Hedda Gabler

by Pericles Lewis Hedda Gabler (1890) is the last of Henrik Ibsen’s realist plays, published at the height of his fame and performed all across Europe in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Even at this point in his career, Ibsen shows the influence of two popular dramatic forms of the nineteenth century, melodrama… Continue Reading Hedda Gabler

Henrik Ibsen

by Pericles Lewis The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) created modern realistic drama out of elements of the popular nineteenth-century forms of the melodrama and the “well-made play.” Although his first European successes occurred with his romantic verse dramas of the 1860s, Ibsen’s great influence on the English stage began with A Doll’s House. The… Continue Reading Henrik Ibsen