Ibsen Plays: 1: Ghosts; The Wild Duck; The Master Builder

The plays in this volume range from the once shockingly realistic Ghosts (1881), 'the play that launched a thousand ships of critical fury'; through The Wild Duck (1884) with its innovatory symbolism and its touching portrait of a fourteen-year-old girl held in thrall by her feckless father ('Where,' asked George Bernard Shaw, 'shall I find an epithet magnificent enough for The Wild Duck?'); to The Master Builder (1892), showing the semi-autobiographical relationship between an ageing genius and a dynamic young woman.Michael Meyer's translations are 'crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana' (Kenneth Tynan)
The plays in this volume range from the once shockingly realistic Ghosts (1881), "the play that launched a thousand ships of critical fury"; through The Wild Duck (1884) with its innovatory symbolism and its touching portrait of a fourteen-year-old girl held in thrall by her feckless father; to The Master Builder (1892), showing the semi-autobiographical relationship between an ageing genius and a dynamic young woman."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 center of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field."—George Steiner"Crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana."—Kenneth Tynan Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is generally regarded as the father of modern theatre: "His influence on contemporaries and following generations, whether directly or indirectly ... can hardly be overestimated."—John Russell Taylor