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.
A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486110202
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	03/13/2012
Series:	Dover Thrift Editions: Plays
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
Lexile:	NP (what's this?)
File size:	697 KB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

"One of the most influential playwrights of his time, Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, at a small Norwegian town of Skien.
By 1850, When Ibsen’s literary abilities had begun to show, and he was no longer satisfied to stay in a small town, he came to Christiania— a venture that would prove to be disastrous. Ibsen had brought with him his blank verse tragedy, Catilina, his first play, deemed unremarkable. When Ibsen was twenty-three, he was appointed to work in a theatre in Bergen. He also wrote plays during this time, but none of them were well-received.
In 1864, Ibsen went on a self-imposed exile, frustrated by his constant penury and his general life in Norway. In these years, he wrote a lot of plays that finally won him critical appreciation and wealth, ending his long-endured poverty— Brand (1865), Peer Gynt (1867), The League of Youth (1869). In 1877, Ibsen began to write the prose plays on which his wider reputation rests, such as A Doll’s House (1879) which is his most-performed play.
In 1881, he managed to come up with an unconventional play— Ghosts, tackling topics such as incest and venereal disease. He continued writing plays until 1900. Some of his later plays are The Lady from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), The Master Builder (1892), and Little Eyolf (1894). Ibsen returned to his country after more than two decades, by which time he had become a literary titan. He suffered a series of strokes in 1900, due to which he became unable to write. Henrik Ibsen breathed his last on May 23, 1906."

Table of Contents

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.

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