A Doll's House

by Henrik Ibsen

Overview

Henrik Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Pillars of Society, The Lady from the Sea, Rosmersholm, The Master Builder, and John Gabriel Borkman. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and by the early 20th century A Doll's House became the world's most performed play.

Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind the facades, revealing much that was disquieting to a number of his contemporaries. He had a critical eye and conducted a free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. His early poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt, however, has also strong surreal elements.

Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as "a profound poetic dramatist—the best since Shakespeare". He is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.

Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays are set in Norway—often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. Born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, Ibsen shaped his dramas according to his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas have a strong influence upon contemporary culture. (wikipedia.org)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644391815
Publisher:	Indoeuropeanpublishing.com
Publication date:	05/30/2019
Pages:	126
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

The Plays for Performance series is edited by Nicholas Rudall, former artistic director of the Court Theatre at the University of Chicago where he is professor of classics, and Bernard Sahlins, founder and director of the Second City. They both live in Chicago, Illinois.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Henrik Ibsen and A Doll’s House: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

A Doll’s House

A Note on Nora’s Final Exit

Appendix A: Contemporary Adaptations, Sequels, and Parodies

• 1. From a letter from Ibsen to a Danish newspaper regarding the ending of the play (17 February 1880)
• 2. Ibsen’s alternative ending (1880)
• 3. From Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman, Breaking a Butterfly (1882)
• 4. From August Strindberg, “A Doll’s House” (1884)
• 5. From Walter Besant, “The Doll’s House—and After,” The English Illustrated Magazine (October 1890)
• 6. From Ednah Dow Cheney, Nora’s Return: A Sequel to The Doll’s House (1890)
• 7. From Israel Zangwill and Eleanor Marx-Aveling, “A Doll’s House Repaired,” Time (March 1891)
• 8. From F. Anstey, “Nora; or, The Bird-Cage,” Mr Punch’s Pocket Ibsen (1893)

Appendix B: William Archer and A Doll’s House

• 1. From Archer’s review of the first performance in England of A Doll’s House, Dramatic Review (4 April 1885)
• 2. From a letter to Charles Archer (13 June 1889)
• 3. From “Ibsen and English Criticism,” Fortnightly Review (July 1889)
• 4. From William Archer, The Theatrical “World” for 1893 (1894)
• 5. From The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen (1906)

Appendix C: Bernard Shaw and A Doll’s House

• 1. On A Doll’s House, Penny Illustrated Paper (1 June 1889)
• 2. From Shaw’s review of A Doll’s House, Manchester Guardian (8 June 1889)
• 3. From a letter to William Archer (11 June 1889)
• 4. From “Still after the Doll’s House,” Time (February 1890)
• 5. From The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
• 6. From “A Doll’s House Again,” Saturday Review (15 May 1897)
• 7. From “The Technical Novelty in Ibsen’s Plays,” The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1913)

Appendix D: The Critics

• 1. In London
  • a. From The Era (28 March 1885)
  • b. From The Times (8 June 1889)
  • c. From The Globe (8 June 1889)
  • d. From The Daily Telegraph (8 June 1889)
  • e. From The Pall Mall Gazette (8 June 1889)
  • f. From The Spectator (21 June 1889)
  • g. From Clement Scott, “A Doll’s House,” The Theatre (1 July 1889)
• 2. In America
  • a. From The Courier-Journal [Louisville, Kentucky] (8 December 1883)
  • b. From The New York Times (27 September 1889)
  • c. From The Boston Globe (31 October 1889)
  • d. From The [New York] Sun (22 December 1889)
  • e. From The New York Times (22 December 1889)
  • f. From The [New York] Evening World (23 December 1889)
  • g. From The [New York] Sun (16 February 1894)
  • h. From The [New York] Evening World (7 June 1895)
• 3. In Montreal and Sydney
  • a. From The [Montreal] Gazette (18 February 1890)
  • b. From The Sydney Morning Herald (19 July 1890)

Appendix E: Feminism

• 1. Henrik Ibsen, “Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times” (19 October 1878)
• 2. From Henrietta Frances Lord, preface to her translation of A Doll’s House (1882)
• 3. From August Strindberg, preface to Getting Married (1884)
• 4. From Havelock Ellis, The New Spirit (1890)
• 5. From Ellen Battelle Dietrick, “The Doll’s House—T’Other Side,” Women’s Penny Paper (15 and 22 March 1890)
• 6. From Annie Nathan Meyer, “Ibsen’s Attitude Towards Woman,” The Critic [New York] (22 March 1890)
• 7. From Max Nordau, Degeneration (1895)
• 8. From Ibsen’s speech to the Norwegian Women’s Rights League (26 May 1898)
• 9. From Louie Bennett, “Ibsen as a Pioneer of the Woman Movement,” The Westminster Review (March 1910)

Appendix F: Acting Nora

• 1. From “Nora Helmer off for the Antipodes: An Interview with Miss Janet Achurch,” The Pall Mall Gazette (5 July 1889)
• 2. From “Ethel Barrymore on Nora Helmer” (6 May 1905)
• 3. Alla Nazimova, “Ibsen’s Women,” The Independent (17 October 1907)
• 4. From Elizabeth Robins, Ibsen and the Actress (1928)
• 5. From Liv Ullmann, Changing (1976)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

New, raw, gut-twisting and gripping. Easily the hottest drama this season.

USA Today

Bold, brilliant and alive.

Wall Street Journal

A thunderclap of an evening that takes your breath away.

Time

The stuff of Broadway legend.

Associated Press

Maybe it's Nicholas Rudall's new translation. Maybe it's a matter of the gods. I couldn't put [A Doll's House] down. It's tight, and terse—reads like a fine short novel.

The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities - Lolita Lark

With its balanced introduction and thoughtfully selected contextual materials (parodies, performance reviews, and more), Leonard Conolly’s volume is a valuable and accessible resource for first-year drama students and seasoned Ibsen scholars alike. It allows twenty-first-century readers to see with fresh clarity the controversy that Ibsen’s play sparked nearly a hundred and fifty years ago—and to recognize, perhaps, that the debate has not subsided quite yet.” — Mary Christian, Middle Georgia State University

“This excellent edition of A Doll’s House shows twenty-first-century readers exactly why Ibsen’s play galvanized their nineteenth-century counterparts—and why its impact remains apparent on our stages, in our classrooms, and in the societies of which they are a part. Conolly provides the critical analysis and historical context necessary to understand what aspects of the play and its author were, and were not, considered revolutionary in multiple national and theatrical settings. Conolly’s contributions to this volume make for lively and informative reading, and his presentation of William Archer’s translation makes the play-text clear and accessible for today’s students. The well-selected appendix materials make for useful and enjoyable reading in and of themselves—especially the adaptations, ‘sequels,’ parodies, and Ibsen’s own alternative ending. As a teacher of modern drama, I have long hoped for an edition of A Doll’s House that was as suitable for students as this one—and now, I am glad to say, I have it.” — Jennifer Buckley, University of Iowa

From the Publisher

A powerful statement of [Ibsen's] radical beliefs about gender, the folly of idealism and the nature of modern love.

Evening Standard

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.

The New Statesman