Henrik Ibsen Plays: Six: Peer Gynt, the Pretenders

By Henrik Ibsen

'Meyer''s translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one''s general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence on the poetic centre of Ibsen''s genius, have beaten academic versions from the field (George Steiner) This volume contains Ibsen''s famous early epic, Peer Gynt, and the historical tragedy The Pretenders, which together with Brand and Emperor and Galilean form a magisterial quartet at the fulcrum of Ibsen''s career. George Bernard Shaw praised Peer Gynt (1867) for the power of Ibsen''s ''grip on humanity .The universality of Ibsen makes his plays come home to all nations''. The Pretenders (1863), described by Kenneth Tynan as Ibsen''s ''first great play'', was also his first real success in the theatre. Michael Meyer''s translations are ''crisp and cobweb-free, purged of verbal Victoriana'' (Kenneth Tynan)'

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0413153002
• ISBN13: 9780413153005
• Release Date: July 1987
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 287 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Works of visionary greatness

Ibsen is often regarded as a "social writer", who, in his works, highlighted contemporary social issues. This is a great misunderstanding: Ibsen was a writer of visionary greatness, to be ranked with the likes of Tolstoy or Henry James. These six volumes of plays translated by Michael Meyer (also a distinguished biographer of the great man) are mandatory reading for anyone remotely interested in great literature. The very late plays, especially - "The Master Builder", "Little Eyolf", "John Gabriel Borkman" and "When We Dead Awaken" - take us to the rarefied heights of greatness.