A Doll's House / Hedda Gabler / The Master-Builder / The Wild Duck
by Henrik Ibsen
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Presents four plays by Henrik Ibsen, with detailed explanatory notes, an overview of key themes, and an introduction to the author's life and times.Tags
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Infrequently one comes across a book, a writer, who is obviously many levels above the typical tripe and hacks passed off as literature or drama. Ibsen is certainly one of the those on a much higher plane. He is noticeably intrigued by women (A Doll House and Hedda Gabler) and explores their unique and sometimes irrational conduct (I know, only from a man's point of view) in depth. If you are interested in plays, start with Ibsen. Once I started a play I just could not put it down until finished. Highly recommended.
Ibsen is another writer I randomly picked up in college and have liked ever since. Amazon people recommend the McFarlane/Arup translation as the best, which has Ghosts rather than The Wild Duck. I'm not sure I read Master Builder, and I'll have to read Ghosts, but the other three made a lasting impression. Ibsen's not light, but he's easy to read and straightforward. Proto-feminism written by a guy? - I guess it's something like that and more.
These plays are among Ibsen's finest and certainly most influential. Any study of 19th or early 20th century drama should include these works. No Ibsen scholar I, a thorough and complete assessment of these works eludes my abilities. Suffice it to say that drama grew up thanks to Ibsen.
A Doll House: 3-act play detailing the blackmailing for forgery of a housewife and mother of three by a failed lawyer. Dramatic focus is on the crisis’ awakening of Nora to her doll-like existence as an uneducated and patronized wife and her new determination to discover herself and the world by separating from her husband and children. Some sexual innuendo.
A doll House, Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, Master Builder.
All of these people are very sad. Confused, mixed up lives.
All of these people are very sad. Confused, mixed up lives.
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700+ Works 27,353 Members
Henrik Ibsen, poet and playwright was born in Skein, Norway, in 1828. His creative work spanned 50 years, from 1849-1899, and included 25 plays and numerous poems. During his middle, romantic period (1840-1875), Ibsen wrote two important dramatic poems, Brand and Peer Gynt, while the period from 1875-1899 saw the creation of 11 realistic plays show more with contemporary settings, the most famous of which are A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and The Wild Duck. Henrik Ibsen died in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway in 1906. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- A Doll's House / The Wild Duck / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder; A Doll House / The Wild Duck / Hedda Gabler / The Master Builder; A Doll's House / Hedda Gabler / The Master-Builder / The Wild Duck
- Alternate titles
- Ibsen: Four Major Plays
- Original publication date
- 1965 (Fjelde) (Fjelde)
- Dedication
- To Borghild Dahl, writer and seer with the inner eye
- First words
- Foreword: It is one of those happy accidents of literary history that Henrik Ibsen's career as a dramatist neatly coincides with the latter half of the nineteenth century.
- Quotations
- If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. that's why I can't stay here with you any longer. (A Doll's House)
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And I heard harps in the air. My - my master builder!
- Original language
- Danish
- Disambiguation notice
- This work represents those anthologies containing A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder. It should not be combined with any anthology containing a differing selection of plays.
Classifications
- Genre
- Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 839.8 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures Other Germanic literatures Danish and Norwegian literatures
- LCC
- PT8854 .F5 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures Norwegian literature Individual authors or works 19th century Ibsen, Henrik
- BISAC
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- Popularity
- 13,959
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (3.90)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 18
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 20