An Enemy of the People; The Wild Duck; Rosmersholm

Ibsen was a fantastic dramatist, and these three plays, though not all his very most famous, are excellent reading. An early pioneer of realism, Ibsen exposes the eternal every-day uglinesses behind the courteous façade of late-19th-century private and public life. So much for Ibsen, who certainly needs no apology; now for the edition. My copy of the Oxford edition is printed on thin paper of low quality, but I cannot speak for the newest (2009) edition, which has a new cover. The translation is mostly fine, though I have not compared it with other translations of the same plays. The translator, James McFarlane, has an extremely weak grasp of the proper use of question marks; the rule that all question sentences in English must end in a question mark, no matter how long, complex, or rhetorical, is one without exceptions, but is nevertheless broken by Mr McFarlane, generally more than once in a page: a maddeningly distracting flaw in an otherwise well-worthwhile book.

A professor of mine told me that AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is not a very good play, so I read it myself to find out...and I disagree with my professor! I think AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is a powerful play on the timeless theme of the individual's relation to society. The "mob scene" in Act IV is a particularly intense piece of dramatic writing that reminded me of the "trial scenes" in such later, American plays as THE CRUCIBLE and INHERIT THE WIND. Several years ago I saw an outstanding local production of THE CRUCIBLE; I would love to see AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE onstage as well.THE WILD DUCK, however, is my favorite play by Ibsen; I definitely agree with those critics who say that it is his masterpiece. I have read it three or four times, and each time I am amazed at Ibsen's skill. The play is a painful, poignant exploration of lost innocence, embodied in the character of Hedvig, a young girl on the verge of womanhood. If I could see only one more Ibsen play onstage (I've already seen HEDDA GABLER and THE LADY FROM THE SEA), it would be THE WILD DUCK. In fact, I'd love to direct it myself someday!

While Ibsen's other two plays in this volume are great, neither can come close to the genius of, An Enemy of the People. Dr. Stockmann's battle for truth against the self-interested masses is perhaps the most agonizingly wonderful exploration into truth and individuality. Ibsen is a master.