an artist meeting an old lover by chance and rejecting his wife, in a symbolic exploration of Ibsen's own literary life and the sacrifices he made in his work.Peter Watts's translation maintains the colloquial tone of the original dialogue. He has also provided an introduction and notes on the texts.Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) turned to journalism and playwriting instead of pursuing a university career. Ibsen was one of the earliest writers to dramatise the individual's alienation from society. Although Ibsen was never fully appreciated during his lifetime, he has since come to be recognised as one of the great dramatists of all time and the 'Father of Modern Drama'.If you enjoyed Ghosts, you might like Ibsen's A Doll's House and Other Plays, also available in Penguin Classics.

Collects five plays spanning Ibsen's career, with general introductions, explanatory annotations, criticism, and selections from his correspondence and other writings.

A sparkling translation of Ibsen's penultimate play. On the family estate outside Oslo at the turn of the 19th century, a man paces the floor in an upstairs room. This is John Gabriel Borkman, once a famous entrepreneur, now reduced to penury and self-doubt following a prison sentence for embezzlement. His wife, her twin sister and his son are all trapped in the claustrophobic atmosphere which has descended upon the household – and which can only lead to an explosion as the suffocation becomes unbearable. Stephen Mulrine's English version of Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman was first staged by English Touring Theatre in 2003.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Ibsen's great play about idealism and liberalism undermined by a deeply conservative society. When Rosmer abandons his faith after the death of his wife, his former friends question his morality. But with guilty secrets and deception surrounding everyone, there are tragic results. Henrik Ibsen's play Rosmersholm was first published in 1886 and first staged in 1887. This edition, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated by Kenneth McLeish, with an introduction by Stephen Mulrine.

It should be a happy day in Mrs Alving's household, on the day of her son's return from Paris and the eve of the opening of an orphanage dedicated to the memory of her late husband, Captain Alving. However, as final preparations are being made with Pastor Manders, old family secrets unravel the perceived identities of the key players. In a rigidly structured society the consequences are nothing short of disastrous. Ibsen's Ghosts, in Richard Harris's accomplished new version, offers a bleak view of the human condition.2 women, 3 men

"In a crumbling Calcutta home, two sisters are forced to come to terms with their mother's secret history. In this funny and moving play, award-winning writer Shelley Silas examines how family and culture, time and distance, influence our sense of who we are. Set in the Indian Jewish community, it explores conflicts between old and new, east and west, tradition and truth. If the past is another country, where is home? Calcutta Kosher was produced by the Kali Theatre Company and toured the UK in February and March 2004."

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.