A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

One of the most influential playwrights of his time, Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, at a small Norwegian town of Skien. By 1850, When Ibsen’s literary abilities had begun to show, and he was no longer satisfied to stay in a small town, he came to Christiania—a venture that would prove to be disastrous. Ibsen had brought with him his blank verse tragedy, Catilina, his first play, deemed unremarkable. When Ibsen was twenty-three, he was appointed to work in a theatre in Bergen. He also wrote plays during this time, but none of them were well-received. In 1864, Ibsen went on a self-imposed exile, frustrated by his constant penury and his general life in Norway. In these years, he wrote a lot of plays that finally won him critical appreciation and wealth, ending his long-endured poverty—Brand (1865), Peer Gynt (1867), The League of Youth (1869). In 1877, Ibsen began to write the prose plays on which his wider reputation rests, such as A Doll’s House (1879) which is his most-performed play. In 1881, he managed to come up with an unconventional play—Ghosts, tackling topics such as incest and venereal disease. He continued writing plays until 1900. Some of his later plays are The Lady from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), The Master Builder (1892), and Little Eyolf (1894). Ibsen returned to his country after more than two decades, by which time he had become a literary titan. He suffered a series of strokes in 1900, due to which he became unable to write. Henrik Ibsen breathed his last on May 23, 1906.