Ghosts

Ghosts (Gengangere)

    Author: Henrik Ibsen

    First Performance: 1882, Chicago; 1883, Helsingborg

    Published: 1881

    First English Translation: 1888

    Genre: Trag. in 3 acts; Norwegian prose

    Setting: Mrs Alving's estate, western Norway, 1880s

    Cast: 3m, 2f

Mrs Alving has built an orphanage in honour of her husband, who died 10 years previously. She reveals to her old friend Pastor Manders the truth about her marriage: Captain Alving was a dissolute reprobate who made her life a misery. She reproaches Manders for insisting that she return to her husband, when she had come to the Pastor seeking help. Now her artist son Osvald has returned home from Paris and begins to flirt with the maid Regina, the daughter of Alving and a former maidservant. To Mrs Alving it is as though the ghosts of the past have...

[The entire page is 322 words long]

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