Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright and poet whose realistic, symbolic and often controversial plays revolutionised European theatre. He is widely regarded as the father of modern drama. His acclaimed plays include A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People and The Pillars of the Community.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).Michael Meyer is widely regarded as the definitive translator of Ibsen and Strindberg. His Strindberg translations made him the first Englishman to receive the Gold Medal of the Swedish Academy in 1964 and his biography of Ibsen won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1971.

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.

• ChronologyCOMMENTARYCultural and Theatrical ContextsTheatrical StyleThemesCharacterisationSettingTranslationPerformance HistoryScholarly and Popular DebateFurther reading and viewingHEDDA GABLERNotes