A Doll's House
A Doll's House (Danish and Bokmål: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. The play is set in a Norwegian town c. 1879.
| A Doll's House | |
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Original manuscript cover page, 1879 | |
| Written by | Henrik Ibsen |
| Characters |
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| Date premiered | 21 December 1879 |
| Place premiered | Royal Danish Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Original language | Norwegian, Danish |
| Subject | The awakening of a middle-class wife and mother |
| Genre | Naturalistic / realistic problem play Modern tragedy |
| Setting | The home of the Helmer family in an unspecified Norwegian town or city, c. 1879 |
The play concerns the fate of a married woman, who, at the time in Norway, lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. Despite the fact that Ibsen denied it was his intent to write a feminist play, it was a great sensation at the time and caused a "storm of outraged controversy" that went beyond the theater to the world of newspapers and society.
In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most-performed play that year. UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.
The title of the play is most commonly translated as A Doll's House, though some scholars use A Doll House. John Simon says that A Doll's House is "the British term for what [Americans] call a 'dollhouse'". Egil Törnqvist says of the alternative title: "Rather than being superior to the traditional rendering, it simply sounds more idiomatic to Americans."