Niru is a young Bengali woman married to an English colonial bureaucrat - Tom. Tom loves Niru, exoticising her as a frivolous plaything to be admired and kept; but Niru has a long-kept secret, and just as she thinks she is almost free of it, it threatens to bring her life crashing down around her. Tanika Gupta reimagines Ibsen's classic play of gender politics through the lens of British colonialism, offering a bold, female perspective exploring themes of ownership and race.

An enhanced exam section: expert guidance on approaching exam questions, writing high-quality responses and using critical interpretations, plus practice tasks and annotated sample answer extracts. Key skills covered: focused tasks to develop your analysis and understanding, plus regular study tips, revision questions and progress checks to track your learning. The most in-depth analysis: detailed text summaries and extract analysis to in-depth discussion of characters, themes, language, contexts and criticism, all helping you to succeed.

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant writer, Hedda Gabler opts instead for a conventional but loveless marriage. But, when her first love returns with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action. Universally condemned in 1890 when it was written, Hedda Gabler has subsequently become one of Ibsen's most performed and studied plays. Blending comedy and tragedy, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against a backdrop of contemporary social Habits and hypocrisies. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is published with Michael Meyer's classic translation, and with commentary and notes by Dr. Sophie Duncan. These offer a contemporary lens on the play's gender politics, and consider some key twentieth and twenty-first century productions of Hedda Gabler, which include actresses like Maggie Smith, Harriet Walker, and Ruth Wilson taking on the iconic titular role.

This revised Student Edition of Ibsen's popular play contains introductory commentary and notes by Sophie Duncan, which offer a contemporary lens on the play's gender politics and consider seminal productions and adaptations of the play into the 21st century. As well as the complete text of the play itself, this new Methuen Drama Student Edition includes a: * Chronology of the play and Ibsen's life and work * Discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created * Overview of the creation processes followed and performance history of the play, including recent performances such as a 2012 short film adaptation and a stage adaptation set in colonial Calcutta. * Analysis of some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the play, such as whether it's a feminist play and its author a feminist * Bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials for further study Ibsen's 1879 play shocked its first audiences with its radical insights into the social roles of husband and wife. His portrayal of the caged 'songbird' in his flawed heroine Nora remains one of the most striking dramatic depictions of the late 19th century woman.

Duncan Macmillan's stunning and resonant adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm. This revival of a masterpiece charts love, politics, past and future, with plenty of twists thrown in for good measure. Rosmersholm is positioned against the backdrop of a looming election, an atmosphere of uncertainty and a bloodthirsty press. In the grand house of an influential dynasty, John Rosmer holds the future in his hands. As he wanders the line between idealism and a painful past, he finds himself ever more torn.

One of the best-known, most frequently performed of modern plays, displaying Ibsen's genius for realistic prose drama. A classic expression of women's rights, the play builds to a climax in which the central character, Nora, rejects a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house." Publisher's Note. Contents. Dramatis Personae.

One of the most widely studied and performed works in the theatrical repertoire, this dark psychological drama, first produced in Norway in 1890, depicts the evil machinations of a ruthless, nihilistic heroine. Readers will discover in the shocking events Hedda Gabler precipitates, a masterly exploration of the nature of evil and the potential for tragedy that lies in human frailty.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Restless and discontented in her marriage, Hedda Gabler is drawn to a former admirer, Lovborg, now a brilliant writer. But he is more taken with Hedda's old schoolfriend. Driven by jealousy, Hedda destroys Lovborg and his precious manuscript and, finally, herself. This English version of Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.

'You've lies in the whites of your eyes, Nora. What have you done...?' Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything. Henrik Ibsen's brutal portrayal of womanhood caused outrage when it was first performed in 1879. This bold new version by Stef Smith reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women's suffrage, the Swinging Sixties and the modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past hundred years? Nora : A Doll's House was first produced by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2019, at Tramway, Glasgow. A new production opened at the Young Vic, London, in February 2020. It was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to celebrate women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. 'A radical, stunning reworking which thrums with relevance and power... a wordsmith at the top of her poetic game... a classic play reinvented for our time' - BritishTheatre.com 'An intense, ambitious survey of women's shifting roles, which amplifies each step in Ibsen's elegantly crafted story, as though Nora's stamping through a cathedral in Doc Martens... Smith's ingenious dialogue makes what could be massively complicated feel simple and legible' - Time Out 'Smith's update is smart and thoughtful, balancing a sense of feminist history and activism with the tightness of a thriller and some rich personal drama' - The Stage 'Stef Smith's excellent adaptation... a provocation infused with Ibsen's radical spirit' - Guardian 'A beautiful and explosively significant piece of theatre' - Scotsman

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Should the truth be pursued, whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based. Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck, considered a masterpiece of modern tragicomedy, was premiered in January 1885 at Den Nationale Scene, Bergen, Norway. This English translation by Stephen Mulrine is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, with a full introduction.

