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Ghosts (play)
 
 
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Ghosts (original Norwegian
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
 title: Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.

Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality.

Play background
Ghosts was written during the autumn of 1881 and was published in December of the same year. It was not performed in the theatre until May 1882, when a Danish
Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries....
 touring company produced it in the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago
Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the Midwestern United States, as well as the List of United States cities by population city in the United States with more than 2.8 million residents....
.






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Encyclopedia


Ghosts (original Norwegian
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
 title: Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
 Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was a major Nineteenth-century theatre Norway playwright of realism drama and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of modernism in the theatre....
. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.

Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality.

Play background


Ghosts was written during the autumn of 1881 and was published in December of the same year. It was not performed in the theatre until May 1882, when a Danish
Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries....
 touring company produced it in the Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago
Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the Midwestern United States, as well as the List of United States cities by population city in the United States with more than 2.8 million residents....
. Ibsen disliked the translator William Archer
William Archer (critic)

William Archer , Scotland critic, was born in Perth, Scotland, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of Master of Arts in 1876....
's use of the word 'Ghosts' as the play's title, whereas the Norwegian "Gengangere" would be more accurately translated as "The Revenants", which literally means "The Ones who Return".

The play achieved a single private London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
 performance on 13 March 1891 at the Royalty Theatre
Royalty Theatre

The Royalty Theatre was a small London theatre situated at 73 Dean Street, Soho and opened on May 25 1840 as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School and finally closed to the public in 1938....
. The Lord Chamberlain's Office
Lord Chamberlain's Office

The Lord Chamberlain's Office is a department within the British Royal Households of the United Kingdom. It is presently concerned with matters such as protocol , state visits, investitures, garden party, the State Opening of Parliament, royal weddings and funerals....
 censorship
Censorship

Censorship is the suppression of freedom of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor....
 was avoided by the formation of a subscription-only Independent Theatre Society
Independent Theatre Society

The 'Independent Theatre Society' was a by-subscription-only organisation in London from 1891 to 1897, founded by Dutch drama critic J. T. Grein to give "special performances of plays which have a literary and artistic rather than a commercial value." The society was inspired by its continental forerunners, the Th??tre-Libre and Die Frei...
, which included George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish people playwright.Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays....
, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, Order of Merit was an England author of the naturalism movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain....
 and Henry James
Henry James

Henry James, Order of Merit , son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an United States author....
 among its members.

Plot


Helene Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in the memory of her dead husband, Captain Alving. She reveals to her spiritual advisor, Pastor Manders, that she has hidden the evils of her marriage, and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband's wealth so that their son, Osvald, might not inherit anything from him. Pastor Manders had previously advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering, and she followed his advice in the belief that her love for her husband would eventually reform him. However her husband's philandering continued until his death, and Mrs. Alving was unable to leave him prior for fear of being shunned by the community. During the action of the play she discovers that her son Osvald (whom she had sent away so that he would not be corrupted by his father) is suffering from congenital syphilis
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
, and (worse) has fallen in love with Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving's maid, who is revealed to be an illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving, and thereby Osvald's own half-sister.

The play concludes with Mrs. Alving deciding whether or not to euthanize
Euthanasia

Euthanasia refers to the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Many different forms of euthanasia can be distinguished, including euthanasia and human euthanasia, and within the latter, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia....
 her son Osvald in his developing syphillitic madness in accordance with his wishes.

Reactions


Much like A Doll's House
A Doll's House

A Doll's House is an 1879 Play by Norway playwright Henrik Ibsen. Written one year after The Pillars of Society, the play was the first of Ibsen's to create a sensation and is now perhaps his most famous play, and required reading in many secondary schools and universities....
, Ghosts was deliberately sensational. What most offended Ibsen's contemporaries was what they regarded as its shocking indecency, its more than frank treatment of a forbidden topic. An English
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 critic was later to describe it as "a dirty deed done in public," and to many it must have seemed simply shocking rather than in any profound intellectual sense revolutionary.

At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, but to show that even a person who followed society's ideals of morality had no protection against it was beyond the pale. Mrs. Alving's is not the noble life which Victorians
Victorian era

The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the period of Victoria of the United Kingdom reign from June 1837 to January 1901....
 believed would result from fulfilling one's duty rather than following one's desires. Those idealized beliefs are only the "ghosts" of the past, haunting the present.

The production of Ghosts scandalised Norwegian society of the day and Ibsen was strongly criticised. In 1898 when Ibsen was presented to King Oscar II
Oscar II of Sweden

Oscar II , born Oscar Frederik was King of Norway from 1872 until 1905 and King of Sweden from 1872 until his death. The third son of King Oscar I of Sweden and Josephine of Leuchtenberg, he was a descendant of Gustav I of Sweden through his mother....
 of Sweden
Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
, 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!"

List of characters

  • Mrs. Helene Alving, a widow.
  • Oswald Alving, her son, a painter.
  • Pastor Manders.
  • Jacob Engstrand, a carpenter.
  • Regina Engstrand believes she is the daughter of Jacob Engstrand, but is actually Captain Alving's child. She is also Mrs. Alving's maid.


External links


Bibliography

  • Book Background, Penguins Classics, Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts and Other Plays ISBN 0-140-44135-2