Synopses & Reviews
Four Major Plays
Volume I
A Doll House
The Wild Duck
Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
Among the greatest and best known of Ibsens works, these four plays brilliantly exemplify his landmark contributions to the theater: his realistic dialogue, probing of social problems, and depiction of characters inner lives as well as their actions. Rich in symbolism and often autobiographical, each of these dramas deals convincingly and provocatively with such universal themes as greed, fear, and sexual hostility, and confronts the eternal conflict between reality and illusion. These Rolf Fjelde translations have been widely acclaimed as the definitive versions of the major works of the father of modern theater.
Translated and with a Foreword by Rolf Fjelde
And an Afterword by Joan Templeton
Synopsis
Four Major Plays
Volume I
A Doll House
The Wild Duck
Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
Among the greatest and best known of Ibsen s works, these four plays brilliantly exemplify his landmark contributions to the theater: his realistic dialogue, probing of social problems, and depiction of characters inner lives as well as their actions. Rich in symbolism and often autobiographical, each of these dramas deals convincingly and provocatively with such universal themes as greed, fear, and sexual hostility, and confronts the eternal conflict between reality and illusion. These Rolf Fjelde translations have been widely acclaimed as the definitive versions of the major works of the father of modern theater.
Translated and with a Foreword by Rolf Fjelde
And an Afterword by Joan Templeton"
Synopsis
Brilliantly exemplifying Henrik Ibsen's landmark contribution to the theater, this collection contains "A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler," and The Master Builder." Revised reissue.
Synopsis
The greatest works by the father of modern theater
Brilliantly exemplifying his landmark contribution to the theater, A Doll House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder are truly the greatest and best known works of Henrik Ibsen.
Synopsis
The foremost dramatist of his age, Ibsen changed theatre forever with his realistic dialogue and depiction of contemporary social problems. Here are four of his greatest works:
Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Lady From the Sea, and
John Gabriel Borkman.
About the Author
Henrik Ibsen was born of well-to-do parents at Skien, a small Norwegian coastal town, on March 20, 1828. In 1836 his father went bankrupt, and the family was reduced to near poverty. At the age of fifteen, he was apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad. In 1850 Ibsen ventured to Christiania--present-day Oslo--as a student, with the hope of becoming a doctor. On the strength of his first two plays he was appointed "theater-poet" to the new Bergen National Theater, where he wrote five conventional romantic and historical dramas and absorbed the elements of his craft. In 1857 he was called to the directorship of the financially unsound Christiania Norwegian Theater, which failed in 1862. In 1864, exhausted and enraged by the frustration of his efforts toward a national drama and theater, he quit Norway for what became twenty-seven years of voluntary exile abroad. In Italy he wrote the volcanic Brand (1866), which made his reputation and secured him a poet's stipend from the government. Its companion piece, the phantasmagoric Peer Gynt, followed in 1867, then the immense double play, Emperor and Galilean (1873), expressing his philosophy of civilization. Meanwhile, having moved to Germany, Ibsen had been searching for a new style. With The Pillars of Society he found it; this became the first of twelve plays, appearing at two-year intervals, that confirmed his international standing as the foremost dramatist of his age. In 1900 Ibsen suffered the first of several strokes that incapacitated him. He died in Oslo on May 23, 1906.