Ghosts (play)
Ghosts (Danish: Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in Danish and published in 1881, and first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, US, performed in Danish.
| Ghosts | |
|---|---|
The first edition of Ghosts by Henric Ibsen, 1881 | |
| Written by | Henrik Ibsen |
| Characters |
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| Date premiered | 20 May 1882 |
| Place premiered | Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago, Illinois |
| Original language | Danish |
| Subject | Morality |
| Genre | Naturalistic / realistic problem play |
| Setting | The country home of the Alving family beside one of the large fjords in Western Norway |
Like many of Ibsen's plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, it immediately generated strong controversy and negative criticism.
Since then, the play has come to be considered a "great play" that historically holds a position of "immense importance". Theater critic Maurice Valency wrote in 1963, "From the standpoint of modern tragedy Ghosts strikes off in a new direction.... Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code. Ghosts, on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it."
Ibsen disliked the English translator William Archer's use of the word "Ghosts" as the play's title, as the Danish or Norwegian Gengangere would be more accurately translated as "The Revenants", which literally means "The Ones Who Return".