https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0961-6704
Of all the plays that influenced Bernard Shaw, perhaps none looms quite so large as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Shaw even featured an Ibsen social club (with a prominent bust of the Norwegian author) in his early comedy The Philanderer. Both reading the drama and seeing it performed were pivotal experiences in Shaw’s career first as a critic and then as a playwright. As he wrote in 1889, and as L. W. Conolly quotes in the new critical edition of A Doll’s House issued by Broadview Press, Shaw “never saw a play listened to with closer attention” than when he saw Ibsen’s drama performed in Amsterdam (233). The play swept across Europe after its publication at the end of 1879, captivating audiences not just in Amsterdam, but in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and only belatedly in England. If the play’s influence on English drama was delayed by...
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Book Review|
October 15 2024
The Quintessence of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House) Available to Purchase
L.W. Conolly, ed. Henrik Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House
. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
: Broadview Press
, 2024
. 310 pages. ISBN 978-1-55481-580-7. $18.95.
James Armstrong
James Armstrong
JAMES ARMSTRONG is an adjunct assistant professor at Baruch College and City College of the City University of New York. He is the author of Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas: British Tragedy on the Regency Stage. He is also a playwright and member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and his plays have been performed by Passage Theatre Company, Detroit Repertory Theatre, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, the Abingdon Theatre Company, and other professional theaters.
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Shaw (2024) 44 (2): 361–364.
