Norwegian Plays (Book Guide)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Commentary (plays not included). Pages: 32. Chapters: Plays by Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler, Brand, The Master Builder, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Ghosts, Rosmersholm, An Enemy of the People, When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town, Little Eyolf, Love's Comedy, The Pillars of Society, St. John's Eve, Anne Pedersdotter, The Pretenders, Catiline, The Feast at Solhaug, The Lady from the Sea, John Gabriel Borkman, Captain Sabertooth, The League of Youth, The Prodigal Son, The Vikings at Helgeland, Lady Inger of Oestraat, Emperor and Galilean, Bsider, Norma, The Saint Olav Drama, The Burial Mound, Olaf Liljekrans. Excerpt: Peer Gynt (Norwegian pronunciation: English: ) is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. Interpreted in its day as a satire on the Norwegian personality, Peer Gynt is the story of a life based on procrastination and avoidance. A first edition of 1,250 copies was published on 14 November 1867 in Copenhagen. Despite having swiftly sold out, a re-print of 2,000 copies, which followed after only 14 days, didn't sell out until seven years later. While Bj rnstjerne Bj rnson admired the play's "satire in Norwegian egotism, narrowness, and self-sufficiency" and described it as "magnificent," Hans Christian Andersen, Georg Brandes and Clemens Petersen all joined a widespread hostility. Enraged by Petersen's criticisms in particular, Ibsen defended his work by arguing that it "is poetry; and if it isn't, it will become such. The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book." Despite this defense of his poetic achievement in Peer Gynt, the play was his last to employ verse; from The League of Youth (1869) onwards, Ibsen was to write drama only in prose. Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt in deliberat...