Hedda Gabler Synopsis
Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant writer, Hedda Gabler opts instead for a conventional but loveless marriage. But, when her first love returns with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action.
Universally condemned in 1890 when it was written, Hedda Gabler has subsequently become one of Ibsen's most performed and studied plays. Blending comedy and tragedy, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against a backdrop of contemporary social Habits and hypocrisies.
This Methuen Drama Student Edition is published with Michael Meyer’s classic translation, and with commentary and notes by Dr. Sophie Duncan.
These offer a contemporary lens on the play's gender politics, and consider some key twentieth and twenty-first century productions of Hedda Gabler, which include actresses like Maggie Smith, Harriet Walker, and Ruth Wilson taking on the iconic titular role.
This translation currently features as an optional set text for AQA Drama & Theatre Studies A-Level.
A Preview of Hedda Gabler is available here.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781350110069 |
| Publication date: |
27th January 2022 |
| Author: |
Henrik Ibsen |
| Publisher: |
Methuen Drama an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
144 pages |
| Series: |
Student Editions |
| Suitable For: |
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| Other Genres: |
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Henrik Ibsen Press Reviews
The production of an Ibsen play impels the inquiry, What is the province of art? If it be to elevate and refine, as we have hitherto humbly supposed, most certainly it cannot be said that the works of Ibsen have the faintest claim to be artistic. We see no ground on which his method is defensible...Things rank and gross in nature alone have place in the mean and sordid philosophy of Ibsen. - Excerpt from an original review, 1890s, Saturday Morning Review
Sophie Duncan is a Fellow of Christ Church, University of Oxford. She received her DPhil from Brasenose College, Oxford, where she was Senior Hulme Scholar, in 2013. She then became Stipendiary Lecturer at St Catherine’s and Supernumerary Fellow in English at Harris Manchester College, before returning to full-time research at Magdalen. She has been a guest lecturer at King’s College London and the Bread Loaf School of English. In 2013, she became Editor of Victorian Network. Her research includes longstanding links with the world of professional theatre, and she works regularly as a historical advisor/dramaturg in theatre, television, radio and film. Her publications include Shakespeare’s Women and the Fin de Siècle (Oxford University Press) and she has published on the African American actor Ira Aldridge, the bibliographical history of Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
