Peer Gynt and Brand

Description

Masterful versions of Ibsen's two great verse plays by one of our greatest living poets, Geoffrey Hill These two masterly and contrasting verse dramas by Ibsen made his reputation as a playwright. The fantastical adventures of the irrepressible Peer Gynt - poet, idler, procrastinator, seducer - draw on Norwegian folklore to conjure up mountains, kidnappings, shipwrecks and trolls in an exuberant celebration of life; while Brand, an unsparing vision of an idealistic priest who lives by his steely faith, explores free will, sacrifice and the self. This volume brings together the poet Geoffrey Hill's acclaimed stage version of Brand with a new poetic rendering of Peer Gynt, published for the first time.

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 died in Norway at the age of seventy-eight.