The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen Volume 3

The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume 3 is one volume of a multi volume English language edition of the complete plays of Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright who lived from 1828 to 1906 and who is generally considered the most important European dramatist of the nineteenth century. The various collected editions of Ibsen in English appeared during the early twentieth century, with the William Archer translations being the most influential and the most widely used.

Volume 3 typically contains plays from the middle period of Ibsen’s career. Depending on the edition, this volume might include plays such as A Doll’s House from 1879, Ghosts from 1881, An Enemy of the People from 1882, The Wild Duck from 1884, or other plays of similar period. These middle period works are the plays that established Ibsen’s international reputation as a major figure in modern drama and that produced the great controversies of the 1880s and 1890s about the proper role of drama in addressing serious social and moral questions.

Ibsen’s middle period plays share several characteristic features. They are set in contemporary middle class Scandinavian settings rather than in the historical or mythological worlds of his earlier work. They focus on the serious moral and social questions of late nineteenth century European life, including marriage, the position of women, religious hypocrisy, political corruption, and the relationship between individual conscience and social conformity. They use realistic dramatic methods, with characters who speak in recognizable contemporary prose rather than in elevated dramatic verse, and with plots that develop through psychologically credible interactions rather than through melodramatic event.

The plays in this period made Ibsen the most controversial playwright of his generation. A Doll’s House caused public protest in many of the cities where it was performed because of the final scene in which Nora leaves her husband and children. Ghosts was attacked as obscene because of its handling of inherited syphilis. The other plays of this period produced similar controversies.

For readers approaching Ibsen for the first time, the major middle period plays are the essential starting point. This volume gives a substantial sample of that period. It pairs naturally with the other volumes of the collected edition.