A Doll’s House, Men of Honour, When We Dead Awaken

’Oh, be not afraid. I am cast out of society, but you, is it not true, you walk around as a man of honour? What more do you want?’ (Laura Kieler, Men of Honour)

Very few readers and audiences know that Ibsen’s iconic feminist drama A Doll’s House was built upon the real-life story of a woman called Laura Kieler, who was his friend and fellow writer. Her life fell apart when A Doll’s House came out and the world saw her deeply private life splashed across its stages. With tremendous determination and perseverance, she managed to recover from the trauma that Ibsen’s play caused her, and channelled her pain into a successful play of her own called (pointedly) Men of Honour. The play, performed in Copenhagen in 1890, caused great debate and fierce controversy. Ibsen eventually responded to her play by likewise writing a drama: When We Dead Awaken, his final work.

This new edition traces the conversation between Ibsen and Kieler through these plays, across almost two decades and brings Kieler centre stage, and deepens our understanding of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and When We Dead Awaken. These three plays create a fascinating whole: a fusion of vantage points, contexts, and visions still reverberating on and off stage today. Furthermore, the two Ibsen plays speak to each other in startling and fresh ways. This volume also explores 21st century concerns about consent and the many ways in which women in particular are still not heard.

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.

Henrik Ibsen, Laura Kieler

Gaye Kynoch has a background in the integrated academic, research and practical study of drama, performance and theatre arts. She has worked with a number of theatre companies and arts organisations, and is a freelance Danish-English literary translator of plays and novels, in addition to books and essays on topics related to history and the arts. Kynoch is also a founding member of the Danish Theatre Forum Europe.

Tzen Sam is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, focusing on Henrik Ibsen’s first female English translators, the women who played an important but largely unacknowledged role in the transmission and reception of Ibsen’s plays in late-Victorian England. Sam completed her undergraduate degree at Peterhouse, Cambridge and an MA at University College London before beginning her DPhil at Oxford.

Kirsten E Shepherd is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Her area of interests are theatre and science, the plays of Ibsen, and the role of theatre and performance in the historiography of Modernism. Her books include Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett (2015) and Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction (2016).