A Doll's House

by Henrik Ibsen

Overview

One of the best-known, most frequently performed of modern plays, A Doll's House richly displays the genius with which Henrik Ibsen pioneered modern, realistic prose drama. In the central character of Nora, Ibsen epitomized the human struggle against the humiliating constraints of social conformity. Nora's ultimate rejection of a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house" shocked theatergoers of the late 1800s and opened new horizons for playwrights and their audiences.
But daring social themes are only one aspect of Ibsen's power as a dramatist. A Doll's House shows as well his gifts for creating realistic dialogue, a suspenseful flow of events and, above all, psychologically penetrating characterizations that make the struggles of his dramatic personages utterly convincing. Here is a deeply absorbing play as readable as it is eminently playable, reprinted from an authoritative translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486270623
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	02/21/1992
Series:	Dover Thrift Editions: Plays
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Only Shakespeare's plays are performed more frequently than those of Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906). The Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet scandalized many of his contemporaries as he led the theater into the modern era by exploring the realities behind 19th-century social conventions.

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

Simon Stephens's agile new version [is] . . . quick and clear and full of subtle touches” —Susannah Clapp, Guardian

“A sensible, sensitive and spirited version . . . that chimes with the debt-laden times we're trapped in and poses still-pressing questions” —Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph

“The supple new version of the text by Simon Stephens is [a] great plus point . . . in this definitive take on a classic” —Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“An astute, often savagely funny version by Simon Stephens . . . And as the doll at the play's heart and hearth cracks like porcelain and the woman emerges, it's with a force that's shattering.” —Sam Marlowe, Metro

“Simon Stephens's new English-language version of the text . . . makes the characters' anxieties feel contemporary despite the period dress. "Feminism" may not have been in Ibsen's vocabulary, but he was undoubtedly concerned with the roles we all play and why.” —Financial Times

From the Publisher

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

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

With a little help from state-of-the-art production techniques and veteran acting talents, narrators Alison Larkin and Andrew Wincott give voice to nine characters and create the energy, intimacy, and acoustics of live theater in their presentation of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 groundbreaking masterwork about a woman's personal and economic awakening. At first, the world seems easy and bright with wife Nora's playful banter and husband Torvald's teasing, but when an old friend arrives and an intimate secret is about to be exposed, Nora must make a fateful decision. The choice to have only two actors playing all the parts works seamlessly, and Larkin nails the emotions of a wife who is telling her husband she can no longer be treated like a toy in a doll's house. Classic theater indeed. B.P. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2024 - AudioFile