Hedda Gabler

by Henrik Ibsen, Sophie Duncan (Editor)

Overview

Universally condemned in 1890 when it was written, Hedda Gabler has since become one of Ibsen's most frequently performed plays. Its title role is elusive and complex: Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, who has no means of finding personal fulfilment in the stifling world of late nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant, wayward writer, she opts for a conventional but loveless marriage in the hope of finding surrogate fulfilment through her husband's career. Blending comedy and tragedy disconcertingly together, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against a background of contemporary social conditions and attitudes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350110076
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/16/2021
Series:	Student Editions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	403 KB

About the Author

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright and poet whose realistic, symbolic and often controversial plays revolutionised European theatre. He is widely regarded as the father of modern drama. His acclaimed plays include A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People and The Pillars of the Community.

Sophie Duncan is a Fellow of Christ Church, University of Oxford. She received her DPhil from Brasenose College, Oxford, where she was Senior Hulme Scholar, in 2013. She then became Stipendiary Lecturer at St Catherine's and Supernumerary Fellow in English at Harris Manchester College, before returning to full-time research at Magdalen. She has been a guest lecturer at King's College London and the Bread Loaf School of English. In 2013, she became Editor of Victorian Network. Her research includes longstanding links with the world of professional theatre, and she works regularly as a historical advisor/dramaturg in theatre, television, radio and film. Her publications include Shakespeare's Women and the Fin de Siècle (Oxford University Press) and she has published on the African American actor Ira Aldridge, the bibliographical history of Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).

Michael Meyer is widely regarded as the definitive translator of Ibsen and Strindberg. His Strindberg translations made him the first Englishman to receive the Gold Medal of the Swedish Academy in 1964 and his biography of Ibsen won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1971.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) has been described as 'the father of modern theatre'. Most of his early plays were traditional historical dramas. After 'Peer Gynt', a fairy-tale fantasy in verse, Ibsen wrote the rest of his plays in prose, and came to be regarded as the great Naturalist dramatist.

Table of Contents

Chronology

COMMENTARY
Cultural and Theatrical Contexts
Theatrical Style
Themes
Characterisation
Setting
Translation
Performance History
Scholarly and Popular Debate

Further reading and viewing

HEDDA GABLER

Notes

Editorial Reviews

...stunning...amazingly contemporary in its considerations of the purpose of life, of the preservation of dignity and integrity...the big issues people don't dare to think about. And here is a staging that does not turn away...

NY Times

...by far the best play of the season...HEDDA GABLER has so many layers. The tragedy plays upon the irony, which acts upon fully drawn characters to make up a thoroughly modern work...You won't see a better production of this fascinating play...

Connecticut Post

When Henrik Ibsen...wrote HEDDA GABLER 110 years ago, a woman's place in society was far different from what it is today. The fact that this psychological drama plays as well now as it did a century ago is apt tribute to the sheer genius of the playwright.

The Record-Journal

The production of an Ibsen play impels the inquiry, What is the province of art? If it be to elevate and refine, as we have hitherto humbly supposed, most certainly it cannot be said that the works of Ibsen have the faintest claim to be artistic. We see no ground on which his method is defensible...Things rank and gross in nature alone have place in the mean and sordid philosophy of Ibsen.” —Excerpt from an original review, 1890s, Saturday Morning Review

From the Publisher

It can take a moment to get accustomed to any full-cast audio performance—the varied voices interact at breakneck speed, and pacing that works on the stage sometimes gives a listener pause. In this audio performance, however, once the adjustment is made, the experience is rewarding. Here, Ibsen's play is in full dramatic effect, with Hedda raving and her husband jauntily oblivious as the intrigue of a marriage with a past plays out in our ears. Some performers do amp up their deliveries and stand out starkly as a result, but the key players are effective in portraying the range of emotions explored. This production is a great introduction to classic stage performances and keeps the listener engaged to the surprise ending. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile

It can take a moment to get accustomed to any full-cast audio performance—the varied voices interact at breakneck speed, and pacing that works on the stage sometimes gives a listener pause. In this audio performance, however, once the adjustment is made, the experience is rewarding. Here, Ibsen's play is in full dramatic effect, with Hedda raving and her husband jauntily oblivious as the intrigue of a marriage with a past plays out in our ears. Some performers do amp up their deliveries and stand out starkly as a result, but the key players are effective in portraying the range of emotions explored. This production is a great introduction to classic stage performances and keeps the listener engaged to the surprise ending. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2020 - AudioFile