Four Major Plays: (Doll's House; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler; and The Master Builder) (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

James McFarlane's and Jens Arup's translations of Ibsen have long been classics and are arguably the best. Although they were published in England almost forty years ago, they still sound remarkably fresh and will be in print for many years to come.

In "A Doll's House" (1879), Ibsen casts us into the world of Nora Helmer, a young Norwegian housewife and Nordic Madame Bovary. Highlighting the restricted position of women in male-dominated society, the play sparked such an uproar in Scandinavia when it appeared that "many a social invitation during that winter bore the words: 'You are requested not to mention Ibsen's Doll's House!'" In fact, Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, the actress who was to play Nora on tour in Germany, was so appalled at the ending of this play -- at this female "monster" -- that she demanded Ibsen write an alternative one in German, which he did (a "barbaric outrage", in his words). McFarlane has appended this German-language ending (and a translation in English).

Based on the theme, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children," "Ghosts" (1881) is one of Ibsen's most riveting plays. Like "A Doll's House", it, too, was denounced on its début ("crapulous stuff", "an open drain", one London reviewer called it -- certainly a Victorian exaggeration). As in most of his plays, Ibsen probes the hypocrisies of patriarchal society, which he deems to be rotten at its core, and stultifying provincial life ("Doesn't the sun ever shine here?"). Typically, he also casts women in a favorable light.

"A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" established Ibsen's reputation as one of the finest playwrights in Europe, but his next two plays -- "Hedda Gabler" (1890) and "The Master Builder" (1892) -- gave him undisputed international fame. As McFarlane points out, the 1890s "were the years when the publication of a new Ibsen play sent profound cultural reverberations throughout Europe and the world." "Hedda Gabler" marks Ibsen's shift away from highly controversial dramas primarily concerned with social and sexual injustice to "domestic" plays that addressed the struggle of individuals to control each other, people who "want to control the world, but cannot control [themselves]." "Hedda Gabler" is a thoroughly electrifying drama about a married woman's devouring sense of decay and confinement. "The Master Builder", which Ibsen coupled with "Hedda Gabler", is his riveting look into sexual potency and the domination of youth by age.

These plays are not as dark and dirty as they might seem. Whatever reviewers may have said about them when they came out and whatever gloomy stuff psychiatrists have written about them since, if you're at all familiar with prime-time television, they won't offend you -- in fact, you probably wont even lift an eyebrow. Still, I found myself glued to them for hours and I've read them before. Find a copy for your shelf!

At the core of Henrik Ibsen's art lay a bottomless talent for investigating the way people hurt one another. But reading his "Four Major Plays" is not painful at all; rather, they are thrilling and even delightful for the different ways the playwright captures and sustains our interest.

"A Doll's House" (1879) the first play here, presents the story of Nora Helmer, a seemingly childlike housewife with a weakness for macaroons whose actual level of devotion to her husband and family is kept hidden until the threat of scandal exposes her to a surprisingly judgmental spouse.

Shocking in its day for questioning then-traditional domestic roles, "A Doll's House" makes its best points in its handling of Nora's character and an abrupt conclusion that still startles. If there are touches of excessive melodrama, and I think there are, they are more than compensated for by Ibsen's deft touch in drawing out the suffocating hypocrisy of social norms.

Even more of an attack on society, "Ghosts" (1881) is that much more melodramatic, too much so for my tastes. Incest, social disease, people living together out of wedlock - it's like Ibsen wanted to cram every shocking thing he could think of into one play, and finish it off with something more shocking still. Convoluted but never boring, "Ghosts" makes its points, dares you to judge, and leaves a mark.

What makes this book indispensible for lovers of good drama are the last two plays, each brilliant in a totally different way. "Hedda Gabler" (1890) is the tale of a woman's moral and mental meltdown told in four gripping acts. Title character Hedda is newly married, but full of spite for the settled life, seeking to cause misery wherever she can.

