Ghosts / The Wild Duck / The Master Builder

Three of Ibsen's most important plays, vividly translated by Michael Meyer. Meyer's intelligent translations will undoubtedly be bested in the 21st century, but largely because their idioms will themselves become outdated. As these three plays are from the second half of Ibsen's career, they are very maturely put together, with only "Ghosts" falling prey to Ibsen's late-in-life move toward representationalism and symbolism (although I quite like his bizarrely artistic final works.) What Meyer did was to revitalise the works into English with a subtle understanding of the characters and interactions, allowing us to understand - through his notes and introductions - how the works played to their original 19th century audience, while still show more creating texts that spoke directly to 20th century people.

Meyer's six volume translation is, in short, a pillar of 20th century theatrical collections. show less