The Wild Duck

This 1884 masterpiece may have its genesis in the hostile reception Ibsen — widely regarded as the father of modern realist drama — had received from the Norwegian public and critics for Ghosts (1881), which gave theater-goers a larger dose of truth than most were willing to bear. His next three plays — The Wild Duck, An Enemy of the People (1882), and Rosmersholm (1886) — focused on the consequences of telling the truth, or forbearing to do so.
In The Wild Duck, the idealistic son of a corr...