The Master Builder and Other Plays

Description

Ibsen's greatest late plays in superb modern translations, part of the new Penguin Ibsen series This volume includes The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken - Ibsen's last four plays, written when he was an old man and had recently returned to Oslo after decades of self-imposed exile. In The Master Builder, a married, middle-aged architect whose best years are behind him becomes bewitched by a strange young woman who claims to have known him for years. The sudden death of a child in Little Eyolf is the catalyst that drives his parents into a greater understanding of themselves and their flawed marriage. In John Gabriel Borkman, a banker recently released from prison must choose between his wife and her sister, his first true love. And in When We Dead Awaken, a sculptor on holiday with his wife is reunited with his first love - the woman who inspired his greatest art.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is often called 'the Father of Modern Drama'. He was born in the small Norwegian town of Skien and started writing plays from an early age. In 1864 he left Norway for a 21-year-long voluntary exile in Italy and Germany. After successes with the verse dramas Brand and Peer Gynt, he turned to prose, writing his great 12-play cycle of society dramas between 1877 and 1899. This included The Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and, finally, When We Dead Awaken. Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891 and died there at the age of seventy-eight. Barbara J. Haveland and Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife are both freelance literary translators. Toril Moi is Professor of English, Theater Studies and Philosophy at Duke University. Tore Rem is Professor of British literature at the University of Oslo.