Hedda Gabler (Student Editions) - Softcover

Henrik Ibsen

3.82

36,580 ratings by Goodreads

9780413770707: Hedda Gabler (Student Editions)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413770702 ISBN 13: 9780413770707

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2002

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Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, trapped in the stifling environment of a bourgeois 19th-century marriage. When writer Eilert Loevborg, an old flame returns to Hedda's life 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 since become one of Ibsen's most frequently performed plays. Its title role is elusive and complex: Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, who has no means of finding personal fulfilment in the stifling world of late nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant, wayward writer, she opts for a conventional but loveless marriage in the hope of finding surrogate satisfaction through her husband's career. Blending comedy and tragedy disconcertingly together, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against a background of contemporary social conditions and attitudes.

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Synopsis:

Condemned by British critics in 1890 when it was written, "Hedda Gabler" has since become one of Ibsen's most frequently performed plays. Its title role is elusive and complex: Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, trapped in the stifling environment of a bourgeois 19th-century marriage. When writer Eilert Loevborg, an old flame returns to Hedda's life with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career under his arm, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action, drawing all in her doomed circle into a catastrophe of her own design. Blending comedy and tragedy together, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against the background of contemporary social conditions and attitudes. Methuen Student Editions are annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work, an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; and notes on individual words and phrases.

From the Back Cover:

'You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English.'

Following this public boast, Professor Henry Higgins accepts a challenge to teach the flower-seller Eliza Doolittle to speak standard English and launch her into polite society. Through Higgins's triumphant transformation of Eliza into a 'lady', and Eliza's subsequent rebellion against Higgins's attitudes and assumptions, Shaw's provocative comedy explores questions of speech and class in England.

First performed in London in 1914, 'Pygmalion' quickly established itself among the classic English comedies. On this lively recording, which offers the complete text of the definitive script of 1I39, the play is performed by a distinguished cast led by Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir Michael Hordern, Lynn Redgave and Donald Pleasence.

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