Henrik Ibsen: 4 Classic Dramatic Works - A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder

Rudha Al-Dhahir: The book is nice
The service is good

United Kingdom on Sep 12, 2023

jvillagomez20: I bought this to read the master builder. It's a great play, I highly recommend Ibsen.
oxford world classics makes good quality books.

United States on Apr 09, 2022

R: Thank you Atlantic publishers for giving me this. The book is amazing and it’s a treat for ibsen fans. I love his work and so I love this book.
It’s complete value for money

India on Jul 05, 2020

horse with no name: After the forced closing of the London theaters by the Puritans in 1642, serious drama in Europe entered a long decline. Despite occasional bright spots--French Neoclassicism, the German Enlightenment--it wasn't until the Victorian Era that a new style of realistic drama emerged, ironically, in Scandinavia and Russia, far from the traditional centers of European high culture. Beginning in 1850 Henrik Ibsen wrote a series of iconoclastic plays that challenged society's taboos and exposed its hypocrisy, while creating larger-than-life characters faced with agonizing ethical dilemmas. Like Shakespeare, Ibsen perhaps is better appreciated on the page than on the stage. With Ibsen, subtext is everything. Taken at face value, his plots can seem absurdly melodramatic, his characters unconvincing, his dialogue trite. You have to learn to read between the lines. Actors often flounder amid Ibsen's characters' nuances, while directors are more interested in making a statement than interpreting the author faithfully. "Hedda Gabler," the longest and most complicated play in this edition, in particular requires repeated readings. Its truly frightful heroine is a latter-day Medea or Lady...

United States on Jul 16, 2019

ken michrina: Gave as gift.

United States on May 26, 2018

Peter B: How can you become tired of Ibsen? Forget those aweful "new interpretations" by some theatre director with a fraction of Ibsen's talent who thinks that he/she knows better than Ibsen what Ibsen intended to convey! It's not necessary to give the plight of women in the 19th century a new spin for the benefit of an audience which supposedly has a short attention span, presumably because the dierctor thinks they have been conditioned by a diet of plays that choose to tell their story on TV or film through a succession of 10 second close-ups, and unfinished sentences . Any audience can work out the parallels with today!

United Kingdom on Apr 27, 2017

Grannydoc: These plays, especially the Doll's House, are still relevant today. They are very interesting to read again and realize what a shock they
were to Europe at that time in history.

United States on Mar 24, 2016

ElfinElfin: I love Henrik Ibsen - my old time favourites are : Doll's House and Hedda Gabler.
They are so timeless. Henrik Ibsen is one of those rare realist writers who crafted his playwrights carefully with sheer profound clarity and he was 100 years ahead of his time. He is provoking by addressing taboo issues such as psychopathy (Hedda Gabler - female aristoctratic psychopath who uses her superficial charm to advance herself to get anything she desires ) and 'feminist issues' in the Doll's House. He was accused of being 'feminist' - but of course it wasn't true - he was just a great observer of society at around the time when freudian theories were emerging.
I was only 18 yrs old when I first read The Doll's House addressing feminist issues such as 'what is it like being trapped in a relationship'. (The Doll's House is a symbol of her entrapment.)
So many people analyzed this masterpiece and I will not give away the story line and the plot just highlight a few iconic lines when at times WORDS do speak louder than actions:

TORWALD: "You have ruined my happiness. You have ruined my future. Terrible. He can do whatever he wants me now..."
NORA: "When I am DEAD - he won't...

United Kingdom on Jul 16, 2014

Arthur E.: Four of Ibsen's greatest plays, taken from what is, in my opinion the best edition of Ibsen that we have had in our language, the Oxford Ibsen of James McFarlane et al. However, for this paperback reissue, some of the valuable appendices were removed. This is a shame but utterly justifiable. It does create a slight impression of incompetence, however, when, on p. 88, I read 'For an insight [...etc...] see his letters to a Copenhagen newspaper [...] (translated below, pp. 454–56)' and find that this book only has 355 pages.

Regardless, four masterpieces in elegant and idiomatic translations, which make for intense literary pleasure; and the plays can be enjoyed perfectly well without the extra letters, &c. However, Oxford University Press, if you are reading this, it is virtually impossible for a young Ibsen-enthusiast to get hold of the Oxford Ibsen (or any complete Ibsen in English, for that matter) nowadays; so, perhaps the time has come to reissue all of his plays—perhaps more cost-effectively, in paperback (with appendices, preferably).

United Kingdom on Jan 09, 2014

Jays mom-mom: I am very pleased with the purchase and the timely manner in which the book came. It arrived just in time for the beginning of the semester and was in great condition. Also, I appreciated the fact that the book was as described.

United States on Sep 09, 2011