A Doll's House / Ghosts / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder (1981)

Holy crap, Ibsen is good. I read Hedda Gabler and Doll's House from this collection. Both feature strong female protagonists who are dissatisfied with the lives they feel trapped in. Both women insist on making something remarkable happen in their mundane worlds; Ibsen wants to remind us that extraordinary things can happen even in the most ordinary of families, where that seems almost impossible. Thus the line, "But, good God, people don't do such things!", which shows up at least twice in each play.

Hedda Gabler is sometimes called the female Hamlet, which seems a bit unnecessary. I mean, I get it. Both characters are lost and depressed and searching for something they're not quite sure of. But to me she seems more like Dorothea, the heroine of [b:Middlemarch.|19089|Middlemarch (Signet Classics)|George Eliot|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309202283s/19089.jpg|1461747] Both marry stuffy, oblivious academics, and both yearn for something more out of life. Hedda Gabler is an image of what might have happened to Dorothea, had she been less strong and principled.

I had the good fortune to be able to compare Jens Arup's Hedda Gabler translation, included here, with Michael Meyer's; Meyer's is worlds better than Arup's. It's not even close. McFarlane's translation of Doll's House is the only one I've read, and it came across well, but I would say that given the information I have right now, Meyer's my homeboy. ( )

Ibsen is one of my favorite playwrights. favorites include: The Master Builder (a truly rough yet realistic of old life in Europe tale) a very important playwright for exploding truths taht were not expressed openly at the time. ( )