Ghosts (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)

The innovative dramas of Henrik Ibsen created a sensation among 19thcentury audiences with their mordant attacks on social conventions. Among the finest of these groundbreaking works was Ghosts, first performed in 1881. In it, the playwright assailed the hypocrisy of moral codes, offering a daring treatment of such thentaboo issues as infidelity, venereal disease, and illegitimacy. Ibsen substituted the modern scientific idea of heredity for the ancient Greek concept of fate, exposing hidden sins of the past as the roots of corruption.The sins of the past are at the heart of the play, whose haunted heroine, Mrs. Helen Alving, has accepted her pastors counsel and endured her husbands many infidelities in silence. Ten years after Alvings death, she is to dedicate an orphanage in his memory. Her son Oswald, kept innocent of his fathers profligacy, returns home for the dedication. Oswalds attraction to the housemaid in reality, his halfsister conjures up the ghost of his parents unhappy marriage. This disastrous romance, along with Oswalds increasing symptoms of the venereal disease inherited from his father, force Mrs. Alving to confront her own ghosts.A powerful and engrossing psychological drama, Ghosts serves as an excellent entre to Ibsens other works and helps confirm his status as the father of modern drama.