| Ghosts | |
|---|---|
 The first edition ofGhosts by Henrik Ibsen, 1881 | |
| Written by | Henrik Ibsen |
| Characters |
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| Date premiered | 20 May 1882 (1882-05-20) |
| Place premiered | Aurora Turner Hall inChicago, Illinois |
| Original language | Danish |
| Subject | Morality |
| Genre | Naturalistic /realisticproblem play |
| Setting | The country home of the Alving family beside one of the large fjords in Western Norway |
Ghosts (Danish:Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian playwrightHenrik Ibsen. It was written in Danish and published in 1881,[1] and first staged in 1882 inChicago,Illinois, US, performed in Danish.[2]
Like many of Ibsen's plays,Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Because of its subject matter, which includes religion,venereal disease,incest, andeuthanasia,[3] it immediately generated strong controversy and adverse criticism.
Since then, the play has come to be considered a "great play"[4] that historically holds a position of "immense importance".[5]Theater criticMaurice Valency wrote in 1963, "From the standpoint of modern tragedyGhosts strikes off in a new direction.... Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code.Ghosts, on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it."[6]
Ibsen disliked the English translatorWilliam Archer's use of the word "Ghosts" as the play's title, as the Danish or NorwegianGengangere would be more accurately translated as "The Revenants",[7] which literally means "The Ones Who Return".
Notable productions
| Characters | Broadway revival | West End revival | Off-Broadway revival |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | 2013 | 2025 | |
| Mrs. Helen Alving | Liv Ullmann | Lesley Manville | Lily Rabe |
| Oswald Alving | Kevin Spacey | Jack Lowden | Levon Hawke |
| Pastor Manders | John Neville | Will Keen | Billy Crudup |
| Jacob Engstrand | Edward Binns | Brian McCardie | Hamish Linklater |
| Regina Engstrand | Jane Murray | Charlene McKenna | Ella Beatty |
Helen Alving is about to dedicate anorphanage, which she has built in memory of her late husband, Captain Alving. Despite her husband's affairs, Mrs. Alving stayed with him to protect her son Oswald from the taint of scandal and for fear of being shunned by the community.
In the course of the play, she discovers that Oswald (whom she had sent away to avoid his being corrupted by his father) is suffering fromsyphilis, which she believes he inherited from his father.[a] She also discovers that Oswald has fallen in love with her maid Regina Engstrand, who is revealed to be the illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving and is therefore Oswald'shalf-sister.
A sub-plot involves a carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, who married Regina's mother when she was already pregnant. He regards Regina as his own daughter. He is unaware, or pretends to be, that Captain Alving was Regina's father. Having recently completed his work building Mrs. Alving's orphanage, Engstrand announces his ambition to open a hostel forseafarers. He tries to persuade Regina to leave Mrs. Alving and help him run the hostel, but she refuses. The night before the orphanage is due to open, Engstrand asksPastor Manders to hold a prayer-meeting there. Later that night, the orphanage burns down. Earlier, Manders had persuaded Mrs. Alving not to insure the orphanage, as to do so would imply a lack of faith in divine providence. Engstrand says the blaze was caused by Manders' carelessness with a candle and offers to take the blame, which Manders readily accepts. Manders in turn offers to support Engstrand's hostel.
When Regina and Oswald's sibling relationship is exposed, Regina departs, leaving Oswald in anguish. He asks his mother to help him avoid the late stages of syphilis with a fatalmorphine overdose. She agrees, but only if it becomes necessary. The play concludes with Mrs. Alving having to confront the decision of whether or not toeuthanize her son in accordance with his wishes.[3]
As with his other plays,Henrik Ibsen wroteGhosts in Danish, the common written language of Denmark and Norway at the time. The original title, in both Danish and Norwegian, isGengangere, which can be literally translated as "again walkers", "ones who return", or "revenants".[7] It has a double meaning of both "ghosts" and "events that repeat themselves" which the English titleGhosts fails to capture.
Ibsen wroteGhosts during the autumn of 1881 and published it that December.[10] As early as November 1880, when he was living in Rome, he had been meditating on a new play to followA Doll's House. When he went toSorrento, in the summer of 1881, he was hard at work upon it. He finished it by the end of November 1881[11] and published it inCopenhagen on 13 December 1881.
