Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxvi]-xxviii).

"These three major plays represent a decisive turning-point in Ibsen's scheme of values." "Hurt and dismayed by the hostile reception of Ghosts in 1881, Ibsen published, a year later, the uncompromising An Enemy of the People. Its protagonist, Dr Stockmann, finds himself up against an alliance of political hypocrisy and vested interest when he attempts to reveal that the town's public baths, its civic pride and joy, are seriously polluted. The Wild Duck (1884), hailed as 'the master's masterpiece', dramatizes the shock of growing up, in the figure of 14-year-old Hedvig Ekdal. In Rosmersholm (1886), a tour de force of constructional skill, two people of opposing ideals clash swords." "Seeking to define 'nobility of character, of mind and of will', these plays are peopled by complex individuals pitted against, or part of, a society Ibsen found so morally abhorrent and claustrophobically provincial that he lived in self-imposed exile for most of his writing career."--BOOK JACKET