Ghosts

Henrik Ibsen stood in the midst of a maelstrom. The publication of the text of Ghosts (1881) had critics seething; they accused the playwright of over-stepping the bounds of decency, undermining the social fabric, and corrupting the very art of playwriting. Ibsen shrugged them off–he guessed from the first that the play’s daring outstripped its era. The story of Mrs. Alving’s struggle to spare her son from the rotted legacy–the “ghosts”–left to him by his family’s sordid past creates a taut, suspenseful tale of secrets kept too long and revealed too late. Ghosts plumbs the depths of misplaced sacrifice, smothered passion, and stifling conventions–staring unblinking into a world diseased.