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    Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

    By Henrik Ibsen

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    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Ibsen includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Ibsen’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781788775854
    Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)
    Author

    Henrik Ibsen

    Born in 1828, Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and poet, often associated with the early Modernist movement in theatre. Determined to become a playwright from a young age, Ibsen began writing while working as an apprentice pharmacist to help support his family. Though his early plays were largely unsuccessful, Ibsen was able to take employment at a theatre where he worked as a writer, director, and producer. Ibsen’s first success came with Brand and Peter Gynt, and with later plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and The Master Builder he became one of the most performed playwrights in the world, second only to William Shakespeare. Ibsen died in his home in Norway in 1906 at the age of 78.

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      Book preview

      Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) - Henrik Ibsen

      The Complete Works of

      HENRIK IBSEN

      VOLUME 15 OF 29

      Ghosts

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2013

      Version 1

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘Ghosts’

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition (in 29 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78877 585 4

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Henrik Ibsen: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 15 of the Delphi Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen in 29 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Ghosts from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Henrik Ibsen or the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      HENRIK IBSEN

      IN 29 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      The Plays

      1, Catiline

      2, The Burial Mound

      3, Lady Inger of Oestraat

      4, The Feast at Solhaug

      5, Olaf Liljekrans

      6, The Vikings at Helgeland

      7, Love’s Comedy

      8, The Pretenders

      9, Brand

      10, Peer Gynt

      11, The League of Youth

      12, Emperor and Galilean

      13, Pillars of Society

      14, A Doll’s House

      15, Ghosts

      16, An Enemy of the People

      17, The Wild Duck

      18, Rosmersholm

      19, The Lady from the Sea

      20, Hedda Gabler

      21, The Master Builder

      22, Little Eyolf

      23, John Gabriel Borkman

      24, When We Dead Awaken

      The Poems

      25, The Poetry

      The Norwegian Texts (De norske tekster)

      26, The Original Texts

      The Non-Fiction

      27, Speeches and New Letters

      The Criticism

      28, The Criticism

      The Biography

      29, The Life of Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Ghosts

      Translated by William Archer

      First staged in 1882, Ghosts was written in 1881 and once more presents a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality.  Originally written in Danish, with the title Gengangere that literally translates as again walkers, the title can also refer to people that frequently appear in the same places. As early as November 1880, whilst still living in Rome, Ibsen was meditating on a new play to follow the sensation caused by A Doll’s House. When visiting Sorrento in the summer of 1881, the playwright was hard at work upon this new drama, which was finished by the end of November and published in Copenhagen on 13 December. Its world stage première was on 20 May 1882 in Chicago.

      The play involves Helen Alving, who is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in the memory of her dead husband, Captain Alving. She reveals to Pastor Manders, her spiritual advisor, that she has ‘hidden the evils of her marriage’ and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband’s wealth so that their son, Oswald, might not inherit anything from him. Pastor Manders had previously advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering and she had followed his advice in the belief that her love for her husband would eventually reform him. However, her husband’s wicked ways continued until his death and Mrs. Alving was unable to leave him for fear of being shunned by the community. During the action of the play she discovers that her son Oswald, whom she had sent away so that he would not be corrupted by his father, is suffering from inherited syphilis and has fallen in love with Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving’s maid. Tragedy further strikes when it is also revealed that Regina is the illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving and therefore Oswald’s own half-sister.

      In many ways Ghosts forms a sequel of sorts to A Doll’s House. Instead of the general query, Did Nora return to her children?, Ibsen puts the stress on the problem of what would have happened to Nora’s children had she and Helmer persisted in living the life of lies they were accustomed to. The moral corruption of Oswald Alving, his degenerate relationship with the serving maid, who proves to be in the end his half-sister, are the direct product of the moral unsavoriness of Captain Alving, whose past life has been covered through the moral smugness of his wife, acting under the advice of the conventional minister, Pastor Manders. If Dr. Rank, in A Doll’s House, was suffering from the sins of his fathers, Oswald Alving is the product of the moral degeneracy of his father and the moral weakness of his mother. Thus, Ibsen’s Ghosts becomes an answer to the question whether Nora had a right to leave her children when she did.

      Much like its predecessor, Ghosts was deliberately sensational, offending many critics with what was regarded at the time as shocking indecency, due to the handling of themes such as infidelity, venereal disease and, worst of all, incest. One English critic later described the play as a dirty deed done in public, whilst another newspaper critic labelled the work as, Revoltingly suggestive and blasphemous ... Characters either contradictory in themselves, uninteresting or abhorrent. Meanwhile, Ghosts also scandalised the Norwegian society of the day and Ibsen was strongly criticised. In 1898 when the playwright was presented to King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, at a dinner in Ibsen’s honour, the King told Ibsen that Ghosts was not a good play. After a pause, Ibsen exploded, "Your Majesty, I had to write Ghosts!"

      The first edition

      ‘Ghosts’ was not performed in the theatre until May 1882, when a Danish touring company produced it in the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago. The hall was later converted into a bowling alley.

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION.

      CHARACTERS.

      ACT FIRST.

      ACT SECOND.

      ACT THIRD.

      Hedvig Winterhjelm as Mrs. Alving and August Lindberg as Osvald in the 1883 Swedish performance.

      INTRODUCTION.

      The winter of 1879-80 Ibsen spent in Munich, and the greater part of the summer of 1880 at Berchtesgaden. November 1880 saw him back in Rome, and he passed the summer of 1881 at Sorrento. There, fourteen years earlier, he had written the last acts of Peer Gynt; there he now wrote, or at any rate completed, Gengangere. It was published in December 1881, after he had returned to Rome. On December 22 he wrote to Ludwig Passarge, one of his German translators, My new play has now appeared, and has occasioned a terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press; every day I receive letters and newspaper articles decrying or praising it.... I consider it utterly impossible that any German theatre will accept the play at present. I hardly believe that they will dare to play it in the Scandinavian countries for some time to come. How rightly he judged we shall see anon.

      In the newspapers there was far more obloquy than praise. Two men, however, stood by him from the first: Björnson, from whom he had been practically estranged

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