"Oh, you know how it is...these things just suddenly come over me," she explains to an oily confidant. "And then I can't resist them." You can't, either. Her twisted path causes much heartache and pain, and some surprising moments of humor for those basing their impression of Ibsen on the previous, more dour plays. Hedda's a terrifically dark, unsettling character, like Richard III in a petticoat.

Though it's hard to call anything better than "Hedda Gabler" for pure rotten fun, "The Master Builder" (1892) works even better at teasing out a rather convoluted concept, that of will to power, in an accessibly dramatic way. To risk another Shakespeare comparison, it's like a twisted take on "The Tempest". The title character, Halvard Solness, is tortured by the guilt of his success, and the sense his accomplishment has been sped along by "devils" both good and bad. Add to the equation a longtime admirer of Solness who dares him to challenge fate more boldly.

It's hard to imagine a story like this working in anyone else's hands, but Ibsen does it with masterful subterfuge, teasing out the main story in the form of a seeming subplot while the story which begins the play recedes into the background. Nothing goes the way you expect it, except perhaps the ending, which Ibsen manages to make feel like destiny. Even the characters are a complex group, Solness alternately megalomaniacal and sympathetic.

Ibsen's great reputation is fully justified in this deep, complex, yet surprisingly accessible volume.

Rather predictably, the first play offered here is "A Doll's House", the most famous of Ibsen's works. Strangely enough, this ended up NOT being my favorite of the four plays provided in this small collection, but I'll get to that in a moment. Next we have "Ghosts", "Hedda Gabler", and finally "The Master Builder".

"A Doll's House", 86 pages long, is also provided here with the alternate German ending. The ending was deemed so scandalous that Ibsen was forced to write up another ending, in which things go slightly differently. "A Doll's House", a play about a woman who rather does the unthinkable (in that time, at least) to help her husband and then once again to herself, is remarkably interesting. Ibsen plays are generally extremely fun to analyze, simply because there's always something there. Nobody would read dull plays, after all. The alternate ending provided is actually the most interesting part of all. It shows us what the impact of this play was on society at the time that it came out. Perhaps we find these things somewhat more "normal" (though they're actually not, and are still considered rather scandalous) and acceptable, so this ending really reminds us of WHY this play was so impressive and WHY Ibsen was such a strange character for his time. An intriguing play, though not my favorite.

No, that falls to "Ghosts". A play that once again touches on difficult subjects that are most intriguing, "Ghosts" chilled me from beginning to end. It was a more interesting play, overall, because it seemed to me more human. That's not to say that "A Doll's House" wasn't human (it definitely is), but there was something about "Ghosts" that touched me more than the other plays. At 73-pages and with fewer characters, "Ghosts" is an easier play to really read, and certainly an enjoyable one.

"Hedda Gabler" changes things a bit. The plot suddenly becomes a bit more interesting with a touch more mystery and intrigue. There are moments that positively creeped me out ("I'm burning your child") and moments where I just shivered. The ending is a bit more intense than in the previous plays, though less surprising. The play felt very different from "Ghosts" or "A Doll's House", though it was still clearly an Ibsen "morbid but interesting" play.

For me, "The Master Builder" is the odd play out. It's the one that, a. Bored me the most, b. Seemed to take the longest (though only barely longer than "A Doll's House, at 88 pages, and shorter than the 97-paged long "Hedda Gabler"), and c. Seemed the least realistic. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the ending wouldn't seem to work on stage. I felt like at some point Ibsen kind of forgot that he was writing a play and mentioned things that wouldn't really work (unless they have a complex blue screen, but those didn't exist in his time...). There are ways around it, certainly, and it's a minor flaw, but I found that "The Master Building" just didn't have that spark that the other plays seemed to have. No, it's not a BAD play, but it's not my favorite among these either.

While there are many options out there for buying Ibsen plays, this one is certainly a good buy. While the Signet edition also gives us four plays for a few dollars cheaper, instead of the incredible "Ghosts", we get the reasonable "The Wild Duck". For those few dollars, I'd opt for "Ghosts". Also, the book type itself is better in this edition as opposed to the Signet Classics one.

Highly recommended to anyone interesting in a good play to analyze and enjoy. Enjoy!