Ghosts was published in Copenhagen on 13 December 1881 in an edition of 10,000 copies.[2] It caused a firestorm of public outcry,[2] and most of the 10,000 copies did not sell, which was financially a severe blow for Ibsen.[2][12] A subsequent print run of the text was not published until 1894.[2]
The play was initially sent to a number of Nordic theaters, including the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, the Nya Teatern and Dramaten in Stockholm, and the Christiania Theater, but all of them rejected the play.[2] In the early 1880s, the play was generally rejected by all major European playhouses, including those in Norway.[12]
Upon the publication of the text,[2] Ibsen's contemporaries found the play shocking and indecent and disliked its frank treatment of the forbidden topic ofvenereal disease. At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, and to show that a person who followed society's ideals of morality was at risk from her own husband was considered beyond the pale. According to Richard Eyre, "There was an outcry of indignation against the attack on religion, the defence of free love, the mention of incest and syphilis."[9]
Ghosts premiered in May 1882 in the United States, produced in Danish for Scandinavian immigrants by a Danish-Norwegian cast inChicago, at the Aurora Turner Hall.[2][13] The first performance in Sweden was atHelsingborg on 22 August 1883.[11]Ghosts was produced in Norway in October 1883, and it received good reviews.[2][9] It was produced independently in September 1889 at Berlin'sDie Freie Bühne.[14]
The play achieved a single private London performance on 13 March 1891 at theRoyalty Theatre, which was its English-language premiere.[13] The issue ofLord Chamberlain's Office censorship, because of the subject matter of illegitimate children and sexually transmitted disease, was avoided by the formation of a subscription-onlyIndependent Theatre Society to produce the play. Its members included playwrightGeorge Bernard Shaw and authorsThomas Hardy andHenry James.[15] The play was reviled in the press. In a typical review at the time,The Daily Telegraph referred to it as "Ibsen's positively abominable play entitledGhosts.... An open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly.... A lazar house with all its doors and windows open ... Gross, almost putrid indecorum.... Literary carrion.... Crapulous stuff".[16]
In 1898 when Ibsen was presented to KingOscar II of Sweden and Norway, at a dinner in Ibsen's honour, the King told Ibsen thatGhosts was not a good play. After a pause, Ibsen exploded, "Your Majesty, Ihad to writeGhosts!"[17][18][19]Ghosts had its first New York City production, and its first English-language production in the U.S., onBroadway on 5 January 1894 at the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre.[20][21] It was produced again in 1899 by the New York Independent Theatre withMary Shaw as Mrs. Alving.[11]
Russian actressAlla Nazimova, with Paul Orleneff, gave a notable production ofGhosts in a small room on theLower East Side in 1895–96.[11] When Nazimova had been a student in Russia, she had wanted to "play Regina for my graduation piece at the dramatic school at Moscow, but they would not let me.Ghosts was at that time prohibited by the censor, because it reflects on the Church."[11]
The play later received many European performances. In its 1906 production in Berlin, the Norwegian artistEdvard Munch was commissioned to create the original stage designs.[22] On 4 May 1962, the play was performed in the Theatre Sala Chopin in Mexico City with Mexican actress and Hollywood starDolores del Río in the role of Mrs. Alving.[23]
ABroadway revival ofGhosts ran from 30 August to 2 October 1982 at theBrooks Atkinson Theater in New York City, and starredKevin Spacey as Oswald in his Broadway debut. The cast includedEdward Binns,John Neville (who also directed the production) as Pastor Manders,Liv Ullmann as Mrs. Alving, and Jane Murray as Regina.[24] The production opened originally at theEisenhower Theater in Washington'sKennedy Center on July 19, 1982.[25]
A touring UK production, designed by Simon Higlett and inspired by Edvard Munch's original stage designs for a 1906 staging in Berlin, began performances atRose Theatre Kingston in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2013, prior to an official opening on 25 September. Directed byStephen Unwin, the cast includedPatrick Drury as Pastor Manders, Florence Hall as Regina,Kelly Hunter as Mrs Alving, and Mark Quartley as Oswald.[22]
An award-winning 2013–14 London production opened at theAlmeida Theatre on 26 September 2013 and transferred to theWest End atTrafalgar Studios on 9 December, running until 22 March 2014.[26] Adapted and directed byRichard Eyre, it featuredLesley Manville,Jack Lowden,Will Keen,Charlene McKenna, andBrian McCardie. Manville and Lowden wonOlivier Awards for their performances;[27] Manville also won theCritics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress, and Lowden also won theIan Charleson Award.[28][29] Eyre won theEvening Standard Award for Best Director.[30] The production also won the Olivier Award for Best Revival, and received Olivier Award nominations for Best Director and Best Lighting Design. A filmed February 2014 performance of the production screened in more than 275 UK and Irish cinemas on 26 June 2014.[31][32][33] The entire filmed performance can be viewed online.[33][34] The production was also adapted for radio by director Richard Eyre, broadcast onBBC Radio 3 on 15 December 2013 and re-broadcast on 26 April 2015.[35] Eyre's production was presented at theBrooklyn Academy of Music in Spring 2015, whereBen Brantley inThe New York Times called it "possibly the bestGhosts you'll ever see".[36]
In 2014 a Chinese-Norwegian co-production entitledGhosts 2.0 was produced in Beijing, commissioned by Ibsen International and directed byWang Chong, who had started the Chinese New Wave Theater Movement. The multimedia performance used four cameras on the stage, giving the audience different perspectives.[37][38]
In 2025, a production atLincoln Center Theater'sMitzi E. Newhouse premiered withLily Rabe,Billy Crudup,Ella Beatty, andLevon Hawke,Hamish Linklater.[39] The production received aDrama League Award nomination for Outstanding Revival of a Play, along with Rabe receiving a nomination for Distinguished Performance.[40]
Ghosts has been filmed, and adapted for film and television, numerous times in various languages. It was adapted at least three times forsilent films. In 1915,George Nichols directed afilm of the same name for producerD. W. Griffith.Mary Alden andHenry B. Walthall starred.[41] Also in 1915, it was filmed in Russia, directed and adapted byVladimir Gardin.[42] In 1918, the Italian production companyMilano Films released an adaptation titledGli spettri [it], starringErmete Zacconi and his wifeInes Cristina Zacconi [it].[43]
In 1987 it was televised on theBBC, directed byElijah Moshinsky and featuringJudi Dench as Mrs. Alving,Kenneth Branagh as Oswald,Michael Gambon as Pastor Manders, andNatasha Richardson as Regina.[44] In 2014 Richard Eyre's award-winning London stage adaptation starring Lesley Manville and Jack Lowden was filmed and screened at numerous cinemas, and is available to view online.[31][32][33][34]
Ghosts public domain audiobook atLibriVox| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
