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.