‘You’ve never loved me, you’ve only found it pleasant to be in love with me’
The plays in this volume, each written a decade apart, demonstrate different sides of Henrik Ibsen’s genius, but all deal with themes of alienation from society and the breaking down of convention. A Doll’s House (1879) portrays a woman questioning her duty to her husband and seeking to escape from the stifling confines of her marriage – a theme that shocked contemporary audiences and established Ibsen’s name outside Scandinavia. In The League of Youth (1869), his first prose drama, Ibsen created a vivid comedy about a hypocritical politician, and in The Lady from the Sea (1888) he depicts a woman who longs for the life she enjoyed by the sea before she was married.
Peter Watts’ lively modern translation is accompanied by an introduction in which he examines Ibsen’s life and times, with individual discussions of the three plays.
