A Doll's House

by Henrik Ibsen, Michael Meyer (Translator)

Overview

A unique combination of performance and commentary. Topics include body language and camera angles; rehearsal vs. performance; set design, costume and make-up; and historical context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350116801
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/01/2020
Series:	Student Editions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	362 KB

About the Author

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright who thrived during the late nineteenth century. He began his professional career at age 15 as a pharmacist’s apprentice. He would spend his free time writing plays, publishing his first work Catilina in 1850, followed by The Burial Mound that same year. He eventually earned a position as a theatre director and began producing his own material. Ibsen’s prolific catalogue is noted for depicting modern and real topics. His major titles include Brand, Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler.

Table of Contents

The introduction and commentary to the play covers:

Cultural and theatrical contexts
Themes
Dramatic devices
Performance history
Trends in scholarly and popular debate

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

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

With its balanced introduction and thoughtfully selected contextual materials (parodies, performance reviews, and more), Leonard Conolly’s volume is a valuable and accessible resource for first-year drama students and seasoned Ibsen scholars alike. It allows twenty-first-century readers to see with fresh clarity the controversy that Ibsen’s play sparked nearly a hundred and fifty years ago—and to recognize, perhaps, that the debate has not subsided quite yet.” — Mary Christian, Middle Georgia State University

“This excellent edition of A Doll’s House shows twenty-first-century readers exactly why Ibsen’s play galvanized their nineteenth-century counterparts—and why its impact remains apparent on our stages, in our classrooms, and in the societies of which they are a part. Conolly provides the critical analysis and historical context necessary to understand what aspects of the play and its author were, and were not, considered revolutionary in multiple national and theatrical settings. Conolly’s contributions to this volume make for lively and informative reading, and his presentation of William Archer’s translation makes the play-text clear and accessible for today’s students. The well-selected appendix materials make for useful and enjoyable reading in and of themselves—especially the adaptations, ‘sequels,’ parodies, and Ibsen’s own alternative ending. As a teacher of modern drama, I have long hoped for an edition of A Doll’s House that was as suitable for students as this one—and now, I am glad to say, I have it.” — Jennifer Buckley, University of Iowa

From the Publisher

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