Richard Eyre's high-profile adaptation of Ibsen's famous 'problem play' about a headstrong woman's determination to control those around her. Arriving home after an extended honeymoon, Hedda struggles with an existence that is, for her, devoid of excitement and enchantment. Filled with a passion for life that cannot be confined by her marriage or 'perfect home', Hedda strives to find a way to fulfil her desires by manipulating those around her. Richard Eyre's adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler was premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2005. Included in this volume is an introduction to the play by Richard Eyre.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Henrik Ibsen's revolutionary play about a woman's awakening to her need for a life of her own. A Doll's House was premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 1879. This English version of A Doll's House is translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.

A Doll's House/Ghosts/Pillars of the Community/An Enemy of the People 'Our home has never been anything other than a play-house. I've been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Daddy's doll-child' These four plays established Ibsen as the leading figure in the theatre of his day, sending shockwaves throughout Europe and beyond. A Doll's House scandalized audiences with its free-thinking heroine Nora. Ibsen's even more radical follow-up, Ghosts, exposes family secrets and sexual double-dealing, while Pillars of the Community and An Enemy of the People both explore the hypocrisy and the dark tensions at the heart of society. This new translation, the first to be based on the latest critical edition of Ibsen's works, offers the best version available in English. A new translation by DEBORAH DAWKIN and ERIK SKUGGEVIK With an Introduction by TORE REM General Editor TORE REM

John Gabriel Borkman, once an illustrious entrepreneur, has been brought low by a prison sentence for fraud. As he paces alone in an upstairs room, bankrupt and disgraced, he is obsessed by dreams of his comeback. Downstairs, his estranged wife plots the restoration of the family name. When her sister arrives unannounced, she triggers a desperate showdown with the past. Henrik Ibsen's most contemporary play and his penultimate, John Gabriel Borkman is gripping, penetrating and savagely funny. This version by Lucinda Coxon premiered at the Bridge Theatre, London, in September 2022, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with a cast led by Clare Higgins, Simon Russell Beale and Lia Williams.

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will feature writing in English from various genres and differing times.

'I think I'm a human being before anything else. I don't care what other people say. I don't care what people write in books. I need to think for myself.' Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered in 1879 in Copenhagen, the second in a series of realist plays by Ibsen, and immediately provoked controversy with its apparently feminist message and exposure of the hypocrisy of Victorian middle-class marriage. In Ibsen's play, Nora Helmer has secretly (and deceptively) borrowed a large sum of money to pay for her husband, Torvald, to recover from illness on a sabbatical in Italy. Torvald's perception of Nora is of a silly, naive spendthrift, so it is only when the truth begins to emerge, and Torvald appreciates the initiative behind his wife, that unmendable cracks appear in their marriage. This compelling new version of Ibsen's masterpiece by playwright Simon Stephens premiered at the Young Vic Theatre, London, on 29 June 2012. It was updated with minor changes in 2013.

Taken from the highly acclaimed Oxford Ibsen, this collection of Ibsen's plays includes A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Acclaimed director Richard Eyre's version of Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts" is a fresh and vivid depiction of a woman who yearns for emotional and sexual freedom, but who is too timid to achieve it.
Helene Alving has spent her life suspended in an emotional void after the death of her cruel but outwardly charming husband. She is determined to escape the ghosts of her past by telling her son, Oswald, the truth about his father. But on his return from his life as a painter in France, Oswald reveals how he has already inherited the legacy of Alving's dissolute life.
This edition contains an introduction to the play by Richard Eyre, which appeared in an edited version in the "Guardian."
"Raw and unsparing, but also devastatingly true to the spirit of the original... theatre seldom, if ever, comes greater than this." - "Sunday Telegraph"
"Both humorous and deeply affecting... the most lucid and affecting version of the play I have ever seen." - "Time Out"
"Richard Eyre's new stripped-down 90-minute version has glories too many to list." - "The Times"
"Held me in its grip throughout... leaves one reeling." - "Telegraph"
"Glittering, dark... as fresh and unsettling as ever." - "Financial Times"
"Grabs you by the throat and never releases its grip... extraordinary." - "Guardian"
"Scaldingly intense... the inexorable build-up of tension is beautifully calibrated." - "The Arts Desk"
Richard Eyre worked for ten years in regional theatre in Leicester, Edinburgh and Nottingham. He was producer of the BBC's Play for Today from 1978 to 1981, and was Artistic Director of the National Theatre from 1988 to 1997. He has since worked widely in theatre and opera - including in the West End, at the National Theatre and the Royal Opera House, on Broadway and in Aix-en-Provence. His film and television work includes "The Ploughman's Lunch, Tumbledown, Iris, Notes on a Scandal," and "Changing Stages," a six-part look at twentieth-century theatre. He has received many awards for theatre, TV and film, and was knighted in 